How to Deliver Your Message, Part 4: Coming out of Nowhere

      One way to convey your theme to readers is not to lead up to it, as in The Big Moment, but to surprise the reader. At least, not to lead up to the message in an obvious way, but in a subliminal way. The surprise sneaks in and then leaps out in the final lines or sentences of a poem or story or essay.

A writer can spend most of a poem or essay or story describing one thing, and that thing can be only distantly or obliquely related to the theme. Then at the very end, BOOM! The writer suddenly says what he or she wants to communicate, but in such a way that it doesn’t feel predictable or heavy-handed.

One famous example of this is Rainer Maria Rilke’s great poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” I’ve translated and written about this poem in another blog, but the ending is worth mentioning again in this context. The poem seems to be a description of an ancient and broken statue. Pretty boring, right? Except that Rilke makes that statue emanate light and sensuality by comparing it to a glowing lamp and to a wild animal’s pelt, among other things. He also uses a tightly constructed sonnet to call attention to the poem itself, rather than where it is heading. Then in the poem’s last five words (in the German original), he clobbers the reader with a message so didactic, so strong, that it is unforgettable. He gets away with this sententiousness by catching the reader unawares, only leading up to the end in the reader’s unconscious, never showing that the poem is headed in that direction.

Another great example of this strategy is one of my favorite poems, Mary Oliver’s “In Blackwater Woods.” You might want to read the poem first, so I don’t spoil the ending. Emily Dickinson once said, "If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."

                                                                     Emily Dickinson

Mary Oliver's "In Blackwater Woods" never fails to blow the top of my head off.

But “In Blackwater Woods”actually starts out as though it’s only going to be just a nature poem about the beauty of fall foliage:

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,

How trite can you get? Except that Oliver starts with the imperative, “Look,” giving us a clue right from the start that something is going on in this poem that requires our rapt attention. And surprisingly, the trees not only have bodies of light, they are redolent of cinnamon and “fulfillment.” Already the poem is subtly conveying that something is undulating beneath the surface of this landscape:

and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.

Notice the peculiar repetition and setting apart of the word “is,” strangely unliterary, prefiguring the diction of the poem’s last two lines. But why are the ponds nameless? I don’t really know, but I’m guessing it’s because they are so sublime in their own right that they are beyond any name that humans place on a signpost or a map.

Then Oliver kicks it into gear: “Every year/everything/I have ever learned…leads back to this”. So now we know we are in the realm of revelation, and what we are about to learn transcends the everyday.

Her reference to “the black river of loss” suggests Lethe, the river in Greek mythology that the dead must cross to the Underworld, the river that erases all memory. But instead of the other side being the kingdom of the dead, in Oliver’s personal myth the other bank of the river is “salvation.” Salvation is a familiar idea in this Christian culture, but Oliver’s idea of salvation is one with a meaning “none of us will ever know.” These are powerful and absolute statements by Oliver, but they are so unexpected, and so different from the usual homilies about being saved, that they arrest us. We realize this is not going to be any kind of sermon we’ve ever heard.

Then Mary Oliver delivers the final pronouncement, again addressing the reader directly, as she did in the poem’s first word: “To live in this world//you must be able/to do three things...” Why is she speaking so directly to us, and what are those three things she’s talking about? We immediately want to know. It turns out they are actually very down-to-earth, and so desperately and beautifully and simply expressed:

to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it…

Then the final imperative, with its oddly repetitious phrasing:

and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Those lines are a kind of “letting go” on the poet’s part as well. She is no longer adorning her poem in literary devices and sparkling originality. Mary Oliver just lays it on the line. And she does, she does.

 

Other recent posts about writing topics:
How to Deliver Your Message: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

How to Get Published
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer

New English Translation of Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo”—Learning from Rilke, Part 2

One of Rainer Maria Rilke’s most famous works is “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” In that short poem he solders together dramatic opposites. The Apollonian (pure abstract art) and the Dionysian (sensual, physical) are often thought of as polar contrasts. But in his description of a statue of the god Apollo, Rilke uses Dionysian language to depict that artwork. He combines the cool energy of classic art with the hot energy of the body, and then Rilke pulls off one of the greatest endings in the history of poetry.

The word “archaic” in the poem’s title resonates in different ways. It refers specifically to the Archaic period in ancient Greek art from 600 to 480 B.C.E., when it was standard for sculptures of human figures to have a smiling face. In fact, that type of expression is called The Archaic Smile.

Greek statue with "The Archaic Smile"

But the word “archaic” is also partly ironic in the title of this poem, since nothing could be as immediate as this statue the way Rilke describes it. The poem is contemporary in its diction, but it’s a Petrarchan sonnet, another fusion of opposites. I’ve tried in this new version of Rilke’s most frequently translated poem to bring out the poem’s oddly indirect directness (almost every statement except the last is a negative). I’ve also tried to include the poem’s sensuality, often censored in translation. To emphasize the impact of the poem’s last phrase, I’ve brought it into contemporary English. Here’s my translation:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

by Rainer Maria Rilke

We’ll never know the incredible head

where his eyes ripen like apples. No,

but that torso is a lamp, and in its glow

his gaze does appear, turned down instead,

but hovering, glistening. Otherwise the arc of his breast

wouldn’t dazzle you, and in the slight

twist of his loins a smile wouldn’t alight

in the center, where the virile parts nest.

Otherwise this stone would be stunted, marred

under those shoulders that plunge hard,

wouldn’t flicker like a wild animal’s coat;

wouldn’t burst from its edges, knife

like a star: there’s nowhere on him so remote

it doesn’t see you: you’ve got to change your life.

(translation © 2017 by Zack Rogow)

            “Archaic Torso of Apollo” derives its force from a particular electricity generated when the directness of life collides with the distance of art. The one object Rilke describes in this poem, an ancient Greek statue of a male torso that he saw in the Louvre Museum in Paris, combines the vitality of the body and ripe fruit (the apple eyes) with the world of ancient art.

            To me it seems that Rilke is deliberately emphasizing the sensuality of this statue, drawing our attention to its breast and crotch, comparing its glow to the pelt of a predatory beast.

            The torso in Rilke’s poem may be buff, but it’s beheaded and de-sexed. It has neither the power of thought, nor the virility of its genitals, nor lips to kiss, nor arms to hold or legs to clench.

            Then why does this broken block of stone mean that we must change our lives—demand that we change our lives? Rilke begins by telling us we can’t see the statue’s eyes, but then reverses direction by saying the torso can see us, with its nipples like eyes and its pelvis curving upward in a knowing smile. The poem continually picks up momentum as it displays the miracle of a headless body that looks at us, smiles at us, even pierces us with its invisible glance. The poem tells us that art strips us bare, throws light on the deepest caverns of our souls, and only when we accept that are we ready to change our lives and begin the trek of our destiny. But that knowledge also produces a smile, even in the most unlikely place: a headless torso.

Other posts on Rilke:
Rilke's "Autumn Day"
Learning from Rilke, Part 1

Other recent posts about writing topics: 

How to Get Published

Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop

How Not to Become a Literary Dropout

Putting Together a Book Manuscript

Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message

Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?

Why Write Poetry? 

Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer