On Handling Grief
In ancient Greece,
dolls perched,
dolls perched,
bird-like, atop
gravestones.
gravestones.
Their dresses
were peppered
with notes
for the dead and purple
tulips. Cupped
upwards, the dolls'
terracotta hands
seemed to
be weaving
the same patch of air
or maybe they
were waving. Their
fingers, too,
undone
by the smallest
tremors.
tremors.
Shannon, glad you're better! This poem is so sure-footed. I love and admire the precise language - which also feels easy and right, not over-worked at all. The short lines and all the white space seem to me to work beautifully too - they create a sense of large quiet, a space of grief and mystery, around the poem's very specific imagery. This is lovely! Also, I'm always grateful when poems *teach* me things: I didn't know this, about dolls and gravestones and ancient Greece: so interesting. There are a couple of small things I noticed that I think are probably just typos: in line 5, I'm guessing "the their" is meant to be just "their"; in line 10, "the doll's" should maybe be "the dolls'"?; in line 13, "weavning" should be "weaving." Typing this out makes me notice another thing I love, which is the poem's music: lots of subtle but resonant chiming, as in perched/bird, dresses/peppered/dead, cupped/upwards, weaving/waving. This last, in particular, is really striking. Which brings me to my only question! The poem as a whole is so precise - I feel like the last sentence (last 4 and a half lines) doesn't quite rise to the rest of the poem in terms of emotional and physical specificity. I don't quite know how to read these lines - in both a physical way (I don't understand what it means literally for the fingers, which are made of terracotta, to be "undone" or what "tremors" refers to - movement of air?) and an emotional one - I'm not sure how to express this, but the rest of the poem feels emotionally clear to me (not summarizable, but like it has a clear emotional spine), while these last lines seem to be veering off in another direction, one I don't quite "get." Sorry if this is a bit vague, and maybe others will disagree. Overall, I love this one. Thanks for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteShannon, I hope the flu is behind you now! I also had not known of this tradition of dolls on graves in ancient Greece. I really like the way you compare them to birds perched on the stones. I also like how the purple tulips (their unique shape) lead us into the cupped hands of the dolls. Like Kasey, I got a little tripped up here...I was picturing the hands shaped like the tulips (little cups) and then got confused with trying to imagine those same hands weaving (LOVE weaving/the same patch of air). Though I had no trouble seeing those hands as waving. But then I was confused again by the fingers and the tremors. Is the speaker comparing her own fingers to those of the dolls? And if so, are the tremors ones of grief? As in hands shaking with grief? The word "undone" makes me wonder if the fingers are actually missing? Shaken/broken off, in an earthquake perhaps, or simply over the centuries. The title links beautifully with the hands in the body of the poem. I noticed the use of the singular possessive in line 10, so I am guessing that this one particular doll has its hands in the air? When I read terracotta, my mind went to that army of buried terracotta warriors found in China and I just assumed that all the grave-dolls (is there a Greek word for them?) were mass-produced since they all served the same function as a record of visitors. I also think of the Greco-Roman glass tear bottles I saw in the Egyptian Museum and the Vatican galleries, some still holding traces of salt despite the passage of time -- I find these different ways of grieving the dead fascinating. The form of this poem, and its compression, is really lovely -- it sits on the page like a Greek column or a grave stele. I look forward to hearing others' comments on these last few lines! Thank you, Shannon!
ReplyDeleteShannon,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the poem! Like others, I was fascinated by the subject matter and enjoyed picturing and trying to understand this death tradition for the first time. I also loved "weaving / the same patch of air," as for me it really captured what feels like futility in grief sometimes. Building on the title, I wondered how personal this poem was - not that it has to be personal. On first reading(s), I assumed that the speaker was handling, or attempting to handle, some real grief in her life, and finding an analogue to this process in her knowledge of these dolls, as if perhaps she felt like a terracotta doll perched on a gravestone. But then on further reading, and after reading others' comments, I wondered if the title referred to a more impersonal interest in handling grief in different periods/cultures, and an aesthetic interest in the loveliness of this doll concept. I think the poem works either way. And if you intended it one way or the other, as you revise, you could steer it more firmly in one direction. I also think the poem could tolerate more visual detail, nailing down what these dolls look like (and in the process helping us understand the final lines a little better), especially since this tradition was unfamiliar to most of us. Thanks for this lovely poem.
Thanks for these comments!
ReplyDeleteHi Shannon! I am totally charmed by this poem and would like to think it's not because of some pro-Greek bias I have :) The section I love the most is 'with notes/for the dead and purple/tulips. The 'dead and purple'- the enjambment there, I just find exquisite, because purple is the color of 'grief' in the Greek Orthodox tradition. This poem reminds me of my Dovecote poem, so I was most sensitive to the white space and the line-breaks... I wondered about why the extra line above 'were peppered' and why also not move 'undone' up one line, so you have all couplets. I get this kind of comment often...so I sympathize. I just love the starkness, and the waving/weaving appeals to me very much. Perhaps my least favorite part of the poem is the title-- which is just not as delicate as the poem itself. Thank you, Shannon.
ReplyDelete