Robert Penn Warren was born there, in Guthrie, Kentucky, and the state has just put up signs on the highway north of the town telling people about it.
… “Only one person has won the Pulitzer Prize in both fiction and poetry,” the governor said of Warren [at the ceremony].
Warren was also deemed the first Poet Laureate of the United States.
“Robert Penn Warren reflected his pride of where he lived in his writing,” said Beshear. “Robert Penn Warren was proud of the place where he lived and the sign is to show him we’re proud of him.”…
Everyone knows his novel, All the King’s Men; his poetry, somewhat less known, is a series of strenuous spiritual nature lyrics. UD, though not immensely keen on Warren’s poetry, has always admired his lines’ unembarrassed intensity of emotion, their unreconstructed romanticism. Here’s a poem of his I just discovered. It has a surprising word in it.
*********************************
The Nature of a Mirror
The sky has murder in the eye, and I
Have murder in the heart, for I
Am only human.
We look at each other, the sky and I.
We understand each other, for
For the solstice of summer has sagged. I stand
And wait. Virtue is rewarded, that
Is the nightmare, and I must tell you
That soon now, even before
The change from Daylight Savings Time, the sun,
Beyond the western ridge of black-burnt pine stubs like
A snaggery of rotten shark teeth, sinks
Lower, larger, more blank, and redder than
A mother’s rage, as though
F.D.R. had never run for office even, or the first vagina
Had not had the texture of dream. Time
Is the mirror into which you stare.
******************************************
The sky has murder in the eye, and I
Have murder in the heart, for I
Am only human.
[I’ll die. I know that. The sky will survive me; the nature the sky’s part of will in fact kill me — I’m only human, only a fragile artifact of the natural world.]
We look at each other, the sky and I.
We understand each other, for
For the solstice of summer has sagged.
[The long sunlit days of summer are ending; the sky and the poet know that the poet’s days also shorten, darken.]
I stand
And wait. Virtue is rewarded, that
Is the nightmare,
[Like the blind Milton, the poet serves God even if he only stands and waits. But there’s a darker reading. The poet is full of rage when he considers how his light is spent; his impending death is night – a nightmare – and nothing else.]
and I must tell you
That soon now, even before
The change from Daylight Savings Time, the sun,
Beyond the western ridge of black-burnt pine stubs like
A snaggery of rotten shark teeth, sinks
Lower, larger, more blank, and redder than
A mother’s rage,
[Nightmare, from the Middle English, is a female demon disturbing the sleep; here, the nightmare takes shape as a burnt and rotten Mother Nature raging murderously after the poet. More blank. Nothingness gradually prevails.]
as though
F.D.R. had never run for office even, or the first vagina
Had not had the texture of dream.
[A bit of whimsy, a bit of wistfulness. The poet thinks, amid the big nothing, of the big somethings in his life: F.D.R.; his amazing initial encounter with the inside of a woman. The nothingness he feels in the face of the sky and the setting sun turns those things into nothings too. As though they never existed. What does Leopold Bloom say at his lowest? No one is anything.]
Time
Is the mirror into which you stare.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:19AM
My favorite American writer.
Lyrical but earthy, simultaneously grounded and ethereal, deeply conscious of time, memory, the physical.
Perhaps it’s something about having grown up a boy in a small Southern town nestled in the mountains, where a nimbleness with words supplied both the imagination needed to learn of he world over beyond the next county and the vessel to escape to that broader world beyond.
All the King’s Men may be the most underrated American novel. The Cass Mastern section alone is a triumph of writing few authors achieve.
April 2nd, 2010 at 9:34AM
I love the odd connections that pop up here from time to time; I have family only a few miles north of Guthrie, and used to drive through it on the way when I’d fly though Nashville. There’s a sort of lush desolation to the country in those parts; the land is incredibly (nearly obscenely, to my desert-trained eyes) fertile, but you can easily drive for hours and (if you avoid the interstate nearby) hardly see a soul. It’s the sort of place that will make you a poet or dead inside; there’s not a lot of in-between.
June 12th, 2011 at 3:08PM
hello, i’m glad to find a page on the web dedicated to this poem, which i’m trying to understand : i’m french, have been reading r.p.warren’s poems for a few months, and find many qualities about them – but sometimes (well, often) also find many difficulties.
will someone explain the word “snaggery” to me ? – is it some place full of snags ? does an american reader also hear “snuggery” (which then gives some ironical tone to this unusual word) ?
many thanks to anyone willing to give some help ! (for the sake of poetry…)
June 13th, 2011 at 7:42AM
Hi kolibet: I’m thinking about snaggery… I’ll comment again later today on it…
Best,
UD
August 9th, 2012 at 11:20AM
hello again ( ! – one year later…)
well, after much time spent on these poems, trying to translate them (and what better way to understand poems ?), then dropping them, for lack of time, i’m at it again – and still don’t get that “snaggery” – not meaning to bother anybody – but isn’t it worth, wondering about those verses which, i believe, we like ?
so, if anybody has any idea about what “snaggery” here means, i will feel very grateful (this particularly applies to mrs soltan, who kindly gave a preliminary answer…)