Poem-A-Day/April 20
The poem for the first part of this week is Moore's "An Octopus," written after Moore climbed Mt. Rainier in Washington State. Note that Moore's poems often celebrate the small and highly ornamented; this poem is her greatest attempt to bring to the enormous, the overwhelming, sufficient language.
Some of you might have run into the term "the sublime" in your literature or art history classes. The discourse of the sublime catches on in the eighteenth century, and become an important theme/problem for the Romantic poets of the early 19th century. Often, "the sublime" is opposed to "the beautiful"--the former being so impressive as to be frightening. The emotions we feel when, for example, we look up at, or down from, a mountain; when we encounter the limits of our own mind and categories for comparison.
"An Octopus" is Moore's great poem about the sublime. Bonnie Costello, a Moore scholar, puts it this way:
The sublime is a drama of consciousness thrown off balance by an object which exceeds its mastery. Moore's strategies of paradox (glass that will bend, 28 icefields from 50 to 500 feet thick of unimagined delicacy) force the boundaries of sense and sensation. Moore stresses physical force in the "crushing rigor of the python" (71). The association of monarchic power (first like American royal families) reinforces this impression. Added to these images of force and power are gothic images of instability, ephemerality, transience. All objects are fugitive. There is a "ghostly pallor" in the pool; she notes the eerie movement ("spider fashion") of the glacier's arms. Obscurity (the larches filter the light, the gusts of a storm obliterate the shadows of the fir trees) which to Burke was a major feature of the sublime, persists on this mountain despite the poem's passionate display of its plenitude. Indeed, detail often contributes to obscurity: the horses are "hard to discern" among the birch trees, ferns, lily pads and other flora. The details themselves set up a momentum of infinity. In this, Moore joins the transcendentalists for whom, as Lawrence Buell argues in Literary Transcendentalism, such catalogue rhetoric provides "the closest verbal approximation they were able to achieve to the boundless vitality of nature; it creates a literary analogue for the speaker's initial bafflement when faced with the rich mysteriousness of nature" (Buell 221). Moore, like Thoreau rather than Emerson, hones to the particular, resisting the logic of totality, of the universal. Moments of mastery are repeatedly undermined, rhetorically and imagistically. The goat who "stands its ground" is confronted with erupting Fujiyama. Moore offers no simple transcendence to restore the sense of power to the perceiver. This is not the egotistical sublime of Wordsworth, in which nature disappoints until the infinite expectations of the beholder are matched by a transcendent signifier. The beholder in Moore's sublime remains overwhelmed by the disorienting prospect of the mountain and the sacrosanct remoteness of its details. Scope eludes her, except as it is established in the poem itself.
The poem for the first part of this week is Moore's "An Octopus," written after Moore climbed Mt. Rainier in Washington State. Note that Moore's poems often celebrate the small and highly ornamented; this poem is her greatest attempt to bring to the enormous, the overwhelming, sufficient language.
Some of you might have run into the term "the sublime" in your literature or art history classes. The discourse of the sublime catches on in the eighteenth century, and become an important theme/problem for the Romantic poets of the early 19th century. Often, "the sublime" is opposed to "the beautiful"--the former being so impressive as to be frightening. The emotions we feel when, for example, we look up at, or down from, a mountain; when we encounter the limits of our own mind and categories for comparison.
"An Octopus" is Moore's great poem about the sublime. Bonnie Costello, a Moore scholar, puts it this way:
The sublime is a drama of consciousness thrown off balance by an object which exceeds its mastery. Moore's strategies of paradox (glass that will bend, 28 icefields from 50 to 500 feet thick of unimagined delicacy) force the boundaries of sense and sensation. Moore stresses physical force in the "crushing rigor of the python" (71). The association of monarchic power (first like American royal families) reinforces this impression. Added to these images of force and power are gothic images of instability, ephemerality, transience. All objects are fugitive. There is a "ghostly pallor" in the pool; she notes the eerie movement ("spider fashion") of the glacier's arms. Obscurity (the larches filter the light, the gusts of a storm obliterate the shadows of the fir trees) which to Burke was a major feature of the sublime, persists on this mountain despite the poem's passionate display of its plenitude. Indeed, detail often contributes to obscurity: the horses are "hard to discern" among the birch trees, ferns, lily pads and other flora. The details themselves set up a momentum of infinity. In this, Moore joins the transcendentalists for whom, as Lawrence Buell argues in Literary Transcendentalism, such catalogue rhetoric provides "the closest verbal approximation they were able to achieve to the boundless vitality of nature; it creates a literary analogue for the speaker's initial bafflement when faced with the rich mysteriousness of nature" (Buell 221). Moore, like Thoreau rather than Emerson, hones to the particular, resisting the logic of totality, of the universal. Moments of mastery are repeatedly undermined, rhetorically and imagistically. The goat who "stands its ground" is confronted with erupting Fujiyama. Moore offers no simple transcendence to restore the sense of power to the perceiver. This is not the egotistical sublime of Wordsworth, in which nature disappoints until the infinite expectations of the beholder are matched by a transcendent signifier. The beholder in Moore's sublime remains overwhelmed by the disorienting prospect of the mountain and the sacrosanct remoteness of its details. Scope eludes her, except as it is established in the poem itself.
Hi all!
ReplyDeleteThere was so much to delve into with "The Octopus;" the poem felt metaphysical to me in the way that Moore's thoughts were deeply simultaneously profound and incongruous. The first lines are so abstract that I had to re-read them several times to develop an interpretation, but the image that resonated with me the most was "beneath a sea of shifting snow dunes" (85). The image of the ground under us constantly being readjusted despite our belief that it is solid, or "of ice,” harkens back to the common Moore motif of losing purpose overtime as one faces paradigm shifts in their world. Another line that really struck me was "The rock seemed frail with their dark energy of life." There is an unceasing debate getting to the root of the human condition, which asks directly whether we are innately good or instinctively evil. I find the rock to be a powerful metaphor for this question as stone can stand the test of time and bear witness to both triumphs and atrocities. The notion that the rock can similarly trap heat and cold and warmth calls to mind the message Moore wishes to express here: the dark desires for control and superiority will outlast the temporary condition of life. Another awe-inspiring image Moore captures is the "irregular patches in the middle lake/where like gusts of a storm" (86), as she is able to lift scientific language and apply it to introspection. The notion of slowly descending into the depths at the center of a lake calls to mind diving deeply into one's increasingly dark motivations and desires at the center of their mind, ones that are exposed when they are faced with true conflict, or "gusts of a storm." I think Moore continues to speak to the human condition in a deeply authentic way when she says "'the visitor dare never speak at home/for fear of being stoned as an impostor'" (87). One's own purpose and beauty can feel isolating when no one can understand, a notion represented by the visitor feeling alienated at their own home. I also was moved by the line "a struggle between curiosity and caution" (88), as it represents the precipice of danger and discovery one can often find when confronted with new challenges and a duality that often defines the trajectory of one's life. The improbability of any one event is mirrored when Moore depicts a diamond: "pleasing equation...a diamond outside and inside, a white dot" (89), alluding to the unlikely formation, caused by a deep source eruption, of one of the most valuable minerals. Moore continues to remake scientific processes as metaphors for the warring forces of adversity and ascendancy at the heart of all of us. I was astonished by the line: "complexities that will be complexities/as long as the world lasts" (90), because I feel that it strongly relates to our current need to address problems like infectious diseases, human rights abuses, and climate change. In order to continue the creation of human history and the development of intricate institutions that exist in society, as the symbolized here by "The Greeks," we have to meet the challenges in front of us. The final image, which returns to the titular image made me realize the enormity of this poem: "the octopus symmetrically pointed/its claw cut by the avalanche" (91). I found that the avalanche likely served as a metaphor for the past, in all of the ways that it accumulates, comes down, reaches us, and harms us once more like rapidly descending snow and rock. The way in which Moore grapples with the great paradoxes of life by presenting inconsistent, and in some ways haunting, images by inextricably linking them to the natural world is truly amazing.
See you all tomorrow! :)
This piece reminded me of our theme of poetry and flowery prose kind of blending into each other. Especially in the context of Moore's other works, I couldn't quite tell if I was reading specific lines of double entendre or if she was simply describing the landscape in deeply emotional language. I think this captures the sublime as well as Moore's brand of poetry; unlike poets who hit readers over the head with metaphors about nature, she actually sees the natural world imbued with these qualities. Moore's language is so passionate and subtle that I genuinely can't tell if she's trying to convey the regalness of the mountain goat or critique some social habit of her day through symbolism. I think it harkens back to the Romantic period, when poets genuinely felt awe for their natural surroundings. Technology had just progressed to the point where one could travel to experience a far-off mountain, so conveying its grandeur and exotic landscapes could be the poem, rather than a vessel for some other commentary.
ReplyDeleteLet me just start off by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed both this piece and "Marriage" by Moore. I said this during class last week, but I absolutely love when authors make classical/biblical allusions in their work to bolster its true meaning (big fan over here of the epic simile). Using the sublime from the romantic era is incredibly daunting and hard to encapsulate completely, but Moore uses such precise language within her pieces that it just works. Nature and our inability to fully comprehend or control it is vastly evident in "An Octopus." Those who try to control it, by vacationing on the side of a seemingly harmless mountain they don't realize is a volcano, cannot recognize their own hubris and pay the ultimate price because of it. The planet's innovation and ingenuity is the only reason why it has gotten to this point in history; it is why we are even here in the first place. The octopus' pseudo-podia was "a much needed invention" -- evolution allows the most fit characteristics to emerge for a species. Earth was here before us, and it will be here after. It has improved and learned from its mistakes -- don't try to think you can ever understand it.
ReplyDeleteHello! I hope everyone is still doing alright. I also quite enjoyed Moore’s poems this week. “The Octopus,” in particular, was a nice escape to nature, especially since we're all trapped inside for the time being. Like the quotation listed above and what others have commented, I found Moore’s description of the sublime to be quite impressive, daunting, and immersive. I found “The Octopus” was not just a description of the sublime in the natural world, but is itself sublime. To clarify, this poem is not merely a description of a sublime mountain, but is also sublime in its structure. It is filled with unique turns of phrases, metaphors and paradoxes that make this the beautiful and intimidating piece of literature that it is. For example, even just the length of “The Octopus” makes the poem seem initially daunting, like looking up at the base of a mountain you’re about to climb. Additionally, I think the title “The Octopus,” a metaphor for the mountain, is also an apt description of the poem itself: different metaphors, imagery, and paradoxes intertwining like tentacles, the controlled chaos of a creature with many limbs. I particularly like the line, “Completing a circle/ you have been deceived into thinking you have progressed...” I think it can be applied to the poem as a whole. Finishing this epic poem, you may be deceived into thinking you understand the mountain or even Moore herself, but both are too complex to capture in a finite number of lines, even if they are sublime.
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