Poetry Project - Conrad Aiken's Morning Song

Poetry. Oh you elusive piece of art that seems to constantly slip through my fingers. I had such grand intentions of reading a Pulitzer Prize winner from each decade. I pulled out my gigantic Norton anthology of poetry and started flagging the pages. I made it through Conrad Aiken in the 1930s before I got pulled in another direction and never came back to it.

I'm not flaking out. Not this month. But the problem is now that I've read these poems, what do I do? I don't really know how to talk about them. I can point out phrases that I liked but I'm not really sure I understand the poems at all. I'm not going to lie—it's frustrating to spend so much time reading and re-reading a poem and in the end not entirely be able to make sense out of it.

Lu wrote a wonderful post a few weeks ago about how to love a poem and I'm going to let her guide me. Her first bit of advice is to love a poem for one line that stops your heart. She goes on: “The best way to fall in love with a poem is to forget what you know about poetry. Just feel it. Hear it. Taste it. Then remember everything you know about poetry. Fall in love all over again.”

After reading "Morning Song" (from Senlin) by Conrad Aiken, I had my line--"when the light drips through the shutters like the dew..." And other lines of imagery that I really loved as well. In small ways "Morning Song" reminded me of one of my favorite poems, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by TS Eliot and after a little poking around I learned that Aiken and Eliot often ran in the same circles.I also learned that Aiken's father shot his mother and then himself when Aiken was only eleven. And that Aiken was never truly appreciated during his own time and has always seemed to live behind the shadows of the other great Modernist poets. And that Aiken wanted to compose poetry similar to symphonies.

But this poem, "Morning Song," caught my eye and I've read it a dozen times and listened to it a few (see video below, which isn't the greatest but I think it's always nice to hear poems spoken). And while I can't completely understand this poem and know that it is only a small part of a much larger poem, the imagery in the poem continues to stick in my ribs--

There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea...
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me....

or

Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die

or

And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains....

In "Morning Song" Aiken juxtaposes the extraordinary and wondrous with the ordinary--a man standing in front of the mirror in the morning tying his tie. And I'm not sure ultimately what the point of the poem is, but the next time I face myself in the mirror in the morning I wonder if I'll be more cognizant of the cosmos around me.

Or something. So go--read Lu's post about How to Love a Poem (because it's one of the best posts I've read in a long time) and then seek out a poem to love.

Is there a poem you really love? What is it about the poem that has stuck with you?

I know that I can't help but smile when I hear a reference to Prufrock..."Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky..."

To participate in the Poetry Project for August (theme is Pulitzer Prize Winners), visit Lu's linky post.