The Contemporary Period (1945-Present), Part 2

Question 1: Describe the meaning of the select trees in John Ashbery’s “Some Trees.”These are amazing: each /Joining a neighbor, as though speech Were a still performance. /Arranging by chance To meet as far this morning/From the world as agreeing With it, you and I /Are suddenly what the trees try To tell us we are: /That their merely being there Means something; that soon /We may touch, love, explain. And glad not to have invented /Some comeliness, we are surrounded: A silence already filled with noises, /A canvas on which emerges A chorus of smiles, a winter morning. /Place in a puzzling light, and moving, Our days put on such reticence /These accents seem their own defense.

Answer 1: “Some Trees,” by John Ashbery, is a poem that examines how thought and feeling interact with the world to create art. The title, “Some Trees,” indicates there is no guarantee that any other trees will offer epiphanies, just “some trees,” like these particular pillars of nature. He begins the poem with the statement, “These are amazing,” perhaps not for any particular reason other than they are looked upon as such, in part because they are “each/Joining a neighbor.” And though joined, they are apart, rooted in place, without the ability to move closer to each other. The mute trees speak, a “still performance” in nature’s temple, and try to tell us that they mean something. This meaning could be the possibility of joy, the hope as they proclaim, “soon/We may touch, love, explain.” The words issued are confused, as speech in this case is merely a still performance, and the still performance is speech as the reader contemplates what, if anything, it means.

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Question 2: Explain the author’s choice of words to describe separation in W. S. Merwin’s “Separation.”Your absence has gone through meLike thread through a needle.Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Answer 2: “Separation,” by W. S. Merwin, is a poem that, in very few words, captures the emotion of separation. Beginning with what the reader is led to believe will be a familiar cliché, such as “gone through me like a knife,” the wording takes an unexpected turn by using “thread through a needle” to depict this emotion. Rather than using a sharp object that would place the emphasis of the poem on the emotion of pain, it instead focuses on the feeling of separation itself. Taking another unexpected turn, rather than using an analogy that clearly depicts something being separated, Merwin describes being apart as a kind of sewing together. So just as traces of thread are left everywhere by the needle, everything the speaker does is marked by the absence of the person who is gone.

Question 3: Describe the images and explain the last statement of the poem “Lying in a Hammock,” by James Wright.Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly/Asleep on the black trunk,Blowing like a leaf in green shadow./Down the ravine behind the empty house,The cowbells follow one another/Into the distances of the afternoon.To my right,/In a field of sunlight between two pines,The droppings of last year's horses Blaze up into golden stones.I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.I have wasted my life.

Answer 3: As the title indicates in James Wright’s “Lying in a Hammock,” the speaker spends a lazy late afternoon lying in a hammock, noticing his surroundings. He views a “bronze butterfly,” hears the cowbells, sees horse droppings illuminated by sunlight “between two pines,” and spots a chicken hawk flying overhead in search of home. The vivid imagery of life, sounds, decay and looking for home are abruptly ended with his surprising declaration, “I have wasted my life.” “Lying in a Hammock” depicts a sad realization in the midst of an otherwise happy moment. Perhaps the speaker has wasted his life on things that did not matter, never stopping to pay attention to his surroundings. Bittersweet, the poem relays the importance of relishing those short intervals of happiness found in simplicity, before, like the chicken hawk, we head back home.

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