When The Smoke Clears
Michael and the mainecourse wizards of poetry analysis,
I’ve been dissecting this interesting poem about Astronomy, and think I understand the first three stanzas but not the fourth:
When The Smoke Clears
The mind, that rambling bear, ransacks the sky
In search of honey,
Fish, berries, carrion. It minds no laws …
As if the heavens were some canvas tent,
It slashes through the firmament
To prise up the sealed stores with its big paws.
The mind, that sovereign camel, sees the sky
For what it is:
Each star a grain of sand along the vast
Passage to that oasis where, below
The pillared palms, the portico
Of fronds, the soul may drink its fill at last.
The mind, that gorgeous spider, webs the sky
With lines so sheer
They all but vanish, and yet star to star
(Thread by considered thread) slowly entwines
The universe in its designs—
Un-earthing patterns where no patterns are.
The mind, that termite, seems to shun the sky.
It burrows down,
Tunneling in upon that moment when,
In Time—its element—will come a day
The longest-shadowed tower sway,
Unbroken sunlight fall to earth again.
— by Brad Leithauser
Helen: “I see it as the mind playing tricks on itself. In meditation you give up your allusions before you come to reality. That’s what I think the poem means. The last stanza is the mind giving up its illusions.”
Me: (To myself) “I read the poem as man’s ability to see the wonder of the universe, is he so chooses, but in the end
The longest-shadowed tower sway
Unbroken sunlight fall to earth again.
he lets go and dies.
Comment by michael — April 19, 2006 @ 10:35 am
I’m also consulting the Irish bard who sent me this poem, and will report back on his interpretation. My take on it is that, whatever the “longest-shadowed tower” is, when it is undermined by the termite-mind, it no longer blocks sunlight (reality?), and the real world resumes.
Comment by rakkity — April 19, 2006 @ 11:10 am
Michael, did Helen mean to say both “allusions” and “illusions”, or is that entirely your fault? (I’m guessing illusions, but given poetry is mostly allusions and I’ve never learned to meditate, I’m wondering.)
Rakkity, what do you think the first three stanzas mean?
I was distracted for a while by trying to incorporate ideas about WHEN a tower would have its longest shadow (close to dawn, close to sunset, but longer at noon on the winter solstice than any time between 9AM and 3PM on the summer solstice, at least for us here, north of the tropics).
I’m struck that “that sovereign camel” is the only version of the mind that sees the sky “For what it is”, but that stanza does NOT come last. So — back to my request of rakkity.
Finally, the last stanza (in conjunction with the title) brings the twin towers to my mind in a rather unpatriotic way. When this was written? Why do you think it’s about astronomy?
Comment by Jennifer — April 19, 2006 @ 1:03 pm
Re: Karen’s Carnivore comments
Have you found the Ladies Detective Agency books set in Botswana on tape yet? There are at least 5 in the series now; I’ve enjoyed all of them very much but then angst over cultural appropriation, or whatever it’s called. Alexander McCall Smith has a simultaneously admiring and condescending … maybe patriarchical? attitude toward the people of Botswana.
Comment by Jennifer — April 19, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
Helen said, “We’re alluding to the illusions of the mind.”
And that she’s listened to two on audio and agrees with your assement, but, nonetheless, likes the “little stories.”
Comment by michael — April 19, 2006 @ 4:14 pm
The last stanza is clearly about the second coming of Jebus.
Comment by James — April 19, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
I see the three stanzas as spanning three main types of astronomy–first the Bear: just rambling randomly around, fishing and peering into everything; then the Camel: plodding around more carefully, identifying stars in the haze of galaxies and so forth; and then the Spider: organizing and theorizing, and weaving webs that link things together. (But I don’t like that phrase, “unearthing patterns where no patterns are”.)
The last stanza seems to be the most subject to interpretation. When I asked my Irish bard friend, Peter, about it, he just returned this Shakespeare stanza as an alternative version (that science is meaningless or doomed to failure).
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Comment by rakkity — April 20, 2006 @ 2:43 pm
And why do I think this poem is about astronomy? Because it was sent to me sandwiched between two other poems by the same poet, with references to the sky. These two poems are more prose than poetry, and they talk about looking at the dark midwestern night sky, studying the stars, imagining travelling to them, and writing science fiction.
http://www.newcriterion.com/archives/24/04/a-science-fiction-writer-of-the-fifties/
Comment by rakkity — April 20, 2006 @ 2:52 pm
OK, then I think the final stanza is about those whose work with TIME may inform astronomers whose focus was SPACE — i.e., space and time are inextricably linked, and in time that will be clear to all.
Meanwhile, I’ve been wondering who James and Jebus are. Although, James, I think Jebus was perhaps a typo? Or there’s a prohibition about using a particular name in vain?
Comment by Jennifer — April 20, 2006 @ 3:02 pm
James wishes to remain anonymous. But, followers of the blog will recognize his singular sense of humor.
Comment by Michael — April 20, 2006 @ 9:55 pm
I’m usually the one to overthink something, but here I submit that the author’s just cataloging some of mankind’s tendencies in reverse-anthropomorphic metaphor, as revealed by our varying attitudes to the “firmament” (that euphemism itself additionally instructive).
Bear — the uncommitted, somewhat self-interested quest for whatever’s out there.
Camel — patient spirituality (and arguably illusion, as identified by HO).
Spider — imposer of patterns; subjectivity.
Termite — blind, defensive denial (and again, perhaps, illusion, but our contructs, too, shall pass).
Any way you slice it, it’s the sky, ’cause we’re under it.
And Rakk, despite your antipathy, you of all people should appreciate “unearthing patterns where no patterns areâ€. What’re the Big Dipper or Orion without our earthbound, singular point of reference? We mentally compress 3- (and even 4-) dimensional space into two for our convenience in comforting simile.
Comment by el Kib — April 21, 2006 @ 6:27 am
rakkity, call me a parrot but I agree with Adam’s last paragraph. I too did some head scratching at your unearthing comment. We’re calling you out buddy … time to further ‘splain yourself.
Also, I loved (how could I not, really) the stanza from whom all other writers pale. Great contribution.
Comment by Michael — April 21, 2006 @ 7:53 am
I finally followed up on Rakk’s link to other poems on the theme by Leithauser. How unselfconsciously iterative that “When the Smoke Rings Sail” also enumerates (and in the same order) a bear, a camel, a spider, termites …
Comment by el Kib — April 21, 2006 @ 8:31 am
…patterns where no patterns are
The artifical constellations are a great example, el Kib, and another might be the epicyles imposed by Ptolemy to explain the retrograde motions of the planets. But I was not thinking of imposed patterns, but discovered patterns, such as those seen in the black-body radiation of the universe by the WMAP telescope.
Almost every day, walking between the labs here at Goddard, I pass by posters that show accurate fits of complicated functions (patterns!) to the wiggly variations of the spatial scales of the sky recorded by WMAP. It is these patterns that have given us the Hubble constant (the conversion factor that turns red shifts into distance), the size and age of the universe, the amount of dark matter, dark energy and the degree of closure of the universe–all to unprecedented accuracy. If these patterns are not really there, then we should all go back to the flat earth resting on an endless (longest-shadowed?) tower of turtles.
Comment by rakkity — April 21, 2006 @ 8:41 am
Oh, the patterns are no doubt there, but to perceive them for what they are requires constant vigilance of our tendency to be seduced by our shifting subjectivity, even our [perhaps unowned] agendas — the underlying thrust, I think, of “When the Smoke Clears”.
Comment by el Kib — April 21, 2006 @ 9:30 am
First thought, no pun intended — this conversation is over my head. Second thought — maybe I should read the rest of them. Now I have, and feel strongly that I read one not three poems. But who is Brad talking about? Actually, it doesn’t matter — I never could stomach that (sexist, racist, as Brad points out) type of sci-fi.
But now I agree with Michael’s first assessment — the guy died.
Comment by Jennifer — April 21, 2006 @ 11:35 am