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Questions of Legacy
First the things we remember—Grandma’s laugh
shaking a tablecloth, fixing blue eyes
__on children next to steaming pies,
or Grandpa’s smothering hug, his rumbling cough
before a solemn speech, his ripsaw snore;
or lengthening hall light flooding the bedspread
as a door widened, a stooped shadow’s low
“Sweet Dreams,” shoes whishing past a closing door,
falling asleep beloved. Though now they’re dead,
thought keeps them living in an afterglow.
Then come the distant lives we only heard
their stories of: he drank and fought his mule
__stalled in a plow-row, she taught school
during the Civil War—the day she stood
alone in a field and felt her husband’s cry
miles off the moment ropes snapped and a steer
trampled him dead—stern faces in dark frames
speak, briefly, in tales retold reverently,
yet each retelling vaguer—listener, teller,
confusing more details—dates, places, names.
Then we forget. Drowned in the river-rush
of new affairs, not a whisper survives–
__the jostled talk of husbands, wives,
on westbound wagons; shout from swishing brush
beside a spring in virgin wilderness,
“Drink, now we’re home”; barn-raising prayers and song;
the teachings—what herbs mend a cut, what spells
make childbirth easy; how to weave a dress
from flax, find water with a willow prong,
the charm that eases heartache. Dying bells,
they go to silence, and we forfeit all
but one upwelling note, always the same,
__a one-word legacy—a name
ours with our mother’s pangs, an unseen caul
we never slough—remembering a birthplace,
the stream a farmer lived by, or his kin,
his courage, hair shade, swagger, luck, goodness,
or meaningless, yet the blazon we re-trace
each signature; a cloak nearer than skin;
theirs, but through toil and passion forged in us.
That name ends, too, where my dull shovel blade
tosses to daylight a dull shard of chert
__as mute as its surrounding dirt,
knapped, barbed, a flawless blade some hunter made,
thrown blindly at the future. Who can claim
the pride still in it? Where it juts from earth
I almost see him, crouched with sweat-dimmed eyes,
thumb pressed to flint, a man who has a name
crafting with skills his father taught from birth
a spear to give his son before he dies.
.
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Carey Jobe is a retired attorney. His work has recently appeared in The Orchards Poetry Journal, The Lyric, The Road Not Taken, Sparks of Calliope, and The Chained Muse. A native Tennessean, he now lives and writes near Tallahassee, Florida.
Carey, your sincere, somber, significant poem gave me goosebumps, since it reflects my own deep appreciation for our heritage replete with the troubles and travails of pioneer stock. As one whose grandfather was a rockhound, use of the word “chert” brought back memories of finding arrowheads made of that particular rock. I commend you on such a great poem with imaginative imagery, fluidity of meter, and superb rhyme. This classic deserves a wide audience.
Roy, thank you for writing such a moving comment on my poem. I come from pioneer stock as well, and I often reflect how much of that tradition is lost today, not out of disrespect but casually, by our not passing it on. I hunted for arrowheads when I was a boy, too, and I’ve watched modern day practicioners of flint-knapping. Thankfully, that’s still a living tradition. Thanks again, and God bless!
This is a remarkable poem, especially for its intricate structure. The ten-line stanza is in iambic fives, except for line 3, which is tetrameter. This allows the ABBA quatrain that starts each stanza to slow down the movement of heavy enjambment, and thereby ease the narrative flow. Note that the bulk of stanzas 3 and 4 are two very long sentences — this means that the places for a stop are crucial.
The poem reminds me of Alan Tate’s magnificent “Ode to the Confederate Dead,” in its style and depth of pious remembrance. “Questions of Legacy” is a truly excellent poem.
Joe, whenever you give a thumbs-up to a poem of mine I feel like I won an award! You made keen observations on the structure. I decided to use a Petrarchan sonnet, minus the second half of the octave and one iamb in line 3. I liked the challenge it presented. For me at least, the more rigorous the form, the better the poem. I found models for intricate stanzaic structures in late Yeats and in several Philip Larkin poems, e.g. “The Whitsun Weddings.” And I’m vastly grateful for the comparison to Alan Tate’s great Ode! I grew up not far from Sewanee, Tn, where he taught in the local university for many years. Earlier in life I talked with one of his students, who told me what an inspiring teacher Tate was, always challenging his students and never willing to settle for mediocrity. Don’t we wish we had more teachers like that in our schools today! Thanks so much for commenting.
What a breathtaking poem. I love it for its superlative craftmanship (the complexity and intrigue of the form, the smooth, lushness of language, the employment of poetic devices…) but more, much more – I love it for its story… a story that (for me) carries with it the sadness of our current times… that feeling of loss as our culture fades into a past whose roots are withering away to nothing. Carey, thank you!
Susan, I’m so glad my poem could touch a chord with you. I think you’ll agree with me that poets have a unique obligation to society. As Robert Frost said, “Poetry should remind us of those things that it would impoverish us to forget.” So much tradition is lost through carelessless, by being busy, and simply neglecting to pass it on in the written word or speech. But, as you’ve written eloquently in many poems, even worse is the attitude of some that we don’t need the past anymore. Keeping our invaluable traditions alive requires constant vigilance and strong voices. Thanks for being one such voice!
Carey, I read a lot of contemporary free verse (maybe you do to) and it strikes me that your poem reads like the best work in that genre, with a sort of rambling, seemingly unstudied flow to it, while also not falling into the pitfall of so much poetry in that genre – not having any point. Then of course you blend that feeling with a traditional rhyme and meter and produce something quite interesting!
Jeremiah, I love your highly perceptive observation. There’s greater freedom, I’ve found, in mastering the constraints of form than in shapeless freedom of “free” verse that often, as you say, ends up nowhere. It’s the difference between a gas cloud and a beautiful spiral galaxy. Thanks for reading my poem and for your thought-provoking comment!
Such beautiful writing and so true! Thank you. Love the word chert & glad to have
read its meaning.
Thanks, jd!
“… a flawless blade some hunter made / thrown blindly at the future.” Beautiful poem! Its subject matter reminds me of a great poem by James Agee (Sonnet IV), which begins:
“I have been fashioned on a chain of flesh
Whose ancient lengths are immolate in dust:
Frail though that dust be as the dew’s mesh
The morning mars, it holds me to a trust… “
Thanks for your kind comments, Cynthia, and for comparing my poem to a poem by my fellow Tennessean, James Agee. I lived not far from his childhood home when I was a student in Knoxville, Tn. He is a great poet and the comparison is a great compliment.
Yes, he truly is a great poet, and I’m so glad that you know of him. My impression has been that he is not nearly as well-known as he should be.
This is a well-crafted poem that tells a compelling story. It passes what I like to call the “camp fire test.” If we had a couple of folks, not necessarily strangers and not necessarily friends, all gathered around a fire and it was time to share a poem or a story, this would make for a fine and original choice.
Good show.
David, thanks for taking the time to comment on my poem! I love the concept of the “camp fire test”–what an intriguing test for poetry. I will keep it in mind as I write future poems!
For young and growing poets like me, this piece is a treasure trove of knowledge. In my perspective, it is not one of those poems that one keeps digesting as he courses through it. I read it a number of times to allow its full effect on me. Rife with images, starting right from the grandpa wishing goodnight through the gently narrowing shaft of the hall light, to the husband’s death snap echoing miles away, to the father’s spear (legacy) passed down to his son, who contemplates whether there’s a sense of pride in having it as the older generation did. Truly, a praiseworthy poem. You’ve inspired me in countless measures, Mr. Jobe. Many thanks!
Thank you for saying so, Shamik. I’ve seen your poems in many places, for example even in our local sonnet contest here in Tallahassee, so I think of you as a grown-up poet rather than “up and growing.” But we never stop learning from others, so I expect you’ll write even better poetry in future. If there were such a thing as a Poetry Stock Market, and I were a consultant in that market, I would advise my clients to buy Shamik Banerjee stock. Best of luck, and thanks again for liking my poem.
Carey, the form you’ve created here qualifies as a Petrarchan canzone (“long song”). Petrarch wrote 29 canzoni himself, and from his practice we see *five to ten stanzas, *10 to 20 lines per stanza, *same rhyme scheme but different rhyme sounds for each stanza, and *shorter or “cut” lines, number and placement of which give the stanzas of each canzone a distinctive shape. The only feature of the Italian model you lack is a final “commiato” or shorter stanza that invokes the canzone and sends it forth. That’s not necessary, of course. But whatever you learned from Yeats and Larkin, you are also a disciple of the great Italian laureate.
“Questions of Legacy” is logically structured, and the comfort of that gives you a good frame for abundant atmospheric expression. The one place of potential confusion (and I will admit it’s an appropriate one) is “or meaningless” in the fourth stanza. “Or meaningless” CANNOT continue the catalog in the previous line, but must refer back to something earlier. I understand it to hark back to “note” and “legacy” and “name,” those things which MAY call up memories, OR may be meaningless. Profound tactic requiring readers to think back and look back! It demonstrates what Joseph Salemi recently said, and I agreed with, that poems are now meant for reading on the page. A reading out loud of this poem could not help but ignore “or meaningless,” and notice nothing but confusion in a line-by-line hearing.
Excellent poem that leads readers to questions you ask, but also ask them to ask, both of the poem and of their legacies.
Margaret, what a thought-provoking comment. Reading what you write, I feel that, in a way, I’m living out my own poem and discovering it has a poetic “legacy” older and richer than I imagined. I’m familiar with Petrarch’s sonnets but not his canzoni. That is, I knew they existed but haven’t gotten around to reading them. But if my poem is, as you say, a distant descendant of Petrarch’s, I will need to do a bit more genealogical research on my poem’s lineage. Life’s just too short to learn all we ought to know. That’s why we need a Margaret Coats.
As to your second point, the construction that I had in mind was “we forfeit all, but…a name, remembering [the catalogued items], or meaningless.” I felt something bardic in the theme, so I tried to write the poem that would have a kind of aural logic if read aloud, not simply read on the page. As I read the poem aloud to myself during its composition, it seemed to me that the thread of meaning came through fairly clearly. But maybe I was wrong. As you say, keeping the meaning straight in one’s head requires an attentive reader able to remember back a few lines (or to look back on paper, for readers). And a person reading the poem would need to take some care about emphasizing certain words. Sadly, our collective attention span seems much shorter in the era of post-it notes and emails. I long for the old tradition of listening to poetry for an hour at a time by a campfire. That required mental discipline for both the reader and the listeners. There we have another tradition that’s slipping, or has already slipped, away from us. Aside from that, thanks for giving me an opportunity to question my assumptions and ask myself a few unasked questions.
A justly-lauded poem, it was easy to sink into the scenes at just the right tempo. I’ll have to re-read one section about a husband dying. I’d identified that with the grandfather, which created a contradiction. Could very well be my read, so I’ll go back again.
I liked that fit within this meter was a just-right storyteller tone and just the right amount of descriptors used with well selected nouns. Not fatty as Longfellow (who I love) can get, nor anorexic like Pound, but just the right marbling.
Looking forward to more.
Daniel, thanks for your thoughful remarks. The passage you’re referring to (in stanza two) describes stories the grandparents told the children about earlier generations, relaying the oral history of the family as legacy. The poem tries to carry the concept of legacy further and further back in time. Glad to hear that the meter, tone, and descriptors worked well for you!