Tennyson's Eagle: A Victorian Poem

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crookèd hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.



Of the Poem:

Line I:
He clasps the crag with crookèd hands

Right from the jump one gets a sense of the mood of this poem. First of all, there’s the alliteration that's caught tightly within the eight syllables of this first line. The rough and almost turbulent sound of these 'Cs' lends a kind of harshness to the opening of the poem that corresponds to harshness that is this eagle's life and environment. Indeed, clasps, crag, and crookèd taken merely as words here are all indicative of the eagle's state of austerity, and the poet would have us know that this majestic bird of prey resides right there on that rocky mass in a somewhat rigorous, and flinted, and nearly defiant way.

Note the intentional use of the word ‘hand’ as opposed to ‘claw’ or ‘talon’. This should be the first indication that this bird- which Tennyson may or may not have experienced- may serve as a symbol of something other than its literal self. It's cool how Tennyson uses a great deal of personifications (like 'hand' vs talon) in so short a poem.

Line II: 
Close to the sun in lonely lands

There’s a beauty that I read in these lines that I’ve seen reflected in so many figures of the past- from Socrates to Spinoza, Buddha to Thoreau- individuals who moved as close as they could to that which they deemed transcendental (or as as our poet says, closer to the sun) only to find themselves alienated in various ways from common society. Not that this is what Tennyson intends, but that image always pops up in my mind. The point I think Tennyson means to convey here is the eagle's noble solitude on those lonely heights.

I love how the poet enjambed the rough alliterations of line one with the line that follows

He clasps the crag with crookèd hands
Close to the sun in lonely lands

and then ends that line with the smoother lonely lands ...

Line III:
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands

The poet ends the first stanza by establishing the height and heavenly grandeur within which his bird abides: the azure sky, his world, his domain and plain of freedom.

By reading the first line, the poem almost seems to impart the idea of an unforgiving habitat, a remote and perhaps cold and lonely place; but now there's something about this particular line that hints to us that this is exactly where this eagle belongs, and more importantly, wants to be. This sky, this world of his surrounds all he is and all he wishes to know, it is the source of not only his liberty, it is the source also of his sovereignty (as we will see in the following stanza).

Again, that the first stanza ends with this majestic creature standing on that rocky formation is a powerful image to contemplate.

Lines IV and V:
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls
He watches from his mountain walls

The vantage point from which the eagle looks is the high summit of a rocky crag, where all is exalted and serene. The waves and the beakers beneath him seem to be little more than wrinkles crawling slowly along the water's tempered surface. The eagle, quite literally, transcends this tumultuous, chaotic world below.

Now Tennyson, like a true and faithful poet, deliberately and carefully chooses his words here. He doesn't say, He watches from the mountain walls; but rather, He watches from his mountain walls. As was previously mentioned, this is exactly where this eagle belongs, and more importantly, wants to be.

But a question is begged ... what does the eagle watch? Let's check out the last line.

Line VI:
And like a thunderbolt he falls

Probably one of the best lines of the poem, and most certainly and most appropriately the most climatic. I love this line, and how Tennyson uses lightning to depict the incredible speed that this bird takes on.

Another thing that I love that Tennyson does is that he doesn't tell you what's happening, he shows you (a technique mastered by some of the best writers the world has known). The first time I read this poem and came to this line I immediately, and without any mental effort, pictured this eagle diving down from off his perch fixed on a fish he eyed from the crag. When that final line was read and that image flashed through my mind I thought to myself, as I often do of poetry, how amazing it is that so much detail can be expressed in so short amount of space.

Conclusion (And One More Consideration): 

Now, the above outline was intended to be a general line by line commentary of the poem- modest and not reading too much into it. The truth is there could be many interpretations rendered about what Tennyson was trying to impart when he wrote this particular piece ... was it just a poem referring to an actual event, or could there be some other hidden, symbolic meaning to it?

To be honest with you, a few things popped up in my mind after having read it. For example, when I read the last line of the poem: and like a thunderbolt he falls, I instantly remembered the line out of Luke 10:18 where Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." In that instant I thought to myself that this poem could very well be talking about Satan's fall, and that the eagle is a symbolic representation of the Devil himself. 

If this were true- and this is just a suggestion- would it explain the uneasiness of the the poem's opening; and would it not make sense of the crookèd hands personification, as the Devil is depicted as a wingèd creature with hands. Maybe I'm reaching, but perhaps crookèd could also mean crooked in the sense of dishonesty (the Devil is, after all, said to be the father of all lies).

And what of this, my curiosity begs ...

Close to the sun in lonely lands / Ring'd with the azure world 

The sun is easily symbolic of God; and the azure world, easily symbolic of heaven. And no doubt such an environment, as unappealing as it would be to the Prince of Darkness, would be a lonely place. Hence the rebellion, or 'stand' as it were. The context, as conjectured as it may be, seems to correspond quite well ...

Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. 

And then there's the sea upon which the 'eagle' gazes. The sea is often depicted as a place of hell in the Bible, a place where Leviathan, that great and evil serpent dwells. Indeed, Revelation 20:13 parallels the idea of the sea directly with that of hell. So there would be no wonder why the eagle here, potentially symbolic of Satan, would be transfixed on the sea below.

Remember how carefully Tennyson selected his words when he said, He watches from his mountain walls rather than He watches from the mountain walls ... wouldn't that be just like the Devil, to lay claim of possession to that which is in fact not his own at all-especially heavenly possessions.

This discontentedness with the celestial spheres (that azure world), this rebel disposition (his stance), combined with that unlawful notion that the vaulted heights are his possession, could only lead to his inevitable expulsion: like a thunderbolt he falls.

And this is only one of a few interpretations that I have pertaining to this poem!

Make no mistakes, though- I take Tennyson's poem for what it's worth, and delight in it, and marvel at it's details and imagery, but I cannot deny that it's language conjures up within me the suspicion that he means something more by it than the simple sighting of so magnificent a creature.

With that, I would love, love, love to hear your interpretation of it.

Colorado's First Poet

There’s no question that there’s a definite stylistic thread that weaves the Imagist movement together- the works of Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle (my favorite), and James Joyce, for example, all bare an uncanny similarity of intensity and radical use of imagery.

Some of the poems I’ve read by poets like this have literally left me staggering in awe- moved to passion, as it were, by a realm of imagination human minds seem to seldom touch. I don’t exaggerate when I say that that kind of poetry carries within itself the very potency that’s at the seat and center of every form of art known- sometimes it’s too overwhelming.

Mina Loy (1882 – 1966), who is said to be Colorado's first official poet, was heavily influenced by the Imagist movement, and all of her works bare the signature of that movement’s style. Although she wasn’t exclusively a poet (indeed, toward the end of her life she denied she ever was) the few works that she produced were very important contributions to poetry and the history thereof. 

Her poems are short blasts of intense imagery skillfully consolidated in a handful of lines- lines that almost at times seem possessed by some remote mystical state verging on madness. With that said, I will admit that she loses me sometimes, with lines like ... 

Dilation has entirely dominated
your long reality
 
 ... but still, her mesmerizing style, like Roethke, ceaselessly draws me back. If you haven't come across her verse, or haven't read Imagist poetry, you should check out some of her works. Here’s one below, a poem which rages against that ruthless deterioration culminating in our inevitable ending ... aging:


An Old Woman

The past has come apart
events are vagueing
the future is a seedless pod
the present pain.

Not even pain has that precision
with which it struck youth.

Years like moths
erode internal organs
hanging or falling
in a spoiled closet.

Does you mirror bedevil you?
Or is the impossible
possible to senility?

How could the erstwhile
agile and slim self--
that narrow silhouette--
come to contain
this huge incognito--
this bulbous stranger--
only to be exorcised by death?

Dilation has entirely dominated
your long reality.

I had to post it ...

Poe's Annabel Lee

It takes a sort of disturbed, divine genius to concoct precious literary works that revolve around the theme of death, and of death’s potential, and of the suffering and the loss thereby, and to render that theme beautiful. Think about it … to draw beauty from the ultimate source of trepidation that, consciously or subconsciously, plagues the life of every living human being … to draw beauty from death? To achieve such a thing requires incredible wit, and audacity, and most certainly a creative mind unmoved by the prospect of risk.

Edgar Allan Poe is such a mind. He is said to have thought that the death of a beautiful woman is “the most poetical topic in the world.” As pathological as that statement may sound, I don’t believe that Poe was moved by some diabolical euphoria revolving around the death of beautiful women, or that some infernal strain of delight flowed through his blood by the thought of it. Poe’s poetical melancholy was derived from real tragic losses that he endured throughout his life, losses that involved women in his life for whom he cared deeply.

The most tragic of these losses was his wife Virginia, who died at the age of 24 after a long and painful battle with tuberculosis. Poe loved her dearly and with all his heart, and was steeped in a deep, desolate depression that could only be assuaged by the remote hope that his beloved might be reunited with him. It was from this tortuous mode of misery, coupled with the longing he had for his wife, that Poe’s final poem would emerge, Annabel Lee.

Annabel Lee is a poem Poe completed two years after Virginia’s death. He struggled desperately to make it as perfect as possible (it is said that there were roughly 11 known versions of it). The poem itself is about love, and about what happens with love when death intervenes.  

The narrator speaks of a love that he shared with a girl by the name of Annabel Lee. This love was so pure between the two, and so deep and innocent, that even the angels were jealous of it. One day “a wind blew out of a cloud, chilling” Annabel Lee, which is said to be the cause of her eventual death. The narrator goes on to say that it was the jealousy of these angels that produced this wind that killed his beloved. Notwithstanding, the narrator continues, the depth and purity of their love was such that it was immutable- nothing, not even death or angels or demons, could separate the two:

And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

The poem then takes a strange and almost repelling twist as it comes to a close. We are told that despite their immutable love, and the beautiful imagery describing Annabel’s presence with him, every evening, during the night-tide, the speaker goes into the tomb of his wife and lies there lovingly by her side.

It’s a fascinating poem that consists of six stanzas with equally fascinating imagery. The tempo of it, most especially when read aloud, flows so incredibly well. Poe uses repetition, alliteration, and polysyndeton with great literary effectiveness. It is a poem that every poet, and every romantic minded person, must of necessity know.

  

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

And we're back ...

It's been quite some time since I last posted in my blog, and a lot has certainly happened since then ...

... of course, there was that incident where my blog was hacked and tampered with- which thankfully I was able to remedy. Then there was a trip I took in August to the east coast (visiting Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York)- a trip that has inspired in me a great deal of imagery and ideas for future works of mine. Then there was that discovery of hundreds of etchings that were done by the poet William Blake- a really awesome modern day find in the world of poetry. And then there was the publication of not just one, but two chapbooks by Colorado poet, Daniel Klawitter- reads that I highly recommend. In short, a lot has happened.

During this time I did a comprehensive study of both Shakespeare's Hamlet (which I'm please to say I'll be seeing next month), and the history and tradition of Russian poetry, studies that were exceedingly informative and edifying.

Just yesterday I posted a biography that was done by Poets.org on a very popular Russian poet, Osip Mandelstam- an interesting man full of conviction and an awesome writer whose life under the Bolsheviks was heavy laden. His poetry is beautiful, and radical, and was clearly in a state of perpetual evolution, even to the very end.

I think everyone should check out these poets, even if unfortunately some of the substance of their works are lost in translation. These poets, from Trediakovsky to Brodsky, are an incredible breed. Indeed,  Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (as translated by Vladimir Nabokov) is one of my all-time favorite poets- I mean absolutely amazing, amazing works of art.

Anyhow, my sabbatical is ended, and I can't wait to share more tidbits that pertain to the works of poets, to the poets themselves, and to poetry in general. Here ... here's one of the first poems written by Mandelstam that I read and that I'm sure you'll appreciate (keep in mind that he emerged during the Symbolist period of Russian literature):

I Could Not Among the Misty Clouds

I could not among the misty clouds
Your unstable and painful image catch,
'Oh, my God', I promptly said aloud,
Having not a thought these words to fetch.

As a bird -- an immense bird and sound --
Holly Name flew out of my chest.
And ahead the mist mysterious crowds,
And the empty cage behind me rests.

- Osip Mandelstam

Osip Emilevich Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam 1891 - 1938

Born in January, 1891, in Warsaw, Poland, Osip Emilievich Mandelstam was raised in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, Russia. His father was a prominent leather merchant and his mother a teacher of music. Mandelstam attended the renowned Tenishev School and later studied at the Sorbonne, the University of Heidelberg, and the University of St. Petersburg, though he left off his studies to pursue writing. He published his first collection, Kamen, or Stone (1913), when Russian Symbolism was the dominant persuasion. Like Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov, who cleared the ground for Russian Futurism, Mandelstam departed from this old mode of expression in favor of a more direct treatment of thoughts, feelings, and observations under the aegis of Acmeism, a programme that included Nikolay Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova. As translator Clarence Brown observes, Mandelstam's variant of Acmeism was a mixture of poetics and moral doctrine, the former based on an "intuitive and purely verbal logic of inner association" and the latter on a kind of "democratic humanism." His second book, Tristia (1922), secured his reputation, and both it and Stone were released a year later in new editions.

Yet the Bolsheviks had begun to exert an ever increasing amount of control over Russian artists, and Mandelstam, though he had initially supported the Revolution, was absolutuely unwilling to yield to the political doctrine of a regime that had executed Gumilev in 1921. The poet published three more books in 1928—Poems, a collection of criticism entitled On Poetry, and The Egyptian Stamp, a book of prose—as the state closed in on him. Mandelstam spent his later years in exile, serving sentences for counter-revolutionary activities in various work camps, until his death on December 27, 1938, in the Gulag Archipelago.

Bio from Poets.org

Neruda's Death ... Questioned

Chilean poet, Neruda ... murdered? If true, how terrible ...

{Smiling}

The Spires

I think they're vulgar, those stately spires,
That raise their heads up to the sky-
The boast of bygone, lost empires
That once against the heavens vied.

Like Babel and that wretched tower
That dared in vain God's heaven reach,
As if they held some sovereign power
To flank the Gates and set some breach!

So yes, these ‘modern' symbols pain me-
They seem disdainful, haughty, rude …
And when I see them vaulted vainly,
I shake my head and mumble, dude? 

-jwm

A Dawning of Dying

  


On My First Real Encounter with Death (Very Young)

In my youth I saw a bird’s ravished body
Lying in the silence of a furrow
Its auburn feathers were wilted and shoddy
And ants stripped its flesh and belly thorough

Strange … so strange imagining this bird to be
To have once ascended the vaulted blue
To have woven music in the old oak tree
Or to have plucked from grass the morning dew

And now, alas … struck down from the sky it flew
This bird, this tiny little creature lies
Displaying a sure message in open view
That whatever comes to live also dies

In the quietude of that lonely meeting
I marveled dreadfully that this should be
That death swallows life, and that life is fleeting
And that all will succumb …
                                                          … including me

-jwm

Klawitter's Collection- Runaway Muse

Ever since Ezra Pound and the Imagist movement of the early 20th century, American poetry seems to have almost slipped entirely away from the traditional, lyrical forms we see in poets such as Dickinson and Poe. In today’s world (or in America, at any rate), it is modernism in the form of free verse that seems to dominate contemporary poetry- and this to such a degree that it seems that one seldom sees poetry written around the idea of meter or a rhythmic scheme.

So you could imagine how overwhelmingly delighted I was when I came to read Daniel Klawitter’s chapbook, Runaway Muse. This is a book full of lyrically composed poems that have some of the coolest and most creative rhyme schemes that I’ve come across in a long time. 

Take, for example, the last stanza of one of his poems, Angelic (which plays off of the last word of the previous stanza, ‘fragrance’). Speaking of angels, Klawitter writes:

These heavenly vagrants
Who descend
From sky to stone
Know that even
Our earthbound bones
Cry out to God
With praise
Like poems

The attention given to composition like this is just incredible. What’s immediately impressive is that the poem itself is very reflective of Anacreontic verse (an ancient form of Greek lyrical verse that almost no one uses anymore).

About the stanza itself? ... remember that from ‘fragrance’ Klawitter writes: "These heavenly vagrants / Who Descend / From sky to stone." By using the rhymes ‘fragrance’ and ‘vagrants’ he strings together the two stanza perfectly, and just when the tempo seems to pause between ‘descend’ and ‘stone’ the reader is thrown into a rhythmic crescendo which is beautifully achieved by using alliteration in line 5 (earthbound bones) and between lines 7 and 8 (praise and poems). 

In fact, in a subtle style similar to that of Dickinson’s, Klawitter cleverly develops a rhyme sequence by using words that obliquely rhyme- he starts with stone, then bends the rhythm towards bones, and completes the climatic point with the perfect alliterated word … poems. Stone, bones, poems ... the stanza sounds so nice and fluid, and fun, when read aloud- very good writing.

There are also internal rhythms that our poet effortlessly plays with; rhythms that dedicated Performance poets are very aware of; sonorous, internal rhyme schemes that intentionally contribute to the fluid cohesion of the speech itself- and this without deviating from point or premise. 

Take for example the opening lines of Klawitter's poem, The Gospel According To Barabbas ... notice the internal rhythmic weaving and alliteration that holds the poem together without stealing from the message itself (Barabbas' voice):

Why do you just hang there?
Why don't you MOVE, man?
Break an arm off the cross
And beat those soldiers silly saying:

"I came not to bring peace, but a sword."

How long, O Lord, until you return?

 Rumor has it you are Mother Mary’s illegitimate son.

A son on the run
Betrayed by a snitch!

Ah, you scratched the wrong itch, Messiah.

In this particular work, cadence seems secondary to what the poet wants you to really know (and what Barabbas, a ruthless insurgent in the eyes of Caesar, ultimately acknowledges) - that Jesus, seemingly weak and disheveled, is the epitome of Strength and Life, of Resurrection and of Advent. The poem makes you realize a truth, never openly suggesting it at all- and all of it is remarkably accomplished through the latent, albeit, guiding force of the poem's tempo.

That, coupled with his theological and more philosophical works, is what I appreciate about Klawitter’s writings … their lyrical, musical nature. To take in a subject is one thing- and many modernist writers have done this really well- but to add the metronome of harmony to a subject that fosters one’s ability to absorb the poem and its point is quite another thing. Klawitter does this flawlessly.

And of the topics of these poems? ... the subject matter Klawitter chooses is just as broad spectrum as is his lyrical creativity. From the very serious Comrade to his humorous Who’s The Real Pet, Klawitter takes you through a labyrinth of emotional and imaginative experiences. 

In his tribute poem to Miles Davis (Birth Of The Cool) one feels a distinct jazziness throughout. From his liturgical poem against nihilism I personally felt a sharp, cold rebuke- as if I were flirting with nihilist ideologies! Give Me Your Tired provoked in me fresh feelings of rebellion, the audacity to refuse one more day of oppression- a really good poem.

In short, Runaway Muse is a refreshing book in the world of contemporary poetry. Far from the rote mechanicalism one sees in the attempt to mimic classical forms; and far from the banal, abstract articulations many modernist poets have succumbed to, Runaway Muse is a collection of poems that are infused with vitality and freshness, having a lyrical nature that is both inviting and sincere. 

I’m grateful, as a reader and writer of poetry, to have had the chance to come across such a sublime and delightful collection of poems. I highly recommend getting a copy, if you haven’t already. 

To learn more about our poet and read some of his other works please go to the following link: Daniel Klawitter.

You can also purchase his works, Runaway Muse (mentioned here), and An Epistemology of Flesh (another one of his collections) on Amazon.