REFLECTIONS ON INFINITE HOPE AND DESPAIR

“Oh, (there is) plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us.” – Kafka

I am writing this paper for myself as well as for the assignment.  Let us look at what we learn about hope and despair from some of the so-called confessional poetry we have read.

The interweaving of hope in Lowell’s Life Studies –

“Sing lullaby, my son, sing lullaby.

I rock my nightmare son, and hear him cry”

                                                      (“The Banker’s Daughter” p.115)

The pathos of not having hope pervades the first half of “Life Studies.” However, the love and skill in the writing of these poems is evidence of hope. Making and reading poetry is born out of a least some hope, that healing might take place.

Lowell is mesmerized by tragedy - 91 Revere Street being a kind of genealogy of American suffering and wounding. His mother saying, “We are barely perched on the outer rim of the hub of decency” can tell us that the geometry of status, of success within their social and economic world, played a leading role in their lives. At the same time, his mother’s articulate choice of phrase shows as well a natural grace in choice of words.

Lowell’s attention to detail shows a hope that there can be something redemptive about the recounting of what transpired in and around their family. Both parents were failures in their uniquely different ways.

“I bored my parents, they bored me.”

(Collected Poems, p. 127)

Lowell must have had momentary arousals of joy and hope in his imagining of the bodies, muscular activities and valor of his toy soldiers.  Later, interestingly, his visits to the chiropractor “made me feel like a hero; I felt unspeakable joy whenever an awry muscle fell back into serenity.” Would that he could have had many more such moments!

His mother accused the father of so many failings that Lowell determined inside himself that somehow he needed to be a hero.

Born in 1917. living through the Depression and two world wars, Lowell died n 1977.  Somehow there seems to be a lacking of “soul” in the U.S. at this time – and, since hope seems to be a soulful property, there was not precisely any place for hope beyond economic achievement to live, let alone grow. Religion, at least for white people, had largely divorced itself from soul. Ironically America founded as a place of religious freedom replaced one religious convention with multiple others, the primary being the non-religious rule of status and economics.

Men were blowhards (though sometimes indeed former heroes); the women fumed in their subservient roles.

“I would stare through this arch and try to make life stop.”

Family creates for most children, perhaps especially for only children such as Lowell, an all-pervasive atmosphere that one cannot escape – for many, this can result in painful suffocations.  

To reconnect with soul – the poets had to affirm, describe and confess its loss in their lives and that of their families. The “hedonic,” a simultaneous experience of pain and pleasure, moves Lowell in his poignant revisits. His evocation of memory is so often a vehicle for love, regrets and the fascination for what cannot be undone.

The second half of Life Studies begins with Part Three’s loving and strikingly upbeat obituaries (even though the one to Delmore Schwartz was anticipatory - he hadn’t died when Life Studies was written). Starting with the poem to Ford Maddox Ford for the first time in the book we find clamorous rhythms and some astonishing percussive qualities –

“Boomed, cut, plucked and booted!” 

(Collected Poems, p. 153)

These represent a swinging tribute to his friend and to the love of language they shared.

Yet a few pages later we find, “Have me, hold me, cherish me!” (p. 170). One cannot read that without feeling something like the pangs that haunted Robert Lowell.

His desperate longings were punctuated in his rhythms and rhymes. The rhymes in particular shine like lights in the New England dusk. His mastery, wit, almost sneaky, and love shine through these subliminal winks to a harmony not superficially apparent. How often I found myself reading with no conscious experience of his masterful rhymes.

Beyond what the words mean are their sounds. Each sound manifesting as an unconscious gesture of breath, throat, lips, tongue and teeth. These provide a connotative undertext. It seems Lowell’s joy and valor live hidden here. Hope too lives in his songs and in Lowell’s troubled but genuine heart.

“Love, O careless Love...” I hear

my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,

as if my hand were at its throat…”

(Collected Poems, p. 192)

Hope and Despair in Plath and Sexton

Both authors seem to parade their shattered hopes with pride, as if they were badges.  Redemptive beauty and the inventiveness of their language issue from them as if they were prayers or perhaps war cries, each combating with overwhelming despair. Perhaps their willingness so thoroughly to abandon hope, jettisoning their lives – allows their work to carry on as talismans for suffering. People similarly wear crosses, that symbol of human cruelty and the sacrifice of the divine.

So many of Sexton’s poems seem like bells ringing, the clapper striking on one side a joyful, playful heart, then hitting some other, some discordant note, or just a thud – a strange painful sound, no one really wants to hear – manifesting bitterness, despair yet with brilliance as the bells keep ringing. On one side, life, on the other side, death – that lethal polarity keeping us transfixed.

“And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go. “

(Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, p.13)

I’m drawn to Sexton verse as early feminist rap. Her rhythmic chants operate like voodoo. There is something almost lethal and subversive carried by her rhymes.

By the time Sexton gets to “Live or Die” the rhymes are mostly gone. However, her uncanny sense of melody and rhythm comes to the fore. There’s a term for guitar solos, chord melody, that use primarily sequences of chords rather than streams of single notes – this can somewhat characterize Sexton’s phrasing, verses, choruses, quasi-nursery rhyme rhythms.

“What a lay me down this is

With two pink, two orange,

Two green, two white goodnights.

Fee-fi-fo-fum –

Now I’m borrowed.

Now I’m numb.”

(Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, p.115)

Yet Sexton’s insistence on wounded yet heroic womanhood shines through her work. “In Celebration of My Uterus” has her monologue on behalf of all women – though discounted and trivialized in the 1950’s model – Sexton declares her solidarity with all women world over. How badly this is still needed – though not as subversive or uncommon as it was at that time 

Finally amazing is Sexton’s playfulness accompanying her despair - tossing rhymes off with abandon and demonstrating incredible wit.  Her playfulness is redemptive, taking her not all the way to dependable self-love or dignity, but partway at least.

Sylvia Plath

“You could say I’m on anything but a roll. “                           

Bob Dylan, “Highlands”

On the other hand, little of Sexton’s playfulness is explicit in Plath – and it’s no surprise, though no less tragic, that she chose to die earlier than Sexton. In Lowell’s case, the power of the past and the search for love keeps his hopes alive. Sexton’s comedic sensibility keeps her despair at bay. 

Along with them, Plath’s writing itself is a strange and strained lifeline. What intrigues me is, why her work is so powerful. Certainly fascinating is how she in some ways avoids self-pity and finds the courage to go on. She is the unforgiving victim. Readers are left rubbernecking at the many and varied existential crime sites.

“Peanut crunching crowd”

                                    (The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, p. 245)

She’s staring death and demons in the face; demons and death stare back. Like actual as well as mythic soldiers, she is willing again and again to engage, in each poem walking through the battlefield of emotions and impulses, a delineation of forbidden territories of mind, heart and body. 

A psychotherapist I know said that any mood that lasts more than a few days, is a racket; meaning it is stance one unconsciously chooses to avoid dealing more directly with reality and yet deeper issues. If this be so Plath is certainly a racketeer and I suspect she wouldn’t mind being characterized by that.  The fairly insensitive and competitive remarks by Joni Mitchell may have a place here (although they may tell us more about Mitchell’s snarkiness than the writers she criticized).  “Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick.  I have nothing in common with them. Sexton was a whopping liar. She didn’t even tell the truth to her shrink. All her confessions, as far as I can determine, seem to be contrived. Plath, I don’t know that well, but I don’t think suicide is chic.”

However, it is not only the case for Plath but certainly a way in which the woman’s role, generally in the 1950’s and earlier and to this day, gave and gives many women a sense of no way out. So Plath leads the charge, through her poetry in the manner of Joan of Arc. Being a familiar of death, she speaks with the authority of a mythic being, almost from that other side, taking on a death-defying, yet death-obsessed persona – unveiling with one hand us her wounds as red badges of courage while holding a killing blade in her other hand. Perhaps no one has ever captured hatred with such tenacity and brilliance.

Opening up Plath’s “Collected Poems” at any point is a source of amazement. Similar to Kafka she manages to stare at Medusa but not turn to stone, at least for now. She, for a time, stares at death and dares to live – hope against hope.  

One may wish for her curse to have been lifted, the spell broken. But what would the result have been? Pretty poems? And what other than her unremitting dare to un-sugarcoat reality makes it great poetry?

Some things I can see:

Plath’s lines are generally short, rarely allowing the reader enough time to breathe as full sentences or longer phrases might - thus, their velocity. The prevention of a full breath in reading then brings us just a tiny bit closer to death. The short motives, as in Beethoven’s 5th symphony’s the four notes motif - “Da-Da-Da-Dum” – promote run-on incantation in her work.

Plath makes witches chants her own.

 (From Witch Chants - https://allchants.com/witch-chants/ )

The Power of Chanting in Witchcraft

Raising Energy

Chanting is an effective way to raise energy, which is a crucial aspect of many magical practices. The rhythmic repetition of words and phrases creates a vibration that resonates with the practitioner’s intentions, generating energy that can be directed towards a specific purpose.

Manifesting Intentions

Witch chants help practitioners focus their thoughts and intentions, which is vital for successful spellwork. By concentrating on the words and meanings of the chant, the practitioner aligns their energy with their desired outcome, increasing the likelihood of manifestation.

Components of a Witch Chant

Rhyme and Rhythm

A good witch chant should have a natural rhythm and often incorporates rhyme. This makes the chant easier to remember and more enjoyable to recite. Rhyme and rhythm also help create a trance-like state, allowing the practitioner to tap into their subconscious mind and access deeper levels of awareness.

Language and Vocabulary

The language used in a witch chant is essential, as it shapes the intention and energy of the spell. Some practitioners prefer to use traditional languages, such as Latin or ancient Greek, while others create their chants in their native tongue. The choice of words is equally important, as they carry the intention and purpose of the chant.

Visualization and Focus

When reciting a witch chant, it’s crucial to maintain focus and visualize the desired outcome. This mental imagery helps the practitioner connect with the energy raised by the chant and direct it towards their goal.

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What is Plath’s goal?  Just to get through one more day? The release of the noxious fumes of her thoughts and feelings? The power of accusation?  Vallejo’s “the goodbye that dresses wounds”? Revenge?

Sharon Olds

Olds, born perhaps significantly 25 years later than Lowell and 10 years after Sylvia Plath, is of a new generation and accordingly brings a new dimension to confessional poetry.  Here the atmosphere is not nearly so hopeless and she brings a curiosity and respect for other people that seems largely absent from those earlier poets. With the recognition of the “other”, we enter a realm that hope can enter.

“I have thought her life was inside my life.”  - (Strike Sparks, p. 95)

They say in therapy that the greatest predictor of positive therapeutic outcomes is not the mode of therapy, but it is the therapeutic relationship of therapist and patient. In Olds’ work, more than in those earlier poets, the relationship, by no means always positive, but at least interesting and problematic, is often what gives her work life and power. Here also explicit sexuality enters the picture.

If we were to entertain the chakra model. Plath and Lowell have great mental powers associated mostly with the 5th and 6th chakras. Sexton one senses could be sexy but in a somewhat detached manner.  Olds seems more familiar with the 2nd chakra and is more accepting of what can be positive about that. At the same time, her heart, the 4th chakra is more activated than in those earlier poets.  Overall she is the healthiest of the four. She is in many ways more fully alive and her poetry gives us permission to accept all of our lives, the tragic, the sexy, the slimy…everything. As such her poetry gives the reader again and again the opportunity to connect more fully with how things are.

“Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”
― Chögyam Trungpa 

I admire Olds in some ways not giving up on anyone or anything, even a gerbil and

 “the faint powerful call of a young animal”- (Strike Sparks, p.94)

It is such a relief finally hear the confessions of love! Each poem seems to show us how to not “get over” anything but to find its place by relating to it with one’s whole self.

“I end up owing my soul to so many, to the Armenian nation…”. (Strike Sparks, p.87)

“My love of her is in me, moving in my heart, changing chambers, like something poured from hand to hand. “ (Strike Sparks, p.98)

It is interesting reading Olds immediately after the other poets I’ve referred to. She does sound somewhat sentimental after those that preceded her.  That is both refreshing but, in some ways, not as riveting as Lowell, Plath or Sexton.  She seems also not to be as “good” a poet.  I’m curious why not.  Maybe she chose to have a more varied and full life.  Accordingly, the preoccupation of poetic power didn’t obsess her as much as it did those predecessors. The necessity of redemption through, especially in Plath’s case, the near-weaponization of language, didn’t obsess her as it did those predecessors.  Her poetry is not her whole life, it is just a part of it and gives us, accordingly, a bit of a guidebook for how to live that way.

There is also a sense that most of Olds’ poetry is in the past tense.  It reflects on past events and people for the most part.  That can slightly soften its impact. Myths don’t play as much of a role here either. Lowell is more haunted by the past, Plath is still trying to find her way out, and Sexton has a playful manner of evoking death as the ultimate punch line. Olds’ memories and evocations are more filtered through love.

Jason Shinder 

With Jason Shinder, as opposed to Plath and Sexton who moved toward death, death here is moving toward him.  In no way has he invited or wanted it.  He has the courage to relate to his life and impending demise with a full variety of emotions – awe, terror, sadness, anger, resignation, humor, self-pity, no pity, and love.

The title “Stupid Hope” reminds me of the Buddhist teacher, Chögyam Trungpa’s teachings on “crazy wisdom”.   His response to the Chinese plundering of Tibet that was in many ways the death of a whole country was “self-existing dignity never wains.” Crazy wisdom implies among other things how important it is to not be “chickening out” through internal habit or through social pressure. The enlightened person often has been seen as crazy.

Similarly, as an exemplar of “stupid hope” and a fragile sense of dignity, Shinder reflects on his own death and life, knowing full well the hope that flies in the face of death.  It is stupid to hope especially that death will not come; stupid to feel the human yearnings for meaning as if it were something that had been promised.

“Hope”, says Shinder

….is all the way down

In the self.

from where it can never be judged

when we are more like children

than we want to be

waking up,

and choosing which stories

we will tell.”

                                                            (Stupid Hope, p.36)

 Hope is in many ways an ironic illusion. It posits a future and certain events to come that we cannot know. Though it says in Romans 8:24-25 “In this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience,” I would not characterize our poets as demonstrating this patience.

To live without hope nevertheless is, depending on one’s perspective, either simply realism or despair. There is hope inherent in Shinder’s being a writer and in supporting other’s writing – hope that the pen might indeed be mightier than the sword, or at least that our words may live usefully beyond us. Each poem as in Genesis, begins with the word. Yet, poignantly, each poem to be itself, ends in no more words – like us. In the beginning was the word and, in the end, no words – adds a poignancy to what we choose to say and what we choose to write, “which stories we will tell”. This is dramatized in Shinder’s work. And occasionally, as demonstrated by “Stupid Hope”, and its reception through its readers, these poems may still speak after we do not.

Our ability to think, especially amplified through the use of words means that we adorn our experience of reality with words, concepts that in some ways can bring us closer, illuminating our experience.  At the same time, they create a layer of apparent meaning under which lies the always direct, unmediated experience which is wordless.  This makes the task of poetry and trying to capture reality itself one which is in some sense hopeless. Yet being invested in the world of language, this is also infinitely useful – a kind of crazy wisdom. It’s like Rimbaud, one of the highest embodiers of crazy wisdom, who said, “so much the worse for the wood that discovers it’s a violin”.  Poetry is that instrument which makes music of the raw and more primary experience of reality itself. How stupid of us to think and hope that words will take us closer to reality - anymore than the violin takes us closer to its original wood.  Maybe though, music and poetry respect and elevate our beautiful illusions.

Such is the embodiment of stupidity, hope, wisdom and the infinite, untouchable by words in so many ways, that nonetheless constitutes the magic, mystery and, yes, ultimately love, from which all poetry springs.

Louise Glück

Last but not least I turned to Louise Glück for hope. What was I thinking? Re-reading “Ararat” I was again impressed by the bleak picture, the largely tragic snapshots of her and her family life.

“But it’s her only hope,

the wish to move backward.”

                                                            (Ararat p. 17)

This deepens my wonder and reluctant, ambivalent admiration for confessional poets and their work. Confession in religion is one of the four parts of the sacrament of penance. For all the poets I’ve explored, with the exception of Shinder, they obviously suffered greatly from what happened in the past (as well perhaps as their genetic pre-dispositions and modern culture). One cannot but feel deep sympathy for the bleak picture of their lives as depicted by so many of their poems. It’s a bit similar to the blues. Full of regret, sometimes recrimination, letting the energy arise and issue into song, sometimes almost boastfully yet soulful; it is one way to deal with life and the fact that even after the horrors within oneself and their upbringing, we are still alive, and that puts us in the position of a strange comedy, since comedy was defined as a tragedy in which the hero survives.

One can imagine, if American blues singers had been more educated in the humanities, what kinds of verses Lightnin’ Hopkins or Robert Johnson might have written?  Gluck would have appreciated the suffering and irony in Tampa Red’s 1931 song, (…after all my hard travelin’ “Things is ‘bout Coming My Way,” evoking an image that would have resonated with Glück’s anorexia – “backbone and navel doin’ the belly rub.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZShGE1p8qw&t=66s

Similarly the confessional impulse lives in so much country and western music. In lines that could almost have been written by any number of our poets, this song made famous by Ernest Tubb in 1942:

That’s All She Wrote 

I got a letter from my mama, just a line or two
She said listen daddy your good girl's leavin' you
That's all she wrote - didn't write no more
She'd left the gloom a hanging round my front door.

If anything, perhaps Louise Glück would have appreciated the despair, bleak and black humor, underlying this verse. After all she noted that she spent days and days listening to Sam Cooke – though she said that his songs didn’t specifically give rise to any of her books (as did music of Maher and Mozart).  She likely listened, among other of Cooke’s recordings, to the poignant “Bring it on Home to Me” over and over again.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE1hf2nhi0s,

Let us consider not only what kinds of sophisticated songs or poems might “better” educated blues singers have written, but also what kinds of blues or country and western songs might have been sung by the likes of Lowell, Sexton, Plath, Bidart, Shinder had they been raised poor and in the deep south?

Back to Glück, to be fair, her love and longing elevates her work considerably, reflects, and respects deep, genuine, albeit it often dashed, hopes.  “Meadowlands” reveals the remainders of love and good times and contentment that she’d experienced with her husband.   I’d love it if the title was derived from, among other sources, the most well-known anthem, “Meadowlands”, sung by the Red Army Choir that was commonly played throughout the U.S. and Europe beginning in the 1920’s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q9fEFM75Kg

However, more likely is the reference to the Meadowlands racetrack in New Jersey.

Whether racetracks, genuine meadows with her beloved flowers, operas and anthems to Orphic heroism, death-defying hope, or the blues, Glück embodies, along with the other confessional poets, a bitter yet honest truth-telling, painted with astounding words and images, sung as strong as the greatest of prayers for the troubled and beautiful world we live in - take it or leave it – that’s all they wrote.

Bibliography

Glück, Louise. (2012). Collected Poems. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux

Lowell, Robert. (2003).  Collected Poems. New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux

Olds, Sharon (2004). Strike Sparks: Selected Poems:1980-2002. New York: Alfred A. Knopf

Plath, Sylvia. (1992). The Collected Poems. New York: Harper

Sexton, Anne (1988). Selected Poems of Anne Sexton. New York: Houghton Mifflin

Shinder, Jason (2009). Stupid Hope. St. Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press

Witch Chants - https://allchants.com/witch-chants/