Bridget+Graf-+Galway+Kinnell

Bridget Graf Post #1 Poet: Galway Kinnell

After Making Love We Hear Footsteps

For I can snore like a bullhorn 1 or play loud music or sit up talking with any reasonably sober Irishman and Fergus will only sink deeper into his dreamless sleep, which goes by all in one flash, 5 but let there be that heavy breathing or a stifled come-cry anywhere in the house and he will wrench himself awake and make for it on the run - as now, we lie together, after making love, quiet, touching along the length of our bodies, 10 familiar touch of the long-married, and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens, the neck opening so small he has to screw them on, which one day may make him wonder about the mental capacity of baseball players - 15 and flops down between us and hugs us and snuggles himself to sleep, his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child.

In the half darkness we look at each other and smile and touch arms across his little, startling muscled body - 20 this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making, sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake, this blessing love gives again into our arms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqpoo6ChRQ

This video is Kinnell’s own reading of the poem “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps.” It is interesting to hear Kinnell’s own interpretation of each stressed or unstressed syllable, which aids the reader in better understanding the poem as a whole. The narrator seems to begin the poem in the middle of a conversation about Fergus’, the son’s, sleeping habits. He explains that various loud, boisterous noises will not wake Fergus; rather, when the narrator and his wife are making love, Fergus always seems to awaken and venture into their room, clad in his baseball pajamas. The parents are not bothered by this common occurrence, however, as they welcome Fergus into their bed. Both Fergus and their lovemaking are physical manifestations of the love felt between the two people.

The syntax of “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” is also notably unique. Each stanza seems to be one sentence, or at least one complete thought. The first stanza illustrates the sensory details and imagery of Fergus’ entrance into his parents bedroom, while the second stanza details each family member’s contentedness with the scene, “his face gleaming with satisfaction at being this very child” (17). The ironic hyperbole “reasonably sober Irishman” (3) adds a humorous element to the poem because Kinnell is hinting at the generalization that Irishmen are rarely reasonably sober, if sober at all. Hyperbole is again utilized in lines 13-14, “and he appears - in his baseball pajamas, it happens, he neck opening so small, he has to screw them on.” Kinnell uses this hyperbole as a humorous insight into the naïve mind of Fergus and his thoughts on baseball players’ heads.

I greatly appreciate Kinnell’s poetic style. The elements he uses are not buried between words; rather, the reader has to read the poem a few times in order to capture and appreciate its essence. In this case, Kinnell stresses the importance of genuine, enduring love of two people.

Oatmeal

I eat oatmeal for breakfast. 1 I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it. I eat it alone. I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone. Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health 5 if somebody eats it with you. That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with. Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion. 10 Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge, as he called it with John Keats. Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him: due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unsual willingness to disintigrate, oatmeal should 15 not be eaten alone. He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion, and that he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton. 20 Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as  wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it. ……

For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch. 61 I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously gummy and crumbly, and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

Here is Kinnell reading “Oatmeal.” [] I really enjoy the way he reads this poem. He puts almost a melodic emphasis on words, yet he stays almost monotone the whole time. “Oatmeal,” like “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps,” seems to be another conversationally styled poem, which reflects the content of the poem as well. Kinnell is having a conversation with the reader about a conversation he had with renowned poet John Keats about something as bland and boring as oatmeal, or “oatmeal porridge” as Keats calls it (11). “Oatmeal” does not seem to follow any metrical or rhyme schemes, namely because the syntax is purely conversation, or stream-of-consciousness. Kinnell explicitly references John Keats (“To Autumn” can be found here: []). I believe Kinnell brings Keats into this poem for a more humorous mood. Keats, one of the most popular English Romantic poets, often wrote of sensual imagery in his odes. To imagine Keats, a deep-thinking poet, as discussing something as drab and ordinary as oatmeal is funny to Kinnell, which is why he invited an imaginary Keats to join him for breakfast. Kinnell’s reference of Patrick Kavanaugh is also comical because of Kavanagh’s Irish descent, alluded by the baked potato. Kavanagh wrote of the everyday and commonplace, which is exactly why Kinnell would invite him to his consumption of his leftover baked potato, one of the most everyday actions.

I applaud Kinnell’s ability to bring humor and comedy into such a boring action as eating his morning oatmeal. The extended version of the poem has many more poetic references, especially to Keats works “Ode to the Nightengale” and “To Autumn.” This demonstrates Kinnell’s expansive knowledge of poetry, yet he still chooses to write in such a colloquial, conversational manner.

Bridget Graf

Wiki Post #2

Wait

Wait, for now. 1

Distrust everything, if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven't they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

Personal events will become interesting again. 5

Hair will become interesting.

Pain will become interesting.

Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.

Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, 10

their memories are what give them

the need for other hands. And the desolation

of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness

carved out of such tiny beings as we are

asks to be filled; the need 15

for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.

Don't go too early.

You're tired. But everyone's tired.

But no one is tired enough. 20

Only wait a while and listen.

Music of hair,

Music of pain,

music of looms weaving all our loves again.

Be there to hear it, it will be the only time, 25

most of all to hear,

the flute of your whole existence,

rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Here is a link of Galway Kinnell reading “Wait”: http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/ntw-mla000008-galway-kinnel-reads-wait

Galway Kinnell explains that he wrote this poem for a student who was contemplating suicide after a bad break up. I think this background enlightens the reader as to what they’re about to delve into; it makes one look at it with a different perception than going into a poem without any previous information. I like how Kinnell beings the poem in line 1. He does not say wait forever or wait a second; he says wait, for now. This introduces the idea that she reader should have a certain sense of rationality and wait for things to blow over before making any rash decisions. He then asks a rhetorical question to incite logical thinking into the reader or the intended audience to make him/her pause and think before doing anything he/she will regret. Kinnell tells the reader to “trust the hours” (2) because time is the only constant in someone’s life. Relationships will come and go, family too can be temporary, but time is always ticking at a constant rate. Kinnell urges the reader to focus on intangible things such as personal events and pain while also sticking to the constants like hair, buds, and secondary gloves, which are always present but sometimes hardly noticed. He then encourages new hope and promise as he speaks about human’s necessity for someone to love, no matter how desolate it can make one feel. Essentially, he says new love is formed from the old.

He then reminds the audience to again wait, not for forever, just don’t go too early. I love the line “You’re tired. But everyone’s tired” (19) because it shows just how wrapped up humans can be in their own worlds. How selfish and narcissistic to believe you are the only one who is tired, or hurt, or lost, or alone. Everyone is. If you would wait, you too could hear the desperation and desolation each person experiences. He then analogizes human suffering to a kind of music: “Music of hair, music of pain, music of looms weaving all our loves again” (22-24). In the last few lines, Kinnell basically says, “Look, if you continue to suffer and continue to only focus on the sorrowful things in your life, you’re going to be completely exhausted. Just sit and listen to the music, and wait for things to blow over. You’ll be ok.”

Parkinson’s Disease

While spoon-feeding him with one hand 1

she holds his hand with her other hand,

or rather lets it rest on top of his,

which is permanently clenched shut.

When he turns his head away, she reaches 5

around and puts in a spoonful blind.

He will not accept the next morsel

until he has completely chewed this one.

His bright squint tells her he finds

the shrimp she has just put in delicious. 10

She strokes his head very slowly, as if

to cheer up each hair sticking up

from its root in his stricken brain.

Standing behind him, she presses

her cheek to his, kisses his jowl, 15

and his eyes seem to stop seeing

and do nothing but emit light.

Could heaven be a time, after we are dead,

of remembering the knowledge

flesh had from flesh? The flesh 20

of his face is hard, perhaps

from years spent facing down others

until they fell back, and harder

from years of being himself faced down

and falling back, and harder still 25

from all the while frowning

and beaming and worrying and shouting

and probably letting go in rages.

…

Although I cut out about half the poem, I believe the essence of the first half is still captured by these lines. I love the scene that this poem sets: a woman, her age unknown to the reader, feeding her decrepit father part of a meal, shrimp. It is somewhat of a struggle as “he turns his head away” and “she reaches around,” but they finally reach some kind of unspoken agreement to cooperate. In turn, he is rewarded with the taste of fresh shrimp and she enjoys his reaction. Kinnell’s description of both the woman and the elderly man as she kisses his face is so dynamic and personable; the reader can actally see the man’s face light up. He next starts with a rhetorical question about the human capacity to remember the touching of flesh to flesh. Here one must note the shift of both tone and verb tense. As the tone becomes more nostalgic and the speaker begins speaking about the past, the verb tense also moves to past tense. The speaker recounts the old man’s trials that led him to have such “hard” flesh. He speaks about the times the old man has stood up for what he believes in as well as the times he has been beaten down, perhaps both literally and metaphorically. It paints a beautiful of the everlasting relationship between a father and daughter and everything that the father has gone through to get to this point.

This poem reminded me of a video I saw earlier today in chorus. It shows an elderly man in a nursing home who has limited range of motion and can only answer yes or no questions, if he even chooses to answer. When music from his era is played through a set of headphones that his caretaker provides, he immediately lights up. His eyes emit light, just as the man in the poem, and he has a much wider range of motion. Both the poem and this video are very touching and ironically similar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ