by Howard Moss
Although it is not yet evening,
The secretaries have changed their frocks
As if it were time for dancing,
And locked up in the scholars' books
There is a kind of rejoicing,
There is a kind of singing
That even the dark stone canyon makes
As though all fountains were going
At once, and the color flowed from bricks
In one wild, lit upsurging.
What is the weather doing?
And who arrived on a scallop shell
With the smell of the sea this morning?
---Creating a small upheaval
High above the scaffolding
By saying, "All will be well.
There is a kind of rejoicing."
Is there a kind of rejoicing
In saying, "All will be well?"
High above the scaffolding,
Creating a small upheaval,
The smell of the sea this morning
Arrived on a scallop shell.
What was the weather doing
In one wild, lit upsurging?
At once, the color flowed from bricks
As though all fountains were going,
And even the dark stone canyon makes
Here a kind of singing,
And there a kind of rejoicing,
And locked up in the scholars' books
There is a time for dancing
When the secretaries have changed their frocks,
And though it is not yet evening,
There is the persistence of song.
I have this book that I generally turn to when nice poems are needed for miscellaneous assignments at school; Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, who hosts and writes the (since cancelled) radio station The Writer's Almanac. This poem, The Persistence of Song, is one of those that I usually skip over because it's too confusing or too long and I don't have patience. However, I thought I should shed my cape of poetic ignorance and try to decipher this poem, which I later realized was totally worth it. This is one of those poems that you have to reread several times to fully grasp the meaning of it. There's some strange and complex metaphors and the writing style is deceptively simple, so it requires some extra thinking power. But after the third or fourth time reading it I saw that this was a truly beautiful poem that shouldn't be tossed aside like a stale bagel. Ms. Robbins told us to pick a poem that's changed our lives, and this poem has. On, like, so many levels, man.
First, I will observe. This poem doesn't have much to pick apart technically, because there's no rhyme scheme or real rhythm. One of things that stood out about this poem for me was the sort of rewind style of the whole thing. The first two stanzas are said and then stated again, but backwards, and almost with the exact same sentence structure and whatnot. It's almost like the author wants to reinforce the ideas of the poem, yet the poem takes on almost a totally new meaning when rewound, which is probably intentional. I also noticed that strange, unexpected metaphors are very prominent in this poem - "who arrived on a scallop shell with the smell of the sea this morning", "at once, the color flowed from bricks, as though all fountains were going". They don't seem to really belong in the poem and might confuse the reader. In fact, the entire thing seems all over the place and all weird and stuff and doesn't really make sense.
Ok, now that the boring stuff is over with, I can get to the cool stuff. In-ter-pre-tation. Ok. So what is this poem really about? It took me a couple of rereads to actually get it. The author does this wonderfully balanced thing of only putting down a few things that evoke "song" to him without sugar coating it and putting in stupid things like rabbits and dandelions. It's not what someone would usually think of as being happy and sunshiny and song-like. It's the sheer simplicity of this poem that makes it so meaningful and appealing to me. Howard Moss is saying that even in the smallest actions we do each day, like changing our dresses even if we don't need to and reading a book, there always this underlying sense of joy and hope. Howard Moss is really expressing his love for music by associating song with a feeling of rejoice. This poem is different from many others that are about music because instead of addressing the topic directly, he sort of slides it in to a poem that appears to be about something else. Hm... clever. In many ways this poem evokes a sense of extreme hope - I was enlightened by the message that it was sending. In simple actions of hope and beauty, there is always song because this poem is saying that joy is song, and song is joy.
Right, I find myself verging into that state of blog posts where it all becomes mushy and repetitive. It's been happening a lot lately. Sorry.
It's so hard to interpret a poem like this because it's all mushy and there's so much simple complexity (oxymoron) in it. I feel like those metaphors aren't meant to confuse you, but it's just that the author is trying to express his complicated emotions of happiness to us and we might not understand them. Yet by comparing these joys and small moments to music, he's making it easier for us to understand.
oh goodness, this was a terrible blog post. i'm losing steam...not using capitals...i'm so sorry, readers, but i'm falling into a pit of crappy blog posts. forgive me... this sucked. i'll rewrite it when i'm not feeling so brain dead. i didn't do justice to a poem that really means so much to me.
