Chapter XXII from Derek Walcott's Caribbean Epic, Omeros

Dove sta memoria?

I was reminded of the following section of his epic poem Omeros after being introduced to this video of a connection opening temporarily between an elderly woman incapacitated by Alzheimer's Disease and a caregiver trying to reach her and evoke the inner person, howbeit briefly.

The poet Derek Walcott encountered a similar situation, and presents it in chapter XXXII of his masterpiece:

Omeros

by Derek Walcott

Chapter XXXII

I

She floated so lightly! One hand, frail as a swift,

gripping the verandah. The cotton halo fanned

from her shrunken crown, and I felt that I could lift

that fledgling, my mother, in the cup of my hand

and settle her somewhere else: away from the aged

women rubbing rosaries in the Marian Home,

but I was resigned like them. I no longer raged

at the humiliations of time. Her turn had come

to be bent by its weight, its indifferent process

that drummed in wrist and shank. Time was that fearful friend

they talked to, who sat beside them in empty chairs,

as deaf as they were; who sometimes simply listened.

They were all withdrawn. They'd entered a dimension

where every single thought was weightless, every form clouded

by its ephemeral halo. Time's intention

rather than death was what baffled them; in the deed

of dying there was terror, but what did time mean,

after some friend stopped talking and around her bed

they opened the panels of an unfolding screen?

The frail hair grew lovelier on my mother's head,

but when my arm rested on her hollow shoulder

it staggered slightly from the solicitous weight.

I was both father and son. I was as old as her

exhausted prayer, as her wisps of memory floated

with a vague patience, telling her body: “Wait,”

when all that brightness had withered like memory's flower,

like the allamanda's bells and the pale lilac

bougainvillea vines that had covered our gabled house.

They, like her natural memory, would not come back.

Her eyes were dim as dusk. There were no more hours.

From her cupped sleep, she wavered with recognition.

I would bring my face closer to hers and catch the

scent of her age. “Who am I? Mama, I'm your son.”

“My son.” She nodded. “You have two, and a daughter.

And a lot of grandchildren,” I shouted. “A lot to

remember.” “A lot.” She nodded, as she fought her

memory. “Sometimes I ask myself who I am.”

We looked at the hills together, at roofs that I knew

in childhood. “Their names are Derek, Roddy, and Pam.”

“I have to go back to the States again.”

“Well, we can't be together all the time,” she said, “I know.”

“There is too much absence,” I said. Then a blessed

lucidity broke through a cloud. She smiled. “I know

who you are. You are my son.” “Warwick's son,” she said.“Nature's gentleman.” His vine-leaves haloed her now.

I Have a New Blog

It won't be daily, but I do intend to post here again, and make a more regular blog of the whole thing. But for now, I wanted to call attention to my new blog, intended to be about English and literature. Unlike my earlier focus, this is intended for my U.S. college students, rather than my ESL friends. It is called "What's All This Then?" I have a new post there today about resources to listen to poetry and literature.

Time to Return to Blogging

I shall be posting to this blog again, and--I hope--on a more regular basis.

Stay tuned!

"The Tree" by Ezra Pound (1882 - 1973)

The Tree

                    I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
                    Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
                    Of Daphne and the laurel bough
                    And that god-feasting couple old
                    That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
                    'Twas not until the gods had been
                    Kindly entreated, and been brought within
                    Unto the hearth of their heart's home
                    That they might do this wonder thing;
                    Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
                    And many a new thing understood
                    That was rank folly to my head before.


This is an early poem by the U.S. poet, Ezra Pound.

Pound was relying on two tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses above all: The myth of Daphne and Apollo and the lovely story of Baucis and Philemon.

The story of Daphne and Apollo is a cautionary tale warning against the danger of pride. Apollo, the god of the Sun, music, poetry, medicine, and more, was also a warrior and divinely skilled at archery. In Ovid's version of the myth, Apollo is inflated with his own power and skill and scoffs at young Eros (Cupid), the son of Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of love. Eros uses his arrows to strike men and women in the heart, causing them to fall in love. Caveat! Eros has two types of arrow: those with a gold tip inspire love, and those with a lead tip inspire loathing. Eros has the form of a young boy, and Apollo mocks him, telling him not to play with a man's weapon. To teach Apollo a lesson, Eros shoots him with one of his arrows--a gold-tipped one--and Daphne with another--a lead-tipped arrow. Apollo is consumed by love and pursues Daphne, but in abhorrence she flees. He gains! She flees on desperately, but sees Apollo is gaining on her, and pleads to the gods to save her. Suddenly, she can not run; she is rooted to the spot (this is where the colloquial phrase comes from); her skin is turning to bark; Daphne is metamorphosing into a laurel tree. Apollo can do nothing to stop the transformation, and soon she is entirely a tree. But Apollo still loves her, and uses his healing power to keep her leaves youthful and green year-round. And ever after, the laurel tree is beloved of Apollo and he takes it as his symbol. So much so, that the winners in the Olympic Games in ancient times were rewarded with crowns woven of laurel leaves.

The story of Baucis and Philemon is a lovely tale. Zeus (Jupiter) and Hermes (Mercury) come to Earth and take the form of wandering travelers. They are rejected by all the people in a village they visit except for a poor old couple, Baucis and her husband Philemon (whose name means "loving" or "one who loves"). Although the old couple are very poor, they give all they have to their guests. Zeus and Hermes are touched by the generosity and kindness of the old couple, but determine to destroy the other people of the village with a flood. Which they do. The gods thus having revealed themselves, Baucis and Philemon dedicate themselves to their service as keepers of a temple. Zeus offers them reward for their goodness, but all they ask for is the gift that they might die together, so that neither should live on alone, which Zeus grants--but in his own way. Rather than dying, when their time comes, the two metamorphose into two trees, a linden and an oak, and those two trees grow entwining with each other, their love living on after them.

In Ezra Pound's poem, the poet's persona visits a quiet wood and sees the forest through eyes informed by Ovid's work. The forest is alive with love--both passionate and importunate and patient and abiding. As he sits and observes the forest, he feels the numinous and the real intermingle; he reflects on Nature and love and in his quiet, outward-looking introspection has an epiphany and comes to understand nature and love in ways that had seemed foolish to him before.

Ezra Pound had an ear for lyric beauty, and this poem is a masterpiece. The fluidity of the rhythm, and the cadence of the assonances are exquisite. It expresses a Romantic appreciation of love and pantheistic Nature, and yet at the same time, an American pragmatism and straightforwardness that twine and resolve in one, just as the elm and the oak (he changed the linden to an elm for his poem) twine and resolve into one.

It is a poem about a man unafraid to see what others disdain or fail to grasp, and a man who is willing, like Daphne, Baucis, and Philemon, to be transformed by love and Nature. As in their tales, contrary qualities harmonize within himself, and the poet's persona undergoes a sea-change that leaves him wiser and more at one in his many-mindedness.


Definitions:
"wold"--a high, wild, open area of rolling hills (in England, also called a "moor")
"entreated"--treated (the word usually means to ask, plead
"wonder thing"--wondrous thing
"nathless"--nonetheless
"rank folly"--total foolishness

New International Center Web Site and Facebook Page

The New International Center has a new Web page, and also a new Facebook page.

The original International Center will close for good on Friday. It is a milestone in many people's lives. Lucy Benedikt, for example, has been there from before the beginning--she volunteered before the Center even opened, more than 50 years ago. She is the senior of hundreds of us volunteers.

I taught my first class at the International Center in December of 1985, the year I came to New York City from Connecticut. My last class ever at the International Center in New York was last night, April 17, 2012. We stopped on a line from my favorite poet to teach, "The Dry Salvages" from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot.

I used to stop by the International Center to see my buddy Vladimir Malukoff, who used to be Program Director there. (My tenure at the Center is now more ancient than I was when I started.) Staff and volunteers used to ask me to teach, and I always declined, thinking that teaching wasn't for me. One particular day, a member of the staff asked me yet again if I would volunteer. I asked, "Can I teach a literature class?" She shrugged and said, "Whatever you would like." I said, "OK. She asked me when I could start, and I replied, "A week from Friday."

The first poem I taught was "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas. I had one or two people the first class. But I proceeded the way I have since, word by word, discussing definitions, meaning, context, history, culture, whatever comes to mind as we go. It was a success.

Since "Fern Hill", I have done many poems in my classes. And books: For ten years, we chugged through Ulysses by James Joyce. Three hours, every Saturday, word by word; digression; background; questions. It was slow going, and in those years we only got about 280 pages in. But some of my best moments as a teacher were during Ulysses. (I started the book a few weeks after my daughter was born. She was born on Bloomsday. When she was little, we used to refer to Ulysses as her "birthday book". She will be 18 on Bloomsday this year.) The Hobbit. Essays by Stephen Jay Gould. About 30 of the Cantos by Ezra Pound. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (three times each, over the years). On Saturday afternoons now, we are reading The Wind in the Willows, which has been a joyous find for several people. How can one not love Mole and Rat? Probably my greatest success is the poetry of T.S. Eliot. The current exigetical journey through Four Quartets is the third time I've traversed it at the International Center. We started with "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", and proceeded through "Gerontion", "Ash Wednesday", "Preludes", and "The Wasteland." What else? Short poems by William Carlos Williams. What else? I can't recall right now; so many.

My philosophy of teaching is to not dumb down to people because they are learning. Their English is still limited, but their minds are not. Language is a tool for the day-to-day, but there is no pleasure in that; why not teach by means of the most interesting ideas and the richest use of language? Poetry as text! I didn't want to teach the same things that others were doing when I started. "The...pen...is...on...the...table." Or the newspaper, or magazines. I felt I had a gift to bring words to life and to teach at the same time. So I used literature as the text. And people get to appreciate, feel, delight in, and learn from literature that they might not have the confidence to approach on their own. I remember one Japanese woman telling me she had been told sternly by her U.S.-born son that she could not read Ulysses because it is too difficult. Ha! She loved Poldy and the cat.

And my approach works. I was the first to teach English this way at the Center. Then others started doing it. Now there are others, and my students glow when they tell me the classics they have read in the other classes. Sometimes, they know the works from translation in their own country, sometimes it is new to them. But there is a feeling of pride and satisfaction that they have read and felt and understood such a book in their laboriously studied new language.

The moment when we reached the end of the fourth chapter of Ulysses (Calypso) and Adam Wroblewsky, who had come to the U.S. as a refuge with no English, read the last two words, "Poor Dignam", and suddenly understood them and gasped out loud in the class at the beauty and meaning of the words was perhaps the moment that validated these 25 years. So long as my brain is my own, I will remember and treasure that moment.

There have been many bad times, many strange, there have been days when it just seemed pointless. But through it all, poetry and sharing poetry has been my compass and my tether keeping me somewhat bound to my self. And the International Center has been my center as well.

Irish Theatre and Literature

There will be a series of free readings of poems put on by the Fallen Angel Theatre Company. These are staged readings: Actors will be on the stage, but reading from scripts, rather than performing from memory and they will not be in costume or moving about the stage.

This will be a wonderful opportunity to hear first-class Irish actors and actresses performing in English for free, and I highly recommend that any of you with an interest in literature take advantage of this wonderful series to attend and enjoy.

The readings will be at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street between 6th Avenue and 7th Avenue on the south (downtown) side of the street.

The next event will be on Monday, April 30, 2012: The play is Airswimming by Charlotte Jones, and information about it can be seen at Fallen Angel Theatre Company's Web page.

The Irish-American Writers and Artists Salon

There is a "salon" for Irish-American writers and artists here in New York City. On Tuesday, April 17, 2012, there will be a performance that will include, among others, the incomparable Aedin Moloney reading the final part of the last chapter of Irish writer James Joyce's masterpiece, the novel Ulysses. Aedin is the best reader of poetry I have ever heard, and her performances are transcendent. I hope that some of you will be able to attend.

I won't be able to be there until late, because that evening is also the last time I will ever meet my class at the International Center, where I have been volunteering since 1985. (I would also invite all of you to my last class!)

But I will attend after my class, and I hope that I will bring some of my students with me.

The performance will be at The Cell, a theater at 338 West 23rd Street. The event will begin at 7:00 and continue to about 9:30.