Stephanie Newman

Eelgrass flowing from the surface of the ocean



like the sea’s aqueous mane,



threaded gold



waving at each swell of tide



now and then



separated as though by fingers—



or like fringe, on the blue-green silk of a scarf



being shaken out.



 



It is hard to think of the time



when a hand, puny and limp,



will no longer be able to hold



 



a comb, or a new stem;



when hair thins and in clumps



falls, and something to have



been proud of once is lost—



 



Like the old egret who stiffens



at the lip of the estuary, eyes naked



and large, bare head and neck turning



to salt, river and air meeting behind him.

Sanctuary, I am light within

your innermost organ: whitened



is the heart you assign to me,

and I assume its shape with ease.



Breath comes to one from another,

for soul is this remnant of expulsion



shriveled on body’s outskirts until

elongating it rears up: guest ready



to love like only the shapeless

can. This air is everywhere.



These faces shape themselves

from light swallowed by water.



I feel river in my under-skull,

tissue rinsed by currents eddying



around nerves. Turn your eyes,

apparitions stream from them.



                          *



 Generations of me rush to the shores

where, touched, your loss sinks below



lines of bodies falling, strapped,

feet tied in bunches, where the hurling







sounds reach me here, where safety

has gained remeaning unentirely.



I do not know these sounds

or their origin, only that my life



has spent itself searching

for black clouds thick



 under skin, explosions boiling sky,

poisons mixed like wild colors



of sunset, intoxicating freedom:

I am running, and when I hit



the confines of white-blinded

skull, I make these sounds.



                          *



There are no sounds these bodies make,

there is the great flush cleansing



their eyes and sterilizing their pink

mouths, there are rocks buried that



no one saw: these are the currencies

of river’s gamblings, the game



water plays with the sun: let us trade

blindness for mineral abrasion, 



 



let us guess at the formulas this world

reactively rearranged: numbers, bonds



flowing like lips between rage

and desire. We can unite, I will pour



myself on top of you, river, and you

will suffocate under ignition.



                          *



I would not trade myself for anything.

Time, your inflation was the mistake:



you submitted to the forceful massage,

now you swell at speeds that distort



my explanation. I am your container,

I nourish you, and I will turn away



in times of anguish. Do not desire me—

desire is your premonition of loss.



Speed from me, child: I am the river

as light unarches.

*On wet grass *



Coldness, the small knife splitting the bud,

the wink of the shears cutting the hedge. The

angel flattening its palm on grass, lifting its

hand to show the gorgeous cross-tangle of

morning, wet with predictions. The child’s

mouth opening, the poppyseeds swirling,

black wind-bound away from their red.



*On Anna Karenina *



How delicately we use the word *ruthless*.

The dancer wraps and unwraps this word

round her torso like silk. And Anna’s body

stretches onstage, neck tense, legs untender,

train shrieking up through her spine, steam

filling the throats of the audience.



*On unrequited love *



Pitiless line of white along the Scottish

lake. Man throwing the split twig to the

injured dog, the fissure in the water-rock.

Two schoolboys with dirt-stained faces

unbuttoning their uniforms. The smell of

used-up flesh climbing the birch tree.



*On Nagy Diófa utca *



The man with his cart sagging under plastic

bags filled with rain. His pillow-case. The

bookstore behind him, lit-up. The garden

deep inside where sleepy children comb

each other’s rain-wet hair. 

Sometimes, to avoid sadness, I ask



what I will think



when I know I am dying.



There, an orchid blooms



and wilts. I wish



I had loved more people.



            Winds, preserve the shape



of me, turns I make



in the dark. I steer



thoughts through forests,



leave freight behind



that warehouse where my friend lives—



drawn into pages of directions,



his light-pencil. In his eyes,



traces of words: gray, faint, edgeless.



            They are for me.



Lay them out on the motionless



river, walk with blue flame in mind



and give my friend my hand.

The sunset-red boy in his little canoe



can only cast his line out so far



 



as his father stands grimacing



on an opposite island: an aging man 



 



in Crete who spat at me once, 



then peered into his little salty pool



 



with contempt that I turned my head away from—



if only to find the next blind peasant



 



lonely with his stories of St. Anthony



 



(he overheard them from the nuns



who passed through the island like clouds last July) 



 



and his open palms, expecting me 



 



to hand him the visible sun 



like a hot coin from his youth



 



spent wandering into and out of cathedrals



and brothels, not understanding 



 



the tombs he was kissing



or the marble faces



 



that watched him pleasantly 



in his boyhood sleep,



 



humming quietly to themselves 



about the price of light in the current market,



 



where the man who sells grapes 



charges one-euro-eighty for every basket



 



and leaves their seeds to float in the sea



like miniature boats towards Alexandria.

  Elegies of writers often tend toward the bombastic, but it would not be an exaggeration to call Adrienne Rich one of the poets who mattered most to the twentieth century. Dedicated to poetry as a form of urgent discourse and committed to prioritizing a vision for women, Rich pushed the boundaries of both her poetry and her activism.



  Rich was born in 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland, the daughter of a former concert pianist and a doctor whose “very Victorian, pre-Raphaelite library” she devoured. Although she won the prestigious Yale Younger Poets’ Prize as an undergraduate, she did not immediately pursue her poetry as a professional, publishing only one follow-up volume while starting a family with her husband, an economics professor. When she published again in 1963, her poetry had become more vibrant and complex, beginning her tendency toward freer verse and livelier spirit that would only increase throughout her long career. Both a participant in the women’s movement of the 1970s and one of its chroniclers, she captured in her poetry the kind of stifled rage that pushed feminism to its peak. The issues of American intervention, the future of the arts, and the public role of the self formed a backbone for much of her later writing.



  At Harvard, Rich studied English. She became friends with fellow undergraduates Donald Hall and Robert Bly, with whom she double-dated. But Harvard was not totally welcoming—as a woman, Rich could not enter the Lamont Poetry Room or become a member of the Advocate. “From 1947 to 1951, when I graduated,” she would later write, “I never saw a single woman on a lecture platform, or in front of a class, except when a woman graduate student gave a paper on a special topic. The ‘great men’ talked of other ‘great men,’ of the nature of Man, the history of Mankind, the future of Man; and never again was I to experience from a teacher the kind of prodding, the insistence that my best could be even better, that I had known in high school. Women students were simply not taken very seriously. Harvard’s message to women was an elite mystification: we were, of course, part of Mankind; we were special, achieving women, or we would not have been there; but of course our real goal was to marry—if possible, a Harvard graduate.”



  A sense of restraint is visible in her early poems, three of which are reprinted on the following pages from their original Advocate publication in 1950-51. Much of the writing is quiet and formal; it seems to echo Rich’s early influences, such as Robert Frost. Her verse, though evocative and lithe, is marked by a controlled and formal precision. As he praised her poems as “gently and modestly dressed,” Auden just as graciously noted in his introduction to the Yale Younger Poets’ Prize that her pieces “respect their elders but are not cowed by them.” Rich was consciously attempting to fit her voice into the model that had been given to her.



  Yet Rich’s early poems are striking in their urge to discover what lies beyond the limits. Each line pulses with the recognition that something does lie beyond: a “whisper of a shade,” a “live thing” shivering, an uneasy moth exploring the “edge of light.” Her pressurized pentameter holds an energy that will eventually burst in her later poems, propelling her style beyond its metrical container. Rich’s Advocate poems are harbingers of her career to come.



  Years later, when Rich wrote “Twenty-One Love Poems,” an expansive series describing her relationship with another woman, the same voice appears to move more freely. The female of Rich’s poetry is no longer confined to her dark room. Instead, she asserts her identity, walks an astonishing spectrum of pleasure and pain, and stands in life’s direct path. The uneasy moth near the night-lamp is gone, replaced by a narrator who is ready to declare: “I choose to be a figure in that light.”