“The Pumpkin at Halloween” by Jane Duran
and “Large Red Man Reading” by Wallace Stevens
The Pumpkin at Halloween
My niece carried a pumpkin
down the supermarket aisle.
She rolled it and bumped it
across the night for fun,
down the sticky rain streets
though it was very heavy,
churning and charming as it was
with seedlore and threads,
held it in her arms
staggering slightly
under a streetlamp
and put it down
outside some council flats
and sat on it. At home
she dug the pumpkin out,
peeked into its mathematics,
its seeds interminable,
its double dealing,
its wild lapping inner walls,
tugged at its sunk city,
jolted days and weeks out of it,
tipped the darkness
from its eyes and mouth.
In the middle of a sunset land
We lit a candle for the pumpkin,
Its forgotten trails,
Its medallion oceans,
Pored over the long words
It released on the wall.
Once the pumpkin lay in a field,
Edible and quilted,
Chiming softly.
Now it burns in a child’s autumn,
ferocious and hollow.
From a purely formal perspective, Jane Duran’s poem is characterised by its lack of structure. The lines, though mostly short, contain 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 syllable lengths. Rhyme is absent, though it is rich with sound through the relation of words. There are no divisions of verse, but the poem suggests natural pauses and breaks. A poem such as this reflects the poetic innovations of the 1920’s onwards; the openness of form and thematic freedom emphasises an alternative to fixed structure and formal delivery. But this hardly means it is less poetic, indeed one could argue that it becomes more so. Formality in poetry is like formality in other communicative contexts – a set of recognised rules that smooth the exchange of information according to certain assumptions, whether they are social, intellectual or even political. Open forms actually intensify the world of the poem because such assumptions can no longer be taken for granted. Rather than being “spoken to” we find ourselves listening in, as with eavesdropping, it is not always clear what is being said or whether it concerns us. The absence of a clear relationship between writer and reader has the effect of foregrounding the poem itself, which is perhaps why a lot of post 1920’s poetry is about poetry. I think what emerges from “A Pumpkin at Halloween” is a celebration of imagination rather than a poem about Halloween, or even childhood. This “ordinary” object (the pumpkin) is made a little less ordinary due to its annual use as a lantern but in the mind of the writer it becomes transformed into another world and a voyage of discovery. Children, by nature – and poets, through an act of will, are adept at making such a journey. In a few lines the Pumpkin is given its own, secret knowledge of “mathematics”, a mythology in the invented word “seedlore” – the presence of underhand “double dealing” – it passes on towards destruction, the “sunk city” becoming a “sunset” land, like the remnant of a lost civilization, it is finally a place of “forgotten trails” and “medallion oceans.” These are just some of the rich and strange vocabulary Duran uses and the urgency of the lines suggests there is a lot more that could be said. In a world where even imagination seems to be most valued as a commodity (the fairly recent commercialisation of Halloween is a good example) the poem reminds us of transforming power of creative thought.
If any poet of the Twentieth Century epitomises the kind of poetry about poetry mentioned before it must be the American writer Wallace Stevens. With the tentative link of Halloween I have chosen his “ghost” poem, “Large Red Man Reading.”
Large Red Man Reading
There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected
more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the
poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips
among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into
reality,
That would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the
frost
And cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves
And against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was
ugly
And laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple
tabulae,
The outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of its
Laws:
Poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines,
Which in those ears and in those thin, spended hearts,
Took on colour, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked.
In the same way that Duran’s poem is not about a pumpkin, this isn’t about ghosts. “Life as death,” for Stevens, is where one is denied the experience of “things as they are,” the ghosts seize on “what was ugly,” or what they had thought was ugly - pots, pans, thorns. The (uncommon) word “spended,” means suffering a loss of blood (the bloodless ghosts) , but is so close to the sound of “splendid” that it completes the transformation of reality the poet speaks – as his book turns from blue to purple as the red of his being invests the objects with meaning. The title sounds like the title of a cubist painting, the colours reinforce the visual, painted quality of the words. The reality we assume we know, Stevens implies, is, as it was for the Cubists, something false and unreal, the “outlines of being”, elsewhere, hidden, and poetry a way they might be revealed.
and “Large Red Man Reading” by Wallace Stevens
The Pumpkin at Halloween
My niece carried a pumpkin
down the supermarket aisle.
She rolled it and bumped it
across the night for fun,
down the sticky rain streets
though it was very heavy,
churning and charming as it was
with seedlore and threads,
held it in her arms
staggering slightly
under a streetlamp
and put it down
outside some council flats
and sat on it. At home
she dug the pumpkin out,
peeked into its mathematics,
its seeds interminable,
its double dealing,
its wild lapping inner walls,
tugged at its sunk city,
jolted days and weeks out of it,
tipped the darkness
from its eyes and mouth.
In the middle of a sunset land
We lit a candle for the pumpkin,
Its forgotten trails,
Its medallion oceans,
Pored over the long words
It released on the wall.
Once the pumpkin lay in a field,
Edible and quilted,
Chiming softly.
Now it burns in a child’s autumn,
ferocious and hollow.
From a purely formal perspective, Jane Duran’s poem is characterised by its lack of structure. The lines, though mostly short, contain 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 syllable lengths. Rhyme is absent, though it is rich with sound through the relation of words. There are no divisions of verse, but the poem suggests natural pauses and breaks. A poem such as this reflects the poetic innovations of the 1920’s onwards; the openness of form and thematic freedom emphasises an alternative to fixed structure and formal delivery. But this hardly means it is less poetic, indeed one could argue that it becomes more so. Formality in poetry is like formality in other communicative contexts – a set of recognised rules that smooth the exchange of information according to certain assumptions, whether they are social, intellectual or even political. Open forms actually intensify the world of the poem because such assumptions can no longer be taken for granted. Rather than being “spoken to” we find ourselves listening in, as with eavesdropping, it is not always clear what is being said or whether it concerns us. The absence of a clear relationship between writer and reader has the effect of foregrounding the poem itself, which is perhaps why a lot of post 1920’s poetry is about poetry. I think what emerges from “A Pumpkin at Halloween” is a celebration of imagination rather than a poem about Halloween, or even childhood. This “ordinary” object (the pumpkin) is made a little less ordinary due to its annual use as a lantern but in the mind of the writer it becomes transformed into another world and a voyage of discovery. Children, by nature – and poets, through an act of will, are adept at making such a journey. In a few lines the Pumpkin is given its own, secret knowledge of “mathematics”, a mythology in the invented word “seedlore” – the presence of underhand “double dealing” – it passes on towards destruction, the “sunk city” becoming a “sunset” land, like the remnant of a lost civilization, it is finally a place of “forgotten trails” and “medallion oceans.” These are just some of the rich and strange vocabulary Duran uses and the urgency of the lines suggests there is a lot more that could be said. In a world where even imagination seems to be most valued as a commodity (the fairly recent commercialisation of Halloween is a good example) the poem reminds us of transforming power of creative thought.
If any poet of the Twentieth Century epitomises the kind of poetry about poetry mentioned before it must be the American writer Wallace Stevens. With the tentative link of Halloween I have chosen his “ghost” poem, “Large Red Man Reading.”
Large Red Man Reading
There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected
more.
There were those that returned to hear him read from the
poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips
among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into
reality,
That would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the
frost
And cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves
And against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was
ugly
And laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple
tabulae,
The outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of its
Laws:
Poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines,
Which in those ears and in those thin, spended hearts,
Took on colour, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked.
In the same way that Duran’s poem is not about a pumpkin, this isn’t about ghosts. “Life as death,” for Stevens, is where one is denied the experience of “things as they are,” the ghosts seize on “what was ugly,” or what they had thought was ugly - pots, pans, thorns. The (uncommon) word “spended,” means suffering a loss of blood (the bloodless ghosts) , but is so close to the sound of “splendid” that it completes the transformation of reality the poet speaks – as his book turns from blue to purple as the red of his being invests the objects with meaning. The title sounds like the title of a cubist painting, the colours reinforce the visual, painted quality of the words. The reality we assume we know, Stevens implies, is, as it was for the Cubists, something false and unreal, the “outlines of being”, elsewhere, hidden, and poetry a way they might be revealed.
