On Exquisiteness in Poetry

Louis MacNeice's Snow
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Saroja

There are poems only a dollop of prolonged inspiration can produce. The idea unfurls by itself, already made, already complete, layer by neatly laid layer. Images follow one another, each one finer than the earlier, enhancing the development of the poem and mining from the germ a self-nourishing process of growth like leaf sprouting on leaf to make a perfectly formed plant.

Take Louis MacNeice’s 'Snow', for instance:


SNOW

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.


The poem is built out of a small handful of images -- snow, roses, tangerine and fire. But their careful interlinking spins a web of sensations. The characterization of the room as ‘suddenly rich’ and the sense of lavishness conjured before the eye by the ‘the great bay window’ are offset ingeniously by the sparing selection of what creates the richness the poet speaks of – the snow and the pink roses. A richness that is not ostentatious for its abruptness, but quiet and elegant, that adds a dash of cheer to the room. White against delicate pink. Muted colours, ‘soundlessly collateral’, almost accidental. ‘Incompatible’ they may be with respect to the season, but the image, with its suggestion of carefully chosen colour and texture, indicates early on a hidden sense of congeniality between these diverse phenomena.

"World is suddener than we fancy it."

The last line expresses both wonderment and knowledge. The occurrence is astonishing, but the ability of the world to spring such mottled surprises is nonetheless expected. The charm of the line is of course in the use of ‘world’ without an article. It is an instance of those small decisions that result in the exquisiteness of a well-crafted poem. Trivial details these may be, but they make a world of difference.

There is more sound, more clamour in the second stanza. It drops the careful approach and orderliness of the first stanza to give in, so to speak, to the ‘craziness’ and the ‘incorrigibility’ of plurality in nature. One may call forth numberless clichés about the sensory appeal of poetry, and yet the imaginative synesthetic effect remains as inexplicable and as immediate as joy’s grape bursting on the palate fine. Notice the delicious lingering on ‘peeling’ and ‘portioning’ the tangerine followed by the monosyllable and consonance of ‘spit’ and ‘pips’ to capture the overpowering moment of intoxication. Time is suspended in this single moment, itself 'drinking' in the shock of the tangerine's flavour.

The room is transformed by the lurking spite and mirth of the fire, which is in counterpoint to the tranquility of the snow and the flowers. In a way, the poem is not about the diversity, craziness or suddenness of the world but the human awakening to these. As the awareness comes rushing in, the contraries impose themselves physically on the speaker, with a sense of unimpeded urgency -- "[o]n the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands".

The last returning line contains both mystery and an impression of completeness. The roses are 'huge', mind you. A new perspective is introduced in looking at them. And there is something as seemingly insubstantial as transparent glass between the snow and the roses -- a piece of detail stored away for the end of the poem. Of course, the presence of the glass suggests that what was pictured as an unexplained skill of nature -- 'spawning' snow and roses at once -- may in reality have had a human hand in its arrangement. Yet, we are convinced by now that amidst the most innocuous of surprises is a hidden, bubbling clash of uncontainable variety. All is tender, quiet and beautiful to sight, but there is always more than meets the eye.

Distilled Delight

Gerald Durrell's Birds, Beasts and Relatives

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Saroja

We took a last glass of wine with Katrina and Stephanos and then made our way sleepily through the olive groves, silvered by a moon as large and as white as a magnolia blossom. The scops owls chimed mourfully to each other, and the odd firefly winked emerald-green as we passed. The warm air smelled of the day's sunshine, of dew, and of a hundred aromatic leaf scents. Mellow and drugged with wine, walking between the great hunched olives, their trunks striped with cool moonlight, I think we all felt that we had arrived, that we had been accepted by the island. We were now, under the quiet, bland eye of the moon, christened Corfiotes. The night was beautiful, and tomorrow, we knew, another tiger-golden day lay ahead of us. It was as though England had never existed.


'Luscious' is the first word that occurs to me when I read the prose of this naturalist and humourist. Everything Durrell describes teems abundant with life. But what gives rise to the tickling, rollicking humour of his writing? Characterisation is what most would say. Or dialogues, perhaps. And... can you believe all those incidents he narrates? So intrinsically comic!

As I came to the end of the first chapter in this sequel to the classic My Family and Other Animals, the author's portly shape and laughing face remembered from the documentary Himself and Other Animals kept coming back to my mind. Blithe as his own image is his writing. Not from ironic distortions, not from comic tolerance of human foibles, the sparkle of Durrell's prose stems from his vast and unbridled enthusiasm for all that is living. To travel through Durrell's work is to encounter zoo after zoo of life forms, human and otherwise, often indistinguishably so.

They were grouped, like a pride of moody lions, round a fire so large and flamboyant that there was immediate danger of its setting fire to the chimney. My sister Margo had just added to it by the simple method of dragging in the carcass of a small tree from the garden and pushing one end into the fireplace, while the remainder of the trunk lay across the hearth-rug.

(To be contd.)