A SHORT INTERPRETATION OF
JESSICA POWERS' POETRYpage one
(from "Manuscript of Heaven") "write me down
as a small adjective attending light,
the archangelic noun."
Regina Siegfried, ASC
Although this presentation may run the risk of beginning like the opening of the Prichard essay read by the students in "Dead Poets Society," I do nevertheless need to establish some criteria for good and great poetry so that we have credible standards for evaluating the poetry of Jessica Powers.
There are three elements to examine when we judge the merits of poetry, indeed when we critique any work of art. the central purpose, the accomplishment of that purpose, and the importance of the purpose Perrine, 222-24; 238-39). Jessica Powers herself gave us the purpose of her poetry in conversations with Bishop Morneau, Dolores Leckey, and myself. She often spoke of God's beauty, love and mercy and of her desire to draw people to God through her poetry. You will find a comment from one of her letters to the bishop in the introduction to the selected poems. She writes: "My only purpose in writing is that there are some things I would like to say to everyone, especially those who are turning from God".
In an interview with her in July, 1987, she commented that she writes a lot about beauty. She said, "I love beauty, holiness and divinity.''
Her poetry is undoubtedly religious poetry and, as such. highlights through her powerful use of crafted images. her intent to draw people to God. to express the human longing for the Transcendent. Readers of her poetry who have faith do not question the importance of her purpose. It is not the function of this presentation to argue or prove third criteria for good poetry, the importance of the purpose We take for granted that Jessica Powers writes religious poetry. To image the human longing for God is an important purpose for those of us for whom faith need not he argued.
Even if we can assume the importance of her purpose, we still need to ask some critical questions about the quality of her poetry as well as its place within poetic traditions. Certain haunting questions that tease me are: into what tradition of religious poetry would we place the work of Jessica Powers - poetry of meditation, devotional poetry, confessional poetry, or sentimental religious poems? Does her Carmelite spirituality fit into the poetry of meditation? What is the relationship between her incarnational spirituality and Carmelite spirituality?
The remainder of this presentation will concentrate on two areas: what are the merits of the poetic techniques through which Jessica Powers accomplishes her purposes, and, secondly, in what tradition or traditions of American poetry is it possible to situate her?
Poets are artists who paint with words. Their pigments are diction, images, figures of speech. allusion, rhyme, and sound - all the techniques available to analyze poetry that you learned in high school and college introduction to literature courses. Brushing these paints on the canvas of a white piece of paperinnuances,blended tones, patterns, and depth with perspective creates for the reader a picture that can be enjoyed, appreciated, and evaluated.
I would like to explicate for you one of Jessica Powers' poems that I consider among one of her best and juxtapose that with one of lesser quality so that we can evaluate her within the body of her own work. Bishop Morneau and I often teased her about doing a selection of her " top ten.'' last July when he, Dolores, and I met with her for her approval of the final manuscript, Dolores told us that the "top ten'' had grown to the "top forty.''] I've chosen to limit myself to the poems in the selected edition, since these are the ones that Jessica Powers wanted published. [If you want to read some other poems that I would evaluate as bad to truly, consult the Marquette Archives holdings of her papers.] I've selected "Ice Storm" (172) and "Human Winter" (113) for their similarity of images. Let me begin with "Ice Storm, "the less-than-excellent poem:
ICE STORM
The language of the heart would desecrate,
The chastity of this moon-blinded night,
these iridescent trees of ice, these great,
ascetic areas of silver light
that have been fields before the winter rain
froze on the snow to magnify the moon.
The trees and vines tinkle a thin refrain
like a glass windbell's tune.
Let those who go abroad be solitary,
stifle the heart and see how this unknown
and brittle world, unreal and legendary,
was filmed in crystal for the mind alone.
Harper's" 181 I[Nov.,1940]: 604 The Place of Splendor." 38 And "The Lantern Burns," 49)
In a good poem. diction. images. and figures of speech are fresh and are arranged in such a way that any rearrangement would destroy the integrity of the poem. Good poems are not sentimental, didactic, or overwritten Perrine, 223-24).
The imagery of ''Ice Storm" is as fresh and as crisp as the scene it describes. The picture that the words paint is one of a snow filled field shimmering in ice on a "moon-blinded night." Without being obvious. the poet captures the brittle cold through words and phrases such as ''iridescent trees of light,'' ''areas of silver light.'' and ice-encased ''trees and vines that] tinkle.'' The poet has captured a ''brittle world.'' one ''filmed in crystal' ' without the blatant statement: ''This is a cold scene." She moves the physical description onto a more symbolic plane when she speaks of ''desecrat[ing] the chastity of this moon-blinded night'' and of ''great ascetic areas of silver light.'' The moon-blinded night and areas of Silver light grow more remote and inaccessible by the precise use of ''would desecrate" "chastity,'' and ''ascetic." This ice-bound landscape becomes metaphor for the theme of the poem: the solitary mind is a better traveler in the fields of the unknown than is the heart. It is the mind alone that can pick its path through ''ascetic areas of silver light'' whose familiarity has been blurred by snow, encased in ice. and made ' 'unreal and legendary.'' Her thematic lines open and close the poem:
The language of the heart would desecrate
......................................................................
was filmed in crystal for the mind alone.
Sometimes, she writes, it is necessary to "stifle the heart" to understand an "unknown brittle world." Behind all the images is the hint that ex-ploring the world of ideas is as exciting, dangerous, and invigorating as stepping into a field after an ice storm.
Because the poet is able to control the metaphors and images in a creative way, the poem is neither didactic nor sentimental. The world "filmed in crystal" becomes metaphor for the world where, in this poem, the mind is most at home. "Ice Storm" captivates our senses and imaginations. The poet does not argue, persuade or cajole: she simply presents us with a comparison and lets us ponder its implications. An ordinary meteorological phenomenon is metaphor for the realm of the mind.
But if we compare Ice Storm" with "Human Winter," we can see that the latter poem engages our emotions on a much deeper level than does the former. "Human Winter" says something much more significant about human nature than does "Ice Storm."
A few words of introduction about "Human Winter.'' I was not at all familiar with this poem until I stumbled across it one hot June day in 1982 in St. Louis University's Pius XII library. It is so good that its winter images delighted and refreshed me on that hot June day. It would certainly be very close to the top of my "top ten" list. Jessica Powers, however, only reluctantly agreed to its inclusion in the selected edition and only with the note you will find with it on page 113 in the hook. Her love for Carmel, I think, blurred her judgment about the high quality of this poem. She told me that she wrote the poem after a meeting she at-tended in New York. In deference to her memory, I think we cannot say too many times that the people described in this poem are not Carmelites.
HUMAN WINTER
No fire could warm this place
though the air hang in sultry shred and the roof
perspire:
nothing here is amendable to fire.
Words fall in slow icy rain and freeze
upon the heart's sudden dismantled trees.
and branches break and fall.
From the wind of inclement glances I cannot shield
myself
who find their frost too subtle to forestall.
I am waiting for the snow of my own obscurity
to settle
and cover me, frozen ground.
to blunt all sharp insufferable sound,
to meet the angles of cold and obliterate them
all.
I long to rise in this room and say. "You are not
my people.
I come from a warm country; my country is love.
Nor did I wish to come here; I was misdirected."
But their frost is not defied, and their cold is
not rejected.
So chilled am I by this presence of human winter
I cannot speak or move.
(Written in 1939 or 40: published in 'America" {Dec. 19, 1942]: 299)
In the opening lines of the poem, the speaker desires fire, yet knows that "no fire [can] warm this place." By the closing lines, the speaker is frozen, realizing that indeed ''no fire can warm this place.''
The vivid imagery of enough fire to cause the air to "hang in sultry shred" and "the roof [to] perspire" quickly gives way to images of cold, ice, and snow. The words of the speakers in the room create an ice storm to ''fall in slow icy rain" that will "freeze upon the heart's sudden dismantled trees." The heart and sensibilities of the speaker are damaged, wounded, broken by the cold words that buffet her. The speaker is left vulnerable to ''the wind of inclement glances." unable to shield herself from their frost and cold. Rather than wanting to crawl into the cliche-filled hole, this speaker wants to respond with her own form of cold: ''The snow of my own obscurity to cover me,'' to obliterate her own form. Since the people gathered in the room have already frozen her - she is "frozen ground'' she longs for snow to blank her out, to save her from ''insufferable sound'' so that she can ''meet the angles of cold and obliterate them all.''
"Because she is metaphorically frozen, she cannot do what she longs to do:
I long to rise in this room and say, ''You are
not my people.
I come from a warm country; my country is love.
Nor did I wish to come here: I was misdirected."Their brittle cold has overpowered, iced over, and frozen her "warm country,'' her country of love.
The precise, creative use of images of cold in "Human Winter'' is the vehicle for its theme that even love sometimes cannot thaw the cold of some human relationships. Again, the poetic techniques in this poem are so sophisticated, controlled, and refined that its message is spoken through words and images that engage our emotions, intellects, hearts, and most of all, our imaginations. The specific room of the poem becomes universal, becomes the place where we have all felt rejection and isolation so intense that we have been frozen. The poem hints at complexities of human nature and human relationships that can haunt the reader into frequent readings of the poem.
There are several reasons why" Human Winter" is a better poem than "Ice Storm," reasons, which ultimately revolve around the significance of each poem's purpose. From a technical viewpoint, an angle which considers the mechanics of poetry, "Human Winter" is a much more sophisticated poem, simply in terms of form.
"Ice Storm" is a simple nature lyric with a standard abab/cdcd/efef rhyme scheme and standard iambic pentameter meter. "Human Winter" is a combination of free-verse meter and unpatterned rhyme, a more complicated form than "Ice Storm." The poetic merits of these two works do not, however, rest on mechanics. The artistic value of ''Ice Storm" is the poet's ability to control the rhyme and rhythm and her ability to create imaginative metaphors. "Ice Storm" is neither trite nor sentimental. But it engages us on an intellectual rather than emotional level it stops too soon. It is easy to read the poem, marvel at its precise use of images. its theme. and then simply say "well done." The power of the poem lies in its theme, namely that the mind travels well in "ascetic areas of silver light.'' It is a poem to engage the mind more than "the language of the heart." From that perspective, it succeeds in an admirable way, since its theme is one that explores the regions where the mind is at home.
''Human Winter," in contrast to 'Ice Storm" captures our emotions. Its theme enriches us with new and felt knowledge. This is no mere meteorological description of the cold's ability to "dismantle trees." "Inclement glances," "words [that] fall in slow icy rain" are metaphors for the human ability to isolate, exclude. cutoff. and wound. The same images of winter and cold that were used in "Ice Storm become symbolic in "Human Winter."
leged and honored to know her, to claim her as friend, mentor, and wisdom figure, can say that her life as well as her poetry did and does that. She wrote in "Manuscript of Heaven" (54) 'write me down as a small adjective attending light, the archangelic noun." Manuscript of Heaven I know the manuscript the Uncreated writes in the garden of His good estate. His creatures are the words incorporated into love's speech. 0 great immortal Poet, in Your volume bright if one may choose a portion, write me down as a small adjective attending light, the archangelic noun. (54) ("The Franciscan," Jan.1938.) In this poem, Jessica Powers sees us as words of God's love. The speaker in the poem may choose to be an adjective: however, the power of the poetry is the power of the verbs of our language. Jessica Powers constantly reminded me of the birds who were so dear to her, a small woman, with deep twinkling eyes, someone as transparent and as elusive as a crystal wren. She writes in "For a Silent Poet" (186): Song was a wild bird and it came unbidden. It settled down across the darkened air to a gray branch in a dull orchard hidden. One morning it was there. Feathers of luster and a polished beak, you cried in your delight, what is this bird that in one space of music seems to speak the note and the note's word? It came from meadows seasonless and boundless into your orchard for a summer stay, and then one night you saw it lift on soundless white wings and float away. Weep not that visit of a brief duration. You are a guest yourself and you must know that in you lie the instincts of migration, and where the bird went, one day you will go. ("Commonweal," May 17, 194O~:76, "The Place of Splendor. "1946, p. 49) I think she is the silent poet of this poem; she does indeed speak for us the note and the note' sword. Her death was a loss for us, but who are we to hold this crystal wren when she was more than ready to soar, to sparkle, and to sing. We have become guardians of her legacy.next page
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