How Poetry Counter Political Tragedy

Try to Praise the Mutilated World

By Adam Zagajewski

September 17, 2001

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

Poetry, with its innate “rhythmic movement” (Tupper, 1918), is a natural medium for people to express strong emotions when they are overwhelmed by major political events. However, in the light of the 9/11 attacks, the potential downsides of poems taking on such iconic subjects were revealed: they “risk not only devolving into cliché but also perpetuating the violence of terror and the violence of grievance and revenge” (Metres, 2018).  Amid such a predicament, past works by Polish poets resurfaced, because they went beyond the narrow confines of facticity and hatred. Clare Cavanagh, a Professor of Slavic Literature, claims that the Polish poets are “masters at converting the anguish of modern Polish history into meditations, at once personal and universal, upon the nature of human suffering” (Cavanagh, 2005). Adam Zagajewski is one such master. His poem, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World” (TTPTMW), originally written as a commentary to the forced Ukrainian exile during the Poland-Ukraine War in the 1940s, reaches beyond its historical intention to heal the wounds of bereaved during 9/11. My essay will discuss how this poem binds these two political events together by engaging the reader through an emotive approach. I argue that, despite the political slant of the poem, it emphasises more on personal experience against the backdrop of political tragedy, to articulate a distinctive response. It calls people to recollect the small moments of joy, to undermine the horror of a political tragedy. Such response is achieved through using accessible imagery to illustrate joy and pain, engaging the reader in a personal conversation, and emphasising more on coping with pain and less on condemnation.

First, the speaker uses accessible imagery from nature, instead of deep philosophy, to illustrate joy and pain. He begins by letting the reader relive small moments of inner joy through the finer things in life. In lines 2, 3 and 16, the speaker recounts the good things offered by nature, like distinct, beautiful seasons, ‘wild strawberries’, ‘the dew’ and ‘acorns’ (TTPTMW, 2, 3, 16); they bring small moments of happiness to ordinary life. Instead of using deep philosophy to offer solace against tragedy, the speaker encourages us to relive the small joys of life, and cling onto their beauty to persevere through painful moments. Moreover, he uses other aspects of nature to reveal the devastation caused by the war, to show that we cannot unsee these devastations, and need to learn to live with pain. In lines 4 and 5, the speaker writes, ‘The nettles that methodically overgrow / the abandoned homesteads of exiles’ (TTPTMW, 4-5). The speaker is juxtaposing the past abundance of the land with its current desolation. The land filled with ‘wild strawberries’ is now only inhabited by ‘nettles’ after the residents went into exile. The overgrowth of nettles paints a picture of losing control: when people cannot even take care of their own lives, they cannot keep the land trimmed and tidy. Through the perspective of nature, the speaker shows that the repercussions of political tragedy are real since they cannot be unseen; we need to live on despite the sorrow.

In a similar vein, natural imagery is effective because they are starkly different from politics. Political events and systems are human-made, complex and messy; nature is unprocessed, straightforward and easily understood. By juxtaposing the complexity of politics and simplicity of nature, the speaker is showing how humans over complicate things; as a result of self-centredness, corruption and violence, we inflict great harm on fellow humans —-‘civil blood makes civil hands unclean’ (Shakespeare, 1597).  Summing up, by intertwining nature with joy and pain, and juxtaposing nature with politics, the reader can recollect ephemeral moments of happiness, see grief with clear eyes, and persist through anguish by clinging onto small moments of joy.

Second, by actively engaging the reader in a personal conversation, the speaker creates a safe space for emotional connection and makes an individual feel valued and understood when an individual may feel insignificant and frustrated by the backdrop of a large-scale political event. He achieves such close engagement through the frequent use of the pronoun ‘you’, and a struggling tone. In the poem, the most frequent pronoun is ‘you’, making the experience personal for the reader. The poem says, ‘You watched the stylish yachts and ships;/…You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere, /you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully’ (“Try to Praise”, 6,10,11). The use of ‘you’ makes the reader feel that the speaker is speaking to the reader in a one-to-one conversation, making the reader feel valued. Besides, be it the leisure activity of watching yachts, or the painful exile and death of refugees, the speaker invites the reader to see the scenes from a first-person perspective. Instead of prescribing the reader with appropriate emotions, he wants the reader to summon her own emotions when seeing the scenes with her own eyes. Such invocation is powerful and emotionally engaging for the reader.

Furthermore, through a struggling tone, the speaker establishes an emotional connection with the reader by showing that he empathises with the reader on the difficulty of overcoming grief (Cavanagh, 2005). The paradoxical refrains of this poem, ‘Try to praise the mutilated world’, ‘You must praise’, ‘You should praise’ and ‘Praise’, shows the speaker knows how difficult it is for the reader to cope with the tragedies, as it is challenging to praise a world that is seriously afflicted. Yet, the constant repetition shows a deliberate effort from the speaker to engage the reader. The speaker’s voice is relentless but not demanding, for he understands the reader needs repeated prompts to accept his call, that is why there are four refrains within twenty-one lines. The reader feels the speaker can empathise with her. Thus, through constant reminder and empathy, the speaker establishes an emotional connection, making the reader feel safe and secure to relive the experiences, both good and bad. Summing up, the struggling tone and the use of the pronoun ‘you’ engage the reader on a profoundly intimate level, creating a safe space for the reader to recollect her own experiences, leave the reader feeling understood.

Third, by deliberately focusing less on condemning the perpetrators and more on coping with grief, this poem puts personal experience at the centre of the poem, instead of politics. Criticising the villains is not the focus of the poem. Throughout the poem, the speaker did not tag any nationality or political side to anyone; he merely describes the tragedies. Without specific reference, he demonstrates neutrality, diminishes hatred between the villain and the victim, and exposes the futility of blame. The attention on the vice of politics is intentionally reduced.

Instead of political condemnation, the bulk of the poem focuses on the personal awakening of hope amidst grief. The speaker first encourages people to accept unavoidability of pain and then offers a glimpse of hope through the imagery of a thrush. He highlights the inevitability of pain in lines 13 and 14, ‘Remember the moments when we were together / in a white room and the curtains fluttered’. Although the ‘white room’ seems to be safe and secure, the curtains are fluttering due to winds entering from the window. The fluttering curtains represent the turbulence in life and the fact that one can never be inoculated from external, unpleasant influences. As pain is fatefully unavoidable, it is all the more important that one accepts it with tranquillity, instead of hatred. Moving on, he began to stir up hope in people. In line 19, he describes the tragedy as ‘the gray feather a thrush lost’. He is making an intertextual reference to Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’, where ‘thrush’ is a symbol for hope (Hardy, 1899). He implies that the tragedy is only one feather, the thrush still has many feathers, and abundant hope awaits those who can see past the agony and see the big picture. Thus, by focusing less on condemnation and more on coping with grief, the speaker sheds more light on personal experience of accepting pain and invoking hope, so people will be encouraged to move on, instead of being consumed by resentment after a political tragedy.

In conclusion, as shown throughout the paper, poetry, as a political commentary, conveys more than factual information by engaging the reader emotively. This poem, by focusing on personal experience in the setting of political tragedy, encourages people to relive the small moments to joy, to counter the horror of political tragedy. By using accessible imagery from nature to illustrate joy and pain, the speaker allows the reader to relive moments of joy and pain and motivates us to persist through the pain. Such an approach is only possible because he successfully engages the reader in a personal conversation through using the pronoun ‘you’ and a struggling tone. Furthermore, he emphasises more on coping with pain and personal experience, less on condemnation and politics. All in all, Zagajewski persuades convincingly using simple truths, instead of deep philosophy; he is not only a talented poet but also a gifted healer of the soul.

Reference

Tupper, James W. “Poetry and the War.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 26, no. 4, 1918, pp. 445–467. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27533149.

Metres, Philip “Beyond Grief and Grievance: American Poetry in the Wake of 9/11 (2011).” The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2018, pp. 17–27. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.9949963.6.

Cavanagh, Clare. “Lyric and Public: The Case of Adam Zagajewski.” World Literature Today, vol. 79, no. 2, 2005, pp. 16–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40158663.

Hardy, Thomas. “The Darkling Thrush.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy. New York: WW      Norton and Company, 2005. 1155. Print.

Shakespeare, William. “Prologue,” Romeo and Juliet, Lit2Go Edition, (1597), accessed December 29, 2019, https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/201/romeo-and-juliet/4314/prologue/.

Zagajewski, Adam. “Try to Praise the Mutilated World.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 11 Sept. 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/09/24/try-to-praise-the-mutilated-world.

Literary response to John Donne’s ‘A valediction: forbidding mourning’

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning 

BY JOHN DONNE

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
   And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
‘Twere profanation of our joys
   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears,
   Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers’ love
   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
   That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
   Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
   As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
   Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
   Like th’ other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
   And makes me end where I begun.

In 1611, before departing for a long trip to France and Germany, John Donne wrote the poem ‘A valediction: forbidding mourning’ to his wife, Anne. This beautiful, metaphorical poem explores the uniqueness of their love, argues that their spiritual love will not be hindered by physical departure, and urges Anne to keep her composure.

The poet has displayed a skilful use of literary devices, especially metaphor. John is famous for his metaphysical conceit, which is about constructing a metaphor using two seemingly unrelated objects; the two most striking metaphors are referring to his departure as an old man’s death and his love with Anne as a compass.  In Stanza 1, he describes the quiet death of a distinguished old man, so quiet that his friends are not mourning openly, they make ‘no noise, no tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move’. He is trying to make a point that, the most virtuous man, even when they are passing away, would not make a big scene. He is trying to tell Anne indirectly that, them being refined, spiritual people, should also behave in a similar way. Their departure should be a quiet one, with no strong outburst of emotions, such that they that are consistently well-behaved. Furthermore, he describes his love with Anne using the dynamics of a compass. A compass has a moving foot and fixed foot. He describes his departure as the movement of a roaming foot, and Anne’s stay at home as fixed foot. He writes that the fixed foot ‘leans and hearkens’, to elevate Anne as an affectionate and caring wife, to encourage her to offer quiet support. At the concluding line, he also assures Anne that, he will ‘end where I begun’. By telling Anne that her love is his beginning and ending,  He is telling Anne that if she stays resolute during the separation, it would be a living proof that their love is strong and spiritual. 

Additionally, he uses juxtaposition to distinguish his love from other people’s love. He sets up a binary between physical and spiritual love. To him, physical is love is external, dramatic, emotional and sensory; spiritual love is internal, refined, and platonic. He sees other people’s love is superficial and fleeting, but his love as deep and longlasting. He says, in a condescending tone, that ‘dull sublunary lovers’ love’ is sensory, and will be gone once the sensory experience fade away when the lovers are far apart. While his love, is a spiritual love that is ‘so much refined’, is a love ‘of the mind’, and is not contingent on sensory experience. Although they may not be able to see each other using their ‘eyes’, to kiss each other using their ‘lips’ and to hold each other using their ‘hands’, they will be able to persevere through periods of separation. Using such juxtaposition, he elevates their loves and hopes to convince Anne that their love will last although they are not physically together. 

Furthermore, the usage of enjambment reflects the event of departure. In Stanza 6, he wrote, ‘One two souls therefore, which are one,/ Though I must go, endure not yet/ A breach, but an expansion’. He breaks up the line to emphasise on ‘A breach’, such line structure mimics the event that he is leaving. The enjambment leads the Anne to the departure but also turns around the departure, a breach becomes an expansion, ‘like gold to airy thinnes beat.’ Just like a piece of gold, which does not break under hamming and beating, their departure provides an opportunity to deepen their relationship. A departure may not break but magnify their relationship. There is another enjambment in Stanza 7 to show the wholeness of their relationships. The first two lines of Stanza 7 writes ‘If they be two, they are two so/ As stiff twin compasses are two;’ This is a continuation from Stanza 6. Initially, although he and Anne are two souls, they are considered as ‘one’, but even if they have to be separated into two souls, they can still be like a twin compass. We can see the split of 2 → 1 → 2 → 1 here. This split-join dynamic is to emphasise that physical distance cannot overwhelm their desire for spiritual togetherness. 

Moreover, the simple structure of the poem helps to convey a complex message. Throughout the poem, the poet has been using ornate, elaborated arguments to convince Anne of their spritual love. In contrast, the structure is surprisingly simple, the poem is written in quatrains and uses an ABAB rhyming scheme. This simple structure prevents the already complicated message from becoming incomprehensive. Such simple preserves the complexity and elegance of the message while ensuring understandability. 

In conclusion, this spiritual, metaphorical poem paints love in a quiet, non-intruding, yet firm way. The speaker is clearly romantic, he sees the extraordinary in ordinary object and event like a compass and a person’s death. He also uses literary techniques like metaphors, juxtaposition and enjambment to distinguish his love. To prevent over-complication of the message, he adopts a simple structure of quatrains and an ABAB rhyming scheme. All these techniques help to deliver the central message powerfully: spiritual love has no breakage, no fracture and no departure.

Hotel
Cyril Wong

In the cupboard, bare hangers are skeletons
for future selves; a complimentary bathrobe
waits like a new and better, even purer, skin;
fresh pillows are the unformed bodies
of lovers yet to be born; bedroom slippers
become footwear for shuffling up
an airy flight of stairs free of this life.
Open the fridge, lean past the overpriced
chocolate and the smugly settled soft drinks
and tune in to voices from the god-realm,
where beings reminisce, not unfondly, about
past desires and mistaken attachments.
On the bed, our bodies stay unentwined
in rest because love is in a different room
in a faraway country; but beneath us,
cowering children press ears to the floor,
absorbing the footfalls of fathers retreating,
heads lowered in shame or shaking with disgust;
these trembling versions of us reach
for each other now, smaller hands taking hold.
In reality, the air-con sighs as discreetly
as possible; behind translucent curtains, night
slowly lifts; nobody expects the morning
to be spectacular; although my eyes are
reluctant to close, still hungry for the ever-new;
while another stranger beside me sleeps and sleeps.

Cyril Wong’s cryptic poem, “Hotel”, is from a collection of poems called “The lovers’ inventory”. This collection documents his past endeavours with lovers and flings with other men. In the poem “Hotel”,  the speaker struggles with reconciling with his identity as a gay man, and can only seek acceptance by looking for promiscuous relationships with strangers outside his home country. The highly ambiguous nature of the poem corresponds to the reality that a gay person’s identity is in constant flux due to societal pressure. They have to wear masks to hide their identity at times, be discreet in how they present themselves to others, so different people may have a different impression of him. 

The theme of this poem is about the complexity of identity, the vulnerability of being a gay man, and the theme was being unfolded gradually in the poem. The speaker starts with a hint, in the first line, he describes a “cupboard” with skeleton-like bare hangers. This “cupboard” corresponds to being in the closet, a typical situation gay men are in. The lifeless nature of the skeletons also signals that the future for the gay man may not be bright. In the next line, the speaker writes about “a complimentary bathrobe waits like a new and better, even purer, skin”. This bathrobe is equivalent to a mask that the gays are wearing constantly, they are afraid of coming out of the closet, and have to constantly suppress their true identity to avoid societal disapproval. The following line, “fresh pillows are the unformed bodies of lovers yet to be born” is implying about the promiscuous nature of gay relationships. Most gay relationships are only physical and temporary, just like hotel room pillows which everyone uses for a brief period of time. Furthermore, the line “love is in a different room in a faraway country” suggests the vital relationship of life —-marriage — is in his home country and he deliberately left it for a short while. The concluding line, “while another stranger beside me sleeps and sleeps” states that gay men’s interaction is only physical and not emotional. Although he tried to escape his ordinary life to get a temporary expression of his true identity, the respite is short-lived, revealing the loneliness deep in his heart. As we can see, the theme of identity and vulnerability is being unfolded gradually. 

The usage of literary devices also supported the theme. We can see that anthropomorphism, personification and volta are at work. The most prominent literary device is anthropomorphism, in which inanimate objects became an extension of the speaker’s emotions. The speaker uses anthropomorphism to convey his desire to escape from the discomfort of his marriage. The poem writes, ‘‘Bedroom slippers become footwear for shuffling up an airy flight of stairs free of this life’, symbolising that this promiscuous relationship is a temporary escape from his usual life. Moreover, he uses personification to describe his covert his discretion. In the line ‘Air-con sighs as discreetly as possible’, he gives the air-con the human ability to sigh, so that the low humming sound of the air-con is compliant with their discreetness. In addition, the usage of volta also shows his vulnerability from a different perspective. The first half of the poem was written from an adult’s perspective, but suddenly, the speaker’s memory drifted back to his childhood, where he was being judged by his father for being gay. The line writes, ‘cowering children press ears to the floor, absorbing the footfalls of fathers retreating, heads lowered in shame or shaking with disgust’. The vivid description of fear and the helpless state of the children further enhances the speaker’s vulnerability. Summing up, the usage of literary devices supported the theme. 

In conclusion, the repressed identity and the vulnerability of being gay is conveyed strongly through a well-organised development, and supported by the usage of literary devices. The poet has skillfully captured the pain of a gay man longing for acceptance.