Frank O’Hara: The Day Lady Died
The Day Lady Died
Charles Simic: Fork
This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird’s foot
Worn around the cannibal’s neck.
As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
Its head which like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.
I had previously heard that Simic was a surrealist poet, and after reading a few of his poems, I can see that he is the Salvador Dali of poets. The way that he transforms a simple household object (a spoon, a fork, a stone) into a living, breathing creature is unsettling. Humans use forks everyday; they are commonplace and controlled by us. Simic sees this fork as an unknown creature and describes in such a way as to make seem evil. This alchemy makes the object seem odd – why would we want to put something as vile as a “fork” into our mouths? A fork is nothing other than a small devil’s pitchfork, a bird foot, so why keep one around the house? In many of his poems, Simic forces us into alien status, making the common world a strange place. We must see things for the first time.
William Wordsworth: The World is Too Much With Us
THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 10
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Although this poem was written almost a century ago, it still resonates with me today. The first line of the poem, “the world is too much with us,” is seperated with a semi-colon from everything else in the poem. Perhaps this is to indicate the significance of the statement. The reader must wonder if the world is better off with humans, and why? Wordsworth proclaims that humans have lost touch with nature and are too obsessed with material. When reading the poem out loud, there is a certain rhyme scheme (petrachan) that makes it seem angry. Although the tone itself seems to be admonishing, the emphasis on words gives away even more Wordsworth’s dissappointment in humanity. Wordsworth then goes on to say that he wishes to be removed from this plebian and uncaring lifestyle – he wishes to be a Pagan, which is not an acceptable spirituality at his time. Paganism would help him to see the greatness of nature and the awe of the unknown world. In line 10, “a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn” evokes imagery of a mother feeding a baby; however, this mother is uknown and is too great to be comprehensible. Wordsworth is trying to say that humans would be better nurished by the uknown and that which invokes awe in them, than the way that they were currently living.
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