Companionship and Connection
May 23, 2006, 6:23 am
Posted by Robert P. Imbelli
In today’s New York Times there is a moving report of a new book by Madge McKeithen. Her son suffers from a debilitating illness, and in struggling to come to terms with it, she turned to reading poetry. She has now published a book of favorite poems and her commentary on them: Blue Peninsular.
The Times’ reporter, Dinitia Smith, calls the book “rigorous, unsentimental, tough, dry, the words like bullets coming at you. And it offers no easy hope.”
McKeithen herself says she finds “no solace in poetry.” What does she find, then? “Companionship. A connection that felt true.”
McKeithen’s _Blue Peninsula: Essential Words for a Life of Loss and Change_ certainly sounds worth having on hand in dark days. As described in the article Fr. Imbelli brings to our attention, McKeithen’s use of poetry to put her situation in perspective in an unsentimental way seems admirable. The last poem in her book is a short one by Emily Dickinson, a reference to which explains the book’s title.
405
It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness –
I’m so accustomed to my Fate –
Perhaps the Other — Peace –
Would interrupt the Dark –
And crowd the little Room –
Too scant — by Cubits — to contain
The Sacrament — of Him –
I am not used to Hope –
It might intrude upon –
Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place –
Ordained to Suffering –
It might be easier
To fail — with Land in Sight –
Than gain — My Blue Peninsula –
To perish — of Delight –
Sorry, the poem is by Emily Dickinson of course. I don’t know how those asterisks got in there.
Clare Boothe Luce, the playwright, convert, wrote that tragedy does not work for Christians. We might say that Mckeithen is in a rut or consumed by tragedy. As Dickenson seemed to be, however brilliant. Psychologists attribute this to our upbringing which gives us this world view at an early age. Transactional Analysis calls it a script or way of looking at things regardless of what is really happening.
Yet Dickinsen can bring us up with her “I dwell in possibility.” It certainly speaks of her way to escape through poetry which we can call a “fools paradise.” Some say she was escaping from Puritanism as well as disappointment in love.
When we are imbued in God we can also be accused of being in a fools paradise. The decision of faith is needed to have the peace that surpasses all understanding.
So McKeithen might be more into “misery loves company” rather than finding a more productive way to deal with her situation. The door is locked to peaceful and happy alternatives. It is stagnation and misery rather than hope, resurrection and love.
Susan, many thanks for providing the Dickinson poem.
Any sense of the meaning of her line:
“Too scant … to contain
The Sacrament — of Him –”?
Bill, I find your last paragraph most unfortunate.
Who are we to offer facile pontifications
on a mother’s affliction?
Robert,
Perhaps the cliche “misery loves company” is to harsh. I hope I am not belittling the affliction so much as questioning the approach. At the same time we ought to make some statement when despair is glorified. What else does
“I am not used to Hope –
It might intrude upon –
Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place”, mean?
This is truly anti-Christian. Isn’t despair glorified? Empathy is certainly the initial move. But when empathy becomes identity, both fall into the pit. And isn’t this poem of Dickinson more escapist than resurrectional?
Bill: it is too harsh–way too harsh. Where in the world do you get “glorifying despair”? There’s a galaxy of difference between glorification and honest acceptance. Anti-Christian? Good grief: not every poem must summon rainbows and butterflies.
Where did I say that every poem must summon cheer? I am pointing out how Dickinson’s poem preaches despair. Isn’t despair an antyonm of hope. Whether we intend or not by celebrating her ode against hope we ‘glorify despair.’ We can appreciate Dickinson’s immense talent as a poet while advising our youth not to be engulfed in her despair which many do. In a certain sense to celebrate her is to celebrate despair.
Even though honest acceptance can be a sign of stoicism I do not oppose it per se. It is when it militates against hope that I draw the line. As I see it the book declares against hope. I don’t think it should be seen as a fundamentalist prerogative (or fault) that we should lament young women and men feasting on Dickinson instead of the gospels?
Honest acceptance without hope is sterile stoicism. And as far as a mother’s affliction is concerned we are empty symbols indeed if we do not encourage her to find delivery in her suffering. Don’t we want to make her connection a redemptive one?
Although we should in no way not help those who suffer, the fact remains that suffering is an ineluctable fact of life. Yet delivery from that suffering through Jesus make us who we are. And in one of the epistles of Peter we are counseled to always give a reason for the hope that is in us.
It might be lonelier
Without the Loneliness –
I’m so accustomed to my Fate –
Perhaps the Other — Peace –
Would interrupt the Dark –
And crowd the little Room –
Too scant — by Cubits — to contain
The Sacrament — of Him –
I am not used to Hope –
It might intrude upon –
Its sweet parade — blaspheme the place –
Ordained to Suffering –
It might be easier
To fail — with Land in Sight –
Than gain — My Blue Peninsula –
To perish — of Delight –
Fr. Imbelli asks about these lines in Dickinson’s poem.
too scant—by Cubits—to contain
The Sacrament– of Him—‘
It’s hard to know with certainty exactly how Dickinson felt on religious matters. When she was a girl at Mount Holyoke all the students were asked to stand up if they wanted to be saved, and she apparently was the only one who didn’t rise. Yet so much of her poetry deals with ultimate questions, the last things, religious doubt, and hope. She values scrupulous honesty in defining exactly the way the inner life feels to her, and yet– as in this poem– writes sparely and elliptically. This spareness of expression, while it keeps us at a tantalizing distance from some of her secrets, leaves room for readers to “fill the gaps” from their own experience. (Maybe this is one reason why Ms McKeithen could find the comfort and wisdom she needed to face her own somewhat different problems in Dickinson’s work.)
My own reading of the poem is that it describes Dickinson’s desire for an end to loneliness, loss, limitation, together with her fear that she has lived too long with loss and limit, and might “perish—of Delight—“should it come. There is a desire for fulfillment, coupled with a sense that the stringencies of her life have left her diminished, and too “scant” to bear it.
Though the lines Fr. Imbelli speaks of may not have been intended primarily to describe religious experience in the way, say, Hopkins’ sonnets do, the fear that the “little room”’ the speaker can offer might be inadequate to entertain the “Other—Peace” that would end loneliness and “interrupt the Dark” might well be a familiar theme to many Christian readers. And the reference to the room’s being too scant “by cubits” might suggest the comment from Matthew about the futility of any of the disciples’ efforts to add a single cubit to his stature by sheer will power. This might seem to accent the helplessness and inadequacy of the speaker, but of course the remark arises in the context of the Providential care for even the “lilies of the field.” A hopeful thought, perhaps.
Bill, your reading of the poem seems hobbled by literalism. I’m hardly an expert in verse, but it strikes me as obvious that the voice of a poem can be used by its author to convey something as fleeting–as non-argumentative–as a moment of experience. Some of my favorite poems do precisely that: capture a moment, hoever joyful, however woeful. Poems need not articulate a philosophy for living, coping, hoping, whatever. Poetry is not homiletics. Voice can also be used ironically, of course.
Grief often descends unalloyed. Soaking it in is not a denial of hope, but a basic human experience, sometimes even a need.
I agree with what I learned in literature 101 that “art is what pleases.” And that may certainly be in the beholder. The nuances that Susan talks about may well be there. There are enough hints that Dickinson may be rebelling against an inflexible parent who dealt more in dictates than in invitation. I would be interested in a study of those who have “Dickinson parties” in college and their aftermath. The good news is that it encourages the love of poetry. What might be questioned is the tendency to dwell in sadness rather than in more uplifting ventures.
Now note that I am not saying that art must be uplifting or that there should be a message. What I stress is that it is important whether someone comes out of such experience hopeful or despondent.
If one really wants to get depressed one should read the “Letters to Theo” by Vincent Van Gogh. While giving insights into the tortured life of an artist, one can easily experience depression by reading this book. The last lines are “What’s the use?”
But if you grant that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then why not “whether someone comes out of such experience hopeful or despondent”? That’s not a useful norm in judging literature. Equally slippery is the notion that one “comes out of” experience in this or that way. How do you decide the end point?
Macbeth is a great play. Not everyone can handle it. Dickinson pleases because she can turn a phrase and she is a great poet. But impressionable minds can justify suicide or despondency after reading her. (Granted she is not as depressing as Sartre and others.) That is a real slippery slope.
Very difficult to decide the end point. But we know words can have powerful effects on us. For example someone listening to a depressed person can very easily become depressed also. The better one listens the worse the depression can be. This is why therapists have to be careful that they do not get into a funk from “drinking in” all these negative words.
Similarly, we like being around cheerful people (not necessarily clownish ones) rather than those who say the glass is half empty.
All of this is related to brainwashing which is the extreme of what we are discussing. The effect on people can be seen as with those under Reverend Jones in Africa, the military or a Catholic seminary and the like.
I do not support burning of books nor would I prohibit young people from reading Dickinson. The hope (no pun intended) is that people have good support systems which will enable them to distinquish as they are exposed to many ideas.
The worst thing that can happen is when a person loses all hope. Hope is the one thing we have left, no matter what the calamity.