The Sustain Pedal, Poems by Carol Jennings,
Cherry Grove Collections, 2022
ISBN 9781625494009
Carol
Jennings’s The Sustain Pedal is a very beautiful collection of
poems that deserves a wide reading. Poetry and music have sustained her
during her long life—she is a year older than I am--and this collection is a
culmination of a life passionately lived.
She is very musical; it’s as if her poems are accompanied by the
haunting melodies and rhythms of Chopin and those of other composers, with the
pitiless metronome of time in the background, the latter ending in total stillness.
Her language is musical as well, as this excerpt from the poem, All Hallows’
Eve, indicates:
Because of
tilt of earth and angle
of
sunlight, autumn crisps and curls
across
summer’s fading fullness
in its
unrelentling passage.
One of the
themes of her poetry in this autumnal collection is revealed in this, and in many
other passages as well: the fleeting duration of human existence, the
indubitable fact that our time on earth is brief and that the clocks of our hearts
will soon by stopped by death. For instance, the brevity of our lives, here
compared to the near-infinite lifespan of the visible universe, is clearly
demonstrated by the last two lines of the poem Clairvoyance:
I don’t
mind a slight blur while standing at a canyon’s edge
to count rock strata that reveal
the brevity of my time
To look
across an unpolluted sky that proves
the slight measure of my place in
the dust
Notice the
adjective my in my time and my place; all the poems are
personal, an intimacy uncloaked by generalization. Although biographical
material is scattered throughout, it is used by the author merely as material
to construct noteworthy poems; the poems are not confessional poems.
2.
I would
like now to discuss two poems of the collection, Ultima Thule and Russian
Dream.
One of my
favorite poems of the collection, Ultima Thule, illustrates Jennings’s
method of composition. She writes primarily to please herself; the content of
her poems is always filtered through the alembics of the sine qua nons of
writing good poetry. First of all, the language used must be clean and pleasant
on the ear. Second, the poem must convey a poetic meaning, not necessarily a
logical, prosaic one. All poets must comply with the first rule; regarding the
second, language poets such as Wallace Stevens, compose poems the meanings of which
can be quite ambiguous. Jennings, like most modern poets, follows both
principles. Her language is clean, but the gist of the poems can almost always
be summarized in prose. Let us now quote the poem Ultima Thule in
its entirety.
On the icy
fringes of
a solar
system we call ours,
your two
spheres melded
In soft
collision. Bright scarf
circles the
point of contact
so you
resemble a lopsided
snowman,
look not unfriendly
as caught
in photos by
spacecraft
hurtling to reach
outer edge
of the Kuipfer Belt
before
burning out.
I look at
three quarters of a century,
measured in
revolutions
around the
sun, a few lines
written,
adagios on the piano,
ancient
ruins entered, dreams
that twist
dark reality,
the deaths
that keep coming.
On Mauna
Kea, the Milky Way
seems to
wrap itself around
our
lonesome minor planet,
where I
have never felt at home.
Ultima
Thule, you will be
among the
last to melt
as our star
expands in death throes.
Your name
meaning
place
beyond the known—
I want it
to be yours alone.
This poem
is a good illustration of what I mean by stating that Jennings writes to please
herself. (Like so many poets of quality, she has, I imagine, given up the drive to become
famous: The vast majority of poets with strong name recognition are, for the
most part, dead.) She wrote this poem, I assume, shortly after the NASA flyby
of the minor planet Ultima Thule, now known as Arrokoth. One cannot assume,
without footnotes, that the average reader would know that Ultima Thule is a
tiny binary rock in the Kuipfer belt, 4 billion miles from the Sun; the most
distant object in the solar system at the time of its discovery in 2014. As
Jennings explains, the two spheres joined together by a “soft collision;” a
“bright scarf” between them records their ancient contact. Who would have
known, without a google or two, that the rock literally looks like a lopsided
snowman? (Supplying footnotes is not a
very aesthetic thing to do.) The derivation of the term Ultima Thule is as
follows: Ultima, Latin for farthermost, is combined with Thule, a mythical land
beyond the borders of the known world.
The second
stanza of the poem adds dark, personal material. The poet is now seventy-five
years old; what has she accomplished? A few lines written--She is being very
modest here, darkly self-critical; she has written remarkable poetry. Most
poets, however, at least occasionally, feel as lonely and isolated as Ultima
Thule; the cold rocks of the Kuipfer Belt scattered around it, blindly obeying the laws of physics,
hardly constitute an audience, She favors playing adagios on the piano, no
major-key allegro con brios for her, who has never felt at home on our 'lonesome minor planet,’ compared
with a distant, cold dead rock, billions
of miles away. She is of course unfair both to herself and to the marvelous
planet on which she resides; however, she is being true to her feeling at the
time she wrote this poem; mastery of craft and raw feeling might make a sad
poem, but a genuine poem nevertheless. In the last stanza, she refers to the
time when our sun will expand, about four billion years hence; having long
since obliterated the Earth, Ultima Thule will warm up and be among ‘the last
to melt.” The last line turns the poem on its head, which good last lines have
been known to do. I interpret it to mean that she would like the place beyond
the known to be reserved for Ultima Thule alone, that is, the ambiguities and
many pains of existence on Earth would be resolved.
A memorable
poem.
The second
poem which I have chosen for more detailed analysis is Russian Dream,
which I will now quote in its entirety.
I dream
myself
In St.
Petersburg,
a city I
have never seen.
The time
fifty years
before I am
born,
and the
Pathétique is débuted,
led by the composer
just nine
days before
his mystery
death.
I am pulled
into the lyric
of dolorous
descent
in his
second theme,
as I have
been every time,
since I
heard it
first at
age ten.
When the
end comes,
and the
pulsating cellos
fade into
stillness,
I want to
tell him—
before I am
forced
to leave
the dream
for my own
life—
that I know
he was not
free to love,
and I am
sorry.
One of the reasons I was chosen to review this marvelous collection is because I am a poet and an amateur musician as well; unlike many readers, I understand all the musical references that occur throughout the book. That she felt ‘Pulled into the lyric/ of dolorous descent/ in his second theme’ (in his sixth symphony), says a lot about Jennings’s character. Those deeply affected by music will instantly understand what the poet is referring to. Tchaikovsky, as demonstrated by the wistful theme Jennings is referring to, had an extraordinary gift for melody; he was , however, a very unhappy man, a fact which comes across in his hyperemotional symphonies. In the fourth symphony, we hear the rhythm of fate which crushed the composer; in his final symphony which Jennings refers to, the feelings of melancholy, self-pity and resignation come across hauntingly. The melody Jennings refers to is one of Tchaikovsky’s most beautiful; the emotions that come across, at least for this listener, is a sad coming to terms that life has turned out, to put it mildly, not the way he would have liked it; a very sweetly poignant farewell to life comes across as well. The last seven lines of the poem are very revealing. She leaves the ‘dream’ (sometimes more like a nightmare) of her life to tell the composer, that is, telling herself as well, that she knew, due to nineteenth century constraints and the melancholy nature of the man (there are indeed a near-infinite number of ways to become melancholy in this life) that Tchaikovsky was ‘not free to love’—hints of determinism, the lack of free will, even self-hate for not being what one’s ideal image wants one to be, are revealed here.
When I was
trained in poetry, I learned about the importance of the last line in a poem,
which summarizes the entire poem often with a jolt of surprise. The last line
here is excellent; Jennings is sorry for the composer, but really is sorry for
herself and the sadness of her life as well. She, like the great composer, has lived a
life with many regrets. Sure, we might have preferred a more mature Bach or
Mozart reference, but the expression of a negative emotion in a successful poem
is a triumph, nevertheless.
3.
The theme
of the book is the evanescence of life, the brevity and tragedy of human
existence; this is partially countered by beauty, specifically, the beauty of
music. Music, however, exists in time; even Wagner operas come to an end. The
chief metaphor of the book, present in its title, is the sustain pedal. The
sustain pedal permits notes to be sustained by removing contact from the
dampers on strings for the duration that
the pedal is pressed. It gives one a very brief experience of permanence. As
she writes in “A Flickering Light,” the first poem of the collection:
The way a flickering
light
can trick
the eye to see it
as a
constant, and knowing
this may be
the antidote
to
everything.
I hold, however, that there is more to life than the illusion of permanence which a flickering life under certain circumstances affords. For instance, in a poem by Harvey Lillywhite, the ‘Flickering light’ becomes a button; the poem concludes with the following lines;’ I’ll know/ How to hear when you call/A last time to promise/to deliver the one button I own/ to your unfathomable wardrobe.” What’s missing in Jennings’s poems is cosmic connection. The universe might be near-infinite, while humans are very finite indeed. But the fact that we’re the only known species in whose finite brains fits, as it were, at least as a concept, the entire universe. This paradox can provide a source of wonder.
The cover
of the collection gives us a view of the pedals of a piano much as a child
would see it. Jennings’s poem, ‘Year of My Birth.’ concludes with the following
lines: ‘I crawled under the grand piano,/where Mother played her homage/to a
more romantic time,/ watched her right foot depress/and release the sustain
pedal/ again and again.’
She used
the sustain pedal to sustain the song of the flickering light of human
existence. This provides a consolation, which, however, like everything else in
Jennings’s view of things, soon comes to an end.
The lack of
a cosmic philosophy, however, doesn’t detract from the beauty and poignance of
most of the poems. Though I do my best
to resist, not always successfully, the negative aspects of life, I have a
great affinity for Jennings’s poetry and her aesthetic. At best, her poems,
with the help of the sustain pedal, transform the flickering light of human
existence into great poetry, not a mean achievement. This is a remarkable
collection.
