Heartfelt Desires:

A Critical Essay

L. Lake

WR 242, Intro to Poetry

Prof. James Benton

2/26/2021

"Wants", "needs", "voice", "cravings"; these are the words of desires. Desires are a core aspect of life and most especially humanity, even when we personify something inhuman such as animals or objects to be presented as feeling and thinking like us. Sometimes, it’s to remove ourselves from what we portray to cope. Perhaps, a means to openly express unpopular thoughts or it boldly proclaiming them to the world for their voices to reach kindred spirits it otherwise may not. For some, a desire to shift the distance between themselves and the subjects of their poems or spur others to think again and consider the possibility that there’s more to them than what initally meets the eye. To celebrate life’s small blessings that we may take for granted.

The poems I will be covering are “Here, Bullet” by Brian Turner, “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, “Altar: Compass” by Jennifer Sweeny, and finally, the villanelle “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas. For style, they all differ in overall length, line length, and share mostly plain language; just about all informal diction throughout, with exception to Brian Turner’s “Here, Bullet”, which uses some anatomical terms to attempt to drive home the brutally gruesome imagery he’s painting. All of the poems I’ve selected are stichic in form, except for Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays”, which is strophic.

“Altar: Compass” from Jennifer Sweeney’s “Foxlogic Fireweed” anthology astrophic poem that contains alliteration as well as “Those Winter Sundays” with “what blurred had become” and “a spoonful of seeds” (Sweeney, page 21, line 10), the phrase containing the titular “Because here, bullet” in “Here, Bullet” and chiefly, the refrain of the titular “Do not go gentle into that good night” of Dylan Thomas’ famous villanelle. Altar: Compass appears to be completely free verse. To me, it’s the author expressing their introspection on the simple joys of childhoods blessed to partake in playing with cloth, sticks, bark, rocks. Bygone days when it was enough to satisfy one’s desires for fun through play imaginative play. Personally, it takes me back to my own childhood when I was a pup of a lad at play, digging in a hole with my Tonka toy excavator, along with my brother and our first friend, David, using garden shovels and spare screwdrivers, and clawing with our hands behind our wood fort built with help. Sweeney’s message is driven home with “you could not remember/since when a small act had brought/such pleasure” (Sweeney, line 13-14). Although I cannot fully relive these moments fully with nuanced accuracy, I beg to differ: One day among those carefree days while digging as we usually did, I uncovered “dinosaur bones” in our digging spot. We’d felt as though we had discovered the tomb of Pharoh Tutankamen himself, whooping and hollering joyfully at our discovery. After our elated excitement, we began to take what we felt to be our monumental discovery seriously and got out more delicate tools, including brushes to carefully extract the bones via my instructions, based on my observations of how professionals on TV and in books excavated fossils. Once we had completed our careful excavation, we rushed my mother to view our delightful findings, who gently broke the sad news to us that, we hadn’t actually discovered something extraordinary that would be worthy of a museum and make us three friends famous, but had merely dug up old chicken bones, much to our disappointment and dismay.

In other words, this poem definitely spoke to me deeply; a testament to such a brief poem and poetry itself as an artform. It feels different than prose, by building a small, yet distinct, heartfelt narrative of nostalgic longing and appreciation for simpler times when, for us as kids, digging up orange-tinged chicken bones buried in the backyard felt to be a monumental event. Ergo, on the contrary to her message’s claim, I recall a fair amount of those innocent desires and simple joys intimately. I relate to what Jennifer Sweeney relays to me through her poem; they mean a great deal to me too. They’re memories worth cherishing and remembering, sometimes to put life into perspective; meditating in appreciation for the simple joys, despite the hustle, bustle, stress, and complications of adult responsibilities.

In contrast, we have the poem “Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden, which is a strophic poem with some alliteration in free verse form. It says very little in terms of language that condenses a lot of deeper connotations, as discussed in class. Such as using the spondee “blue-black” as imagery for the bitter, bone-chilling cold the father got every morning, in spite of “cracked hands that ached” to show he’s a laborer of great burdens, yet never lets that stop him warming up the house of his family. There’s a distinct message of tragic tension in the family, because “No one ever thanked him.” (Hayden, line 5) and when he would call for his son to warm himself by the fire, he would “slowly I would rise and dress/fearing the chronic angers of that house,”.

Regardless, his father doesn’t simply clean his shoes, but “my good shoes as well” (Hayden, line 12); a simple, yet distinct connotation denoting the father’s dedication to his family with gifts of time and sweat as his love language. Regrettably, seemingly sincere demonstrations of love failed to be apparent until the speaker of the poem’s adulthood. It is a small poem that founts a great deal of emotion and carries about as much weight lamenting this deep-seated feeling with repetition of “What did I know” (Hayden, line 13) denote the guilt the speaker feels for having taken his father’s shows of affection as mere routine chores when seen retrospective insight, they were the gracious efforts of a hardworking father who cared for his family, unable to express it well with words. At least, that is what this poem speaks to my heart.

As I stated about “Altar: Compass” (Sweeney, 21), they’re memories worth cherishing and remembering, sometimes to put life into a perspective of being able to meditate in appreciation for the simple joys of life. In this case, find appreciation and gratitude for simple acts of love through dedicated care from a parent when no longer too young to fully comprehend the strength and determination it takes for a parent to seldom prevent the aches and pains of working for a living from caring for your needs when you are young.

In relation to fathers and sons, I see “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas as a strophic lament of encouragement in the form of a villanelle when his father “was going blind when DT wrote this poem. The dying of the light is a reference to darkness and being blind.” (All Poetry) Every syllable seems to be smoothly under his control. The first few stanzas are about how various types of men cope with coming face-to-face with death and darkness. His rhyming scheme supports his themes of light and darkness. Although, when abstractly describing a certain type of man in the passage “Because their words had forked no lightning they/Do not go gentle into that good night.” (Thomas, line 5), which genuinely puzzles me as to what sort of man he was thinking of when I otherwise gleam most of the meaning of his poem. I called it a “lament of encouragement”, due to the repetition of insisted resistance speaks against mediocrity and furthermore, that Thomas viewed living life to its fullest, despite the fear of when death inevitably arrives, as a courageous endeavor for his human kin. In the end, he addresses his ailed father fading and tells him personally, “And you, my father, there on the sad height”, which I figure to be the brink of death, “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.” (Thomas, lines ) and so ends with his insistence of courage to resist rather than let life pass you by when they “learn, too late, they grieve” (Thomas) as death comes for them without making the best “the dying of the light” (Thomas, lines 3, 9, 15, 19) in us.

Lastly, we have the visceral enigma that is Brian Turner’s “Here, Bullet” which is riddled with clever metaphors. The imagery is vivid and brutal and intimate. “His first book, Here, Bullet, chronicles his time in Iraq.” (Poetry Foundation) That said, there is no doubt in my eyes that in the titular, cornerstone piece of that book, he is the speaker of the poem speaking to the bullet leaving the chamber of his gun, personifying it to express his interior struggle for taking someone else’s life and detach himself from the kill as with “If it is a body you want/here is bone and gristle and flesh” (Turner, lines 1-2) and most especially “because here, Bullet/here is where the world ends, every time.” (Turner, lines 15-16). I feel some of the weight and wrenching feeling of becoming one with a weapon to take someone’s life second-hand through Turner’s use of anatomical diction, such as “aorta’s opened valves” (Turner, line 4) when referring to a heart and “here is where I moan the barrel’s cold esophagus/triggering my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have inside of me” (Turner, lines 11-14). In my mind, phrases such as “clavicle-snapping wish”, “that insane puncture into heat and blood” and “hissing through the air” (Turner, 7-8, ) almost create a cinematic effect for a tale of duty turned bargaining for the sake of coping.

Authorship, from my point of view and experiences, is the desire to use writing as a universal language. It’s painting a mental picture to draw a metaphysical bridge that transports ideas across between people. In this case to bridge the gap between author and audience, where a poem truly lives, to speak directly to the other minds or covertly deliver secrets past the armored barriers of the hearts of those you wish to send a message of thoughts and feelings; our desires. Heartfelt desires for what we have, what we had, as well as, what we wish to obtain or achieve for ourselves or others.