Up a lattice of sumac and into the spars
of the elderberry, the first pumpkin vine had climbed,
and a week after first frost
great pendulous melons dangled like gods
among the bunches of lesser berries
and the dazzled, half-drunken birds.

Then the pumpkins fell, each mythical fruit’s
dried umbilicus giving way in a rush
of gold and snow of elliptical leaves.
A skull thud, the dull thunk of rupture,
a thin smoke then, like a soul, like dust.

But the last, high up and lodged
in a palm of limbs and pithy branches,
sways now in the slightest breeze and freeze
after freeze caves in on itself
and will, by spring, cast its black

leathery gaze out over the garden
like the mummy of a saint or an infirm
and desiccated pope. Below, where the others fell,
that seed not eaten by winter birds,
one, say, buried in meat and a sheath

of skin, will rise. From its blunt,
translucent nubbin, a leaf trifoliate
and a stalk as succulent as bamboo, it will climb
blithe as a baby Christ up the knees
of the wood it cannot know it is bound for.

 

Born in Illinois in 1951, Robert Wrigley earned his MFA from the University of Montana.  Many of his poems illustrate mankind’s relationship with the natural world.  Robert Wrigley’s books include Earthly Meditations (Penguin, 2006) Beautiful Country (Penguin, 2010) and Anatomy of Melancholy and Other Poems, (Penguin, 2013). His awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and the Kingsley Tufts Award. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of Idaho.

In his poem, Wrigley instills religious significance in the lifespan of a pumpkin.  Throughout the poem, which is comprised of four quintains and one sestet, Wrigley describes the growth of a pumpkin with religious allusion.  The poem begins with the vine’s ascension of the lattice after the “first frost” (3).  This use of alliteration highlights the biting nature of nature’s frost and ice from which the pumpkin emerges.  The first indication of the religious nature of the poem is in line four: “great pendulous melons dangled like gods.”  Wrigley’s description gives the pumpkins a sense of omniscience, height, and godliness; he specifically deifies them.  The second stanza describes their fall as a birth: “then the pumpkins fell, each mythical fruit’s/dried umbilicus giving way in a rush/of gold and snow of elliptical leaves” (7-9).  Wrigley then transitions to the last pumpkin that remains in the air; using internal rhyme he describes that it “sways now in the slightest breeze and freeze” (14).  Although the pumpkin will die as the colder months set in, it “will, by spring, cast its black/leathery gaze out over the garden/ like the mummy of a saint or an infirm/and desiccated pope” (16-19).  Like a dead, withered pope or the preserved corpse of a saint, the pumpkin will linger and will be reborn, only to fall once again.  Comparing the pumpkin to major religious figures, Wrigley inscribes a sense of spiritual, otherworldly significance, relating the physical plant to a higher power.  As the new pumpkin grows from where others have fallen, “it will climb/blithe as a baby Christ up the knees/ of the wood it cannot know it is bound for” (24-26).  Wrigley links the wooden lattice to the cross on which Jesus was crucified.  Because the pumpkin is newly born, it has no understanding that it is predestined to face the same crucifixion and death.  Wrigley links these strong religious themes, including images of the crucifixion and deceased spiritual icons, in order to deify the pumpkin’s life and death.

 

Sunlight like Vaseline in the trees,

                                   smear and shine, smear and shine.

Ten days of rain and now the echoing forth of bland and blue

Through the evergreens.

Deer stand on their hind legs

                                    in the bright meadow grasses.

The sound of the lilac up-surge rings bells for the bees.

Cloud puffs, like mortar rounds from the afterlife,

                                  pockmark the sky.

Time, in its crystal goblet, laps and recedes, laps and recedes.

 

If we were the Rapture’s child, if we

Were the Manichaean boy,

If we were the Bodisattva baby,

                                  today would be a good day

To let the light in, or send it out.

We’re not, however. We’re Nature’s nobodies,

                                  and we’d do well

To put on the wu wei slippers and find a hard spot

To sit on,

             sinking like nothing through the timed tides of ourselves.

_______________________

Charles Wright was born in 1935 and has published several acclaimed poetry collections throughout his life. His rural Tennessee upbringing has forged a motif of nature and self-reflection throughout many of his works.  As one of the preeminent poets of the last fifty years, Wright’s poetry collections have won numerous awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and a Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Most recently the Library of Virginia celebrated his work with its lifetime achievement award.

Originally published in the Appalachian Poetry Spring/Summer 2005 Volume 55 number 1 of Shenandoah, Matins is one of several poems previously published by Shenandoah.  With a strong reliance on natural imagery and religious allusion, Wright creates a breathtaking scene that reminds the reader of the inevitable passage of time as well as the ultimately useless human imperative to understand our world through religion. He paints a picture of the perfect sunlit clearing, with light streaming through leaves and perfect “cloud puffs” that are so perfect they appear like something from the afterlife.  The poem references the passage of time in an almost meditative exhalation before moving on to question existence, first by referencing the Christian ideal of the Rapture as it relates to a child. Then Manichaeism, a part of the Gnostic religions founded in Iran, also applied to a youth. Then a reference to the Bodisattva, a term for Gautama Buddha before he reached enlightenment, culminates this triad of youthful religious allusions.  These allusions serve to orient the narrator as an unenlightened, less-than-wise person, which Wright concludes by bringing the reader into the equation as a fellow “nobody.” Finally, Wright mentions wu wei, which is the Dao tenant of inaction. Suggesting  that we put on the “wu wei slippers” is tantamount to saying “let’s put on our philosophizing cap” and that most people could use some time alone with themselves if meaning is ever to be attributed to this chaotic world.

So sweet the hour, so calm the time,
I feel it more than half a crime,
When Nature sleeps and stars are mute,
To mar the silence ev’n with lute.
At rest on ocean’s brilliant dyes
An image of Elysium lies:
Seven Pleiades entranced in Heaven,
Form in the deep another seven:
Endymion nodding from above
Sees in the sea a second love.
Within the valleys dim and brown,
And on the spectral mountain’s crown,
The wearied light is dying down,
And earth, and stars, and sea, and sky
Are redolent of sleep, as I
Am redolent of thee and thine
Enthralling love, my Adeline.
But list, O list, so soft and low
Thy lover’s voice tonight shall flow,
That, scarce awake, thy soul shall deem
My words the music of a dream.
Thus, while no single sound too rude
Upon thy slumber shall intrude,
Our thoughts, our souls O God above!
In every deed shall mingle, love.

 

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1809.  He is most well known for his work in the area of detective fiction and is often cited as the creator of the genre. During his lifetime, Poe was also recognized as a prominent literary critic.  The poem “Serenade” was published in 1833 and was first printed in an issue of the Baltimore Sunday Visitor.

In his poem, “Serenade,” Poe uses a combination of archaic diction, allusions to Greek mythology, consistent meter, and rhyme to create a magical nighttime setting.  Antiquated language is present in many of Poe’s poems, including “The Sleeper” (1831).  His decision to use words such as “O,” “thee,” and “list,” which is simply an abbreviation of  “listen,” serves both to create the sense that the poem is set in another, more mystical time as well as to maintain the meter of the poem.  Adding to the mysticism, Poe alludes to Greek mythology frequently throughout “Serenade.”  His idea of the beauty of untouched nature is strengthened by his reference to “Elysium,” which is described as a “paradise” in Homer’s Odyssey.  According to mythology, Elysium is a concept of the afterlife reserved for mortals related to the gods and the righteous and heroic mortals chosen by the gods to live a blessed life even after death.  This image of “paradise” is strengthened by Poe’s allusion to the Seven Pleiades.  In astrology, the Pleiades are a cluster of stars among the nearest of the stars to earth, making them some of the brightest stars in the night sky.  In Greek mythology, the Seven Pleiades are seven beautiful sisters, born to the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione.  Due to their beauty, the sisters are said to have had many romantic affairs with Olympian gods.  These affairs resulted in the births of several gods, including Hermes and Aethusa, the lover of Apollo.  Poe’s reference to Endymion reflects the profound affect nature has on man.  According to folklore, Endymion was a handsome mortal whose love of observing astrological movements resulted in a romantic relationship between him and Selene, the Titan goddess of the moon.  In addition to enhancing the aesthetic of the poem, Poe’s use of archaic diction as well as his references to Greek mythology strengthens his credibility as an “educated” poet, although he only attended university for a year before dropping out due to increasing debt. While Poe was often criticized for being too “poetical,” or simple, in his rhyming, the simplicity he utilizes in “Serenade” adds to the dreamlike quality of the poem.  The AABB rhyme scheme and iambic tetrameter both work to mimic the rhythm of a lullaby, performing a “Serenade,” as the title suggests, that lulls the reader as if into a dream with the gentle cadence he has written.  With the combination of his mystical references, antiquated speech, and unbroken meter, Poe illuminates ‘the beauty of nature unmarred ‘e’in with lute’ showing the true beauty of night inherent in its silence; a beauty that can be explored through the possibilities present in dreams.