I found Larry Levis’ poetry confusing and difficult to understand. His collection of poems entitled Elegy contains poems of varying content, style, and length and even though he did not compile it himself, I believe Philip Levine did an excellent job especially when it comes to the order the poems are placed in. I enjoyed this because a couple of the poems in the third section relate back to images and names that were in the first two sections.
As we talked about in class, Levis’ poetry looks like it would be easy to read, not like Alice Notley’s poetry for example, but once you begin to read the poems you soon discover that you are confused and unsure of not only what is happening in the poem metaphorically but also what it happening literally. One example of this is the poem “Elegy for Whatever Had a Pattern in It”. This poem, on the first read is a jumble of Spanish names, black widows, girls who hairspray their hair too much, and the idea that we are all representations. But on a further read you realize that not only are there patterns apparent in the content throughout such as the pattern of the hourglass on the black widow’s body and the pattern of Ediesto Huerta’s work habits, but also the patterns of repetition in the actual language of the poem. It seems as though each time you read through a poem you discover something else.
I did have one thought that we didn’t talk about in class and that is the titles. The last nine poems all begin with “Elegy with a” or “Elegy for” or “Elegy ending in a”. These poems don’t necessarily even relate to their titles except that they have one line which references the title. When we read W.S. Merwin’s poetry we discovered that the title added a little something or a new slant to the poem, but Levis’ just doesn’t seem to do that. I wonder if maybe I’m just not looking hard or deep enough to find a further meaning in these titles or if Levis didn’t title them himself. I wonder if Levine had to title them and he didn’t want to bias the poems one way or another with anything that wasn’t straight from the poem. One poem in particular made me laugh because of the title. “Elegy Ending in the Sound of a Skipping Rope” has nothing to do with a skipping rope until the very last line: “until I could hear only the endless,/Annoying, unvarying flick of the rope each time/It touched the street.” (81) As I was reading through the poem I kept waiting to hear a jump rope or even a reference to it, but it didn’t show up until this last line. And I literally laughed out loud when I read that line.
I did enjoy the reappearance of Anastasia and Sandman throughout the collection as well as the other reoccurring themes such as horses and death and the afterlife. However, I feel like it would take an entire semester to fully understand all of the references and nuances found in this collection of poetry.
I have to say, I agree with you about Levis' titles. Whether or not he created those titles himself, they are certainly quite mind blowing. I can't seem to make sense of hardly any of the ones you mentioned, that begin with "Elegy..." This doesn't particularly bother me, other than my natural curiosity and desire to know. Otherwise I feel like the odd titles only work to enhance the overall strangeness that is reading Levis' poetry. Really, what good would a sensible title do for a poem such as "Elegy for Whatever had a Pattern in it"? It certainly wouldn't make much a difference to me as far as how well I understand the crazy and intensely intricate structure of the poem, and its allusions.
ReplyDeleteIf any meaning is given to the poem by the title, perhaps it is just that we should pay more attention to those sounds of the skipping rope. I thought a lot about whether or not that last line holds more meaning to the entire poem than it first appears to. I still don't know, of course, but it's hard for me to completely write the titles off as meaningless. I like your idea that perhaps Levine chose the titles as a way of trying to stay as ambiguous as possible. I don't know if he titled them either, but that would make a lot of sense to me.
Anyways, I also found this poet rather difficult to read. I think he's brilliant, perhaps a bit too brilliant for me to connect to, and I really appreciate and admire what he accomplished.
To add to what Carrie said, and to comment more on the titles of the individual poems: I did not enjoy Levis very much, and don’t necessarily think he’s anymore brilliant the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteI really liked your response Callie because of your approach and how you tackled some of the points I was thinking of about Levis as well (the titles as well as the deceptive nature of Levis.) I feel like Levis, rather than being brilliant, is simply being intentionally ambiguous.
I disagree (amicably, of course) with the idea that this collection was put together well. Frankly I felt Levine did a shoddy job putting all these poems together and that the first section in particular doesn’t fit at all with what comes later. Levis’ later poems in the collection are interminable and frankly boorish in their constant need for analyzation to get anything from them.
That said, I did like how you noted some particular references (Sandman and the like) some of which I did see but not as clearly as you did. I agree also it would be good to devote more time to Levis, though it is not possible, and also see his earlier poetry so as to get a better sense of what his previous collections were like. I feel they might help me understand Elegy better as well.