In The Waiting Room
Written by Tom Fasano on October 28, 2008 – 9:38 pmIn the Waiting Room
by Elizabeth Bishop
In Worcester, Massachusetts,
I went with Aunt Consuelo
to keep her dentist’s appointment
and sat and waited for her
in the dentist’s waiting room.
It was winter. It got dark
early. The waiting room
was full of grown-up people,
arctics and overcoats,
lamps and magazines.
My aunt was inside
what seemed like a long time
and while I waited and read
the National Geographic
(I could read) and carefully
studied the photographs:
the inside of a volcano,
black, and full of ashes;
then it was spilling over
in rivulets of fire.
Osa and Martin Johnson
dressed in riding breeches,
laced boots, and pith helmets.
A dead man slung on a pole
“Long Pig,” the caption said.
Babies with pointed heads
wound round and round with string;
black, naked women with necks
wound round and round with wire
like the necks of light bulbs.
Their breasts were horrifying.
I read it right straight through.
I was too shy to stop.
And then I looked at the cover:
the yellow margins, the date.
Suddenly, from inside,
came an oh! of pain
–Aunt Consuelo’s voice–
not very loud or long.
I wasn’t at all surprised;
even then I knew she was
a foolish, timid woman.
I might have been embarrassed,
but wasn’t. What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Without thinking at all
I was my foolish aunt,
I–we–were falling, falling,
our eyes glued to the cover
of the National Geographic,
February, 1918.
I said to myself: three days
and you’ll be seven years old.
I was saying it to stop
the sensation of falling off
the round, turning world.
into cold, blue-black space.
But I felt: you are an I,
you are an Elizabeth,
you are one of them.
Why should you be one, too?
I scarcely dared to look
to see what it was I was.
I gave a sidelong glance
–I couldn’t look any higher–
at shadowy gray knees,
trousers and skirts and boots
and different pairs of hands
lying under the lamps.
I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.
Why should I be my aunt,
or me, or anyone?
What similarities
boots, hands, the family voice
I felt in my throat, or even
the National Geographic
and those awful hanging breasts
held us all together
or made us all just one?
How I didn’t know any
word for it how “unlikely”. . .
How had I come to be here,
like them, and overhear
a cry of pain that could have
got loud and worse but hadn’t?
The waiting room was bright
and too hot. It was sliding
beneath a big black wave,
another, and another.
Then I was back in it.
The War was on. Outside,
in Worcester, Massachusetts,
were night and slush and cold,
and it was still the fifth
of February, 1918.
Posted in Elizabeth Bishop, Poetry | 1 Comment »
Those Winter Sundays
Written by Tom Fasano on October 21, 2008 – 10:23 pmThose Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Posted in Poetry | 3 Comments »
After Apple-Picking
Written by Tom Fasano on October 13, 2008 – 3:06 pmI agree very much with Seamus Heaney’s assessment that this poem is not about death, that to characterize it as such would be to rob it of its life. It is indeed Frost’s ode to autumn. In another vein, Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” could have been subtitled “The Fall.” A consequence of the Fall is that humans labor. Even the most commonplace human endeavor is steeped in larger significance, which is easy to see in this poem. But we cannot say if the lines following the reference to “dreaming” in line 17 refer to the day’s labor or a memory of it because of the subtle blending of memory and sensation as well as concept and precept.
AFTER APPLE-PICKING
by Robert Frost
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.
Tags: Robert Frost
Posted in Literature, MP3s, Poetry, Robert Frost | No Comments »
James Joyce’s “The Dead”
Written by Tom Fasano on October 5, 2008 – 11:19 am
I’ve edited a new book — James Joyce’s “The Dead” — for which I wrote the introduction and almost one hundred explanatory notes. Again, this book is being published by Coyote Canyon Press, a publication date of October 17. Yes, it’ll be out soon and available wherever great books are sold!
Joyce wrote “The Dead” with loving care for the geographical, historical, and political details of his native city. Most of the local references are painstakingly exact and add to the realism of Joyce’s stories. In addition, Joyce’s details are often suggestive of everyday Dublin life and lend verisimilitude of place and time to his narratives. The purpose of the footnotes I wrote for this volume is to explain topical and religious references, literary allusions, historical and political nuances, and Irishisms which are likely to baffle the modern-day reader.
Posted in Life of a teacher | 1 Comment »