hoofprints in the snow

Whenever I show my students “The Ride,” by Richard Wilbur, I brace myself, because I know that one of them is about to compare it to “the poem ‘Footprints in the Sand.'”

I understand. It reminds me of “Footprints in the Sand,” too, a little. They’re both stories about a savior who carries you when you’re too weak to walk, and about feeling humbled by that sacrifice. But as literary works, they have about as much in common as Mars and a Mars bar, and so the comparison makes me twitchy and irritable.

First of all, “Footprints in the Sand” isn’t a poem. It’s a story. In fact, it’s many stories. There is no one authoritative version of it. And the different versions are essentially interchangeable — their exact wording isn’t that important. “The Ride,” by contrast, would not be “The Ride” if it were the same story told in different language. Here’s Richard Wilbur:

Till the weave of the storm grew thin,
With a threading of cedar-smoke,
And the ice-blind pane of an inn
Shimmered, and I awoke.

Here’s the same stanza in paraphrase:

Till the storm started to weaken
And I could smell smoke from a chimney,
And I saw a window with a light behind it,
And that was when I woke up.

The biggest difference between “Footprints” and “The Ride,” though, is the way the reader experiences them. “Footprints” is compelling because of the exhilarating surprise in its final line. But it can only surprise you once. When you reread it with pleasure, you’re savoring the memory of that surprise. “The Ride” can show you something new every time you return to it. It’s a poem of faith, I believe, but not a mere profession of faith; it’s as profound, mysterious, and true as the most vivid dream:

The Ride

The horse beneath me seemed
To know what course to steer
Through the horror of snow I dreamed,
And so I had no fear,

Nor was I chilled to death
By the wind’s white shudders, thanks
To the veils of his patient breath
And the mist of sweat from his flanks.

It seemed that all night through,
Within my hand no rein
And nothing in my view
But the pillar of his mane,

I rode with magic ease
At a quick, unstumbling trot
Through shattering vacancies
On into what was not,

Till the weave of the storm grew thin,
With a threading of cedar-smoke,
And the ice-blind pane of an inn
Shimmered, and I awoke.

How shall I now get back
To the inn-yard where he stands,
Burdened with every lack,
And waken the stable-hands

To give him, before I think
That there was no horse at all,
Some hay, some water to drink,
A blanket and a stall?

“Longing, we say, because desire is full / of endless distances.”

Today I read part of the Wikipedia entry on the BlackBerry mobile device. Selfishly, I was happy to learn that it has lost quite a bit of its market share. Because the sooner I can forget that “BlackBerry” was ever a synonym for “smartphone,” the sooner I can get back to hearing the final line of Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas” without all of that context-pollution. Some words need to be elegy to what they signify.

“Meditation at Lagunitas” may be the most famous American poem of the past 50 years. It deserves to be, in any case. (Unlike famous songs, famous poems almost always deserve to be.) I know you’re busy, but take a minute to treat yourself to it:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177014

how to pronounce the last word in Philip Larkin’s “Home Is So Sad”

Reading Philip Larkin’s “Home is So Sad” aloud presents a problem for Americans. How should we pronounce the final word?

Home Is So Sad

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

In the United States, “vase” rhymes with “face.” In England, with “gauze.” Larkin obviously intended the British pronunciation; he was British. And saying “vahz” concludes the poem with something much closer to a full rhyme than “vace” would. Here’s a recording of Larkin himself reading the poem:

But I can’t bring myself to say “vahz” when I read it. I’d feel as though I were affecting an accent. More significantly, I think the British version sounds a little too grand when spoken by an American. For the poem’s purposes, the vase needs to be decorative and attractive, but also somewhat ordinary, somewhat everyday. A “vahz” can be a middle-class household item in the U.K., but in the U.S. it tends to be preceded by the words “priceless Ming.” And I actually like the small jolt that the off-rhyme delivers — the unexpectedness of it. It introduces a dissonant note that suits the poem’s mood perfectly, even if it’s not the note Larkin thought he was composing.

Isn’t it a sad and beautiful poem, by the way?

“something finer”

A highlight of the Favorite Poem Project Summer Teachers Institute in Chicago: hearing Carl Phillips discuss Rita Dove’s “Dusting.” What a poem. By the time you’re halfway through it, you’ll be as desperate as Beulah to remember the name of the silly boy she kissed so many years ago:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/24214