Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle

Evening Concert, Saint-Chapelle
John Updike

The celebrated windows flamed with light
directly pouring north across the Seine;
we rustled into place. Then Violins
vaunting Vivaldi's strident strength, then Brahms,
seemed to suck with their passionate sweetness,
bit by bit, the vigor from the red,
the blazing blue, so that the listening eye
saw suddenly the thick black lines, in shapes
of shield and cross and strut and brace, that help
the holy glowing fantasy together.
The music surged; the glow became a milk,
a whisper to the eye, a glimmer ebbed
until our beating hearts, our violins
were cased in thin but solid sheets of lead.

This poem shows that music can be seen and felt, not just heard. "The vigor from the red, the blazing blue, so that the listening eye saw suddenly thick black lines." This line explains to the reader that the music was meant more than just to be heard. This reminds me of a part in the movie Ratatouille when the rat is explaining to his brother that food taste differently when paired with different foods. He has his brother imagine what the tastes look, move, and sound like. This poem has the same concept that something taken in with one sense can be taken in with other senses. When we hear a rhythm, we can feel the base moving up and down, our eyes want to flow to the beat, and our body wants to move to the melody. To me, that's what the author is describing in this poem. He is describing what he sees and feels when he hears the music at Saint-Chapelle. 

I had to do a little bit of Research to understand what Vivaldi and Brahms was. I already knew that the Seine River flows through Paris so I assumed that the church overlooks the river. Antonio Vivaldi was an Italian composer and priest born in 1678 who was very influential over Europe.  Johannes Brahms was another inspirational composer that was born in Germany in 1833. I’m pretty sure the narrator was playing the music because of the  line, “until our beating hearts, our violins were cased....” So if the narrator was playing the beautiful music, was he thinking of these two men while he was playing the songs? And were the songs actually Vivaldi’s and Brahms’ composed pieces?

The last line strikes me. I cannot tell if the solid sheets of lead are referring to something permanent, as if the music played was making history, or if it refers to the music being over and the violins being stored in a sturdy case. If it is the former, then that would seem more purposeful; however, if it is the latter, then it would make more sense. Maybe its neither and I’m just making the wrong assumptions. 

Mr Fear

Mr Fear

-Lawrence Raab

He follows us, he keeps track.

Each day his lists are longer.

Here, death, and here,

something like it.

Mr Fear, we say in our dreams

what do you have for me tonight?

And he looks through his sack,

his black sack of troubles.

Maybe he smiles when he finds

the right one. Maybe he’s sorry.

Tell me, Mr. Fear,

what must I carry

away from your dream.

Make it small, please.

Let it fit in my pocket,

let it fall through

the hole in my pocket.

Fear, let me have

a small brown bat

and a purse of crickets

like the ones I heard

singing last night

out there in the stubbly field

before I slept, and met you.

The personification of Mr. Fear is what I love so much about this poem. It makes the reader relate so much easier to the poem as compared to just talking about why no one enjoys fear. The image in my head of Mr. Fear plotting against the narrator with his sack of troubles reminds me of something evil. The fear in this poem is not just being afraid of something, its about nightmares. The narrator knows that Mr. Fear will give him or her nightmares, and the narrator embraces that and wishes for a small scary dream. 

I have a hard time with the idea of “a small brown bat and a purse of crickets.” The narrator wants these things from Fear, but are they meant to be deathly scary, a small nightmare, or a safe haven? The poet knows Fear is present, so is he or she asking for mercy or trying to settle with Fear? The sound of crickets in the yard while falling asleep can be comforting for some, but a small brown bat is troublesome for my reasoning. I think it is meant to be safety for the narrator to protect him of her self from Fear. Can Mr. Fear be afraid of anything, like a bat? What about the power of not being scary to others? The narrator is embracing the fear he or she is given, which can make Mr. Fear seem less scary. Maybe a small brown bat is just another small fear that the narrator has.

“Here, death, and here something like it” What is the poet trying to say here? That all things that we are scared of are related to death? People may be afraid of death, but that’s not the only thing to be scared of, is it? I’m afraid of spiders that crawl around my backyard, but I know that death will not come because of those spiders. So why did the poet phrase those words just so? Do spiders scare me just as much as death scares me?

1943

No excuses this time as for why it's late. Life happens.

1943
-Donald Hall

They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium
Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round

of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died
in the third wave of Tarawa. Every morning of the war

our Brock-Hall Diary delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons
to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter

frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,
Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,

or the right engine faltered into Channel silt, or troops marched
-what could we do?-with frostbitten feet as white as milk.



Since this poem was already discussed in class, I'm not going to just say what I thought about this poem. I've been feeling patriotic this past week due to the 9/11 tenth anniversary, so I chose to blog about this poem.

I was reminded of a book I read called The All Americans by Lars Anderson, and its about young men who go through the naval academy and the military academy. No matter how prepared they thought they were heading into the war, nothing compared to what it was really like. Granted, there is a big difference between academies and heavyweight finals when it comes to preparing for war, but no one really knew what they were in for.

I love how the poet is able to create vivid pictures in the readers mind without using a lot of description. I think this is because the subject and setting are things that most readers have learned about and seen before. For example, the line "while marines bled to death in the surf," can remind the reader of a movie such as Saving Private Ryan, or of their Modern America class when their teacher showed pictures of Normandy Beach.

The question at the end, "what could we do?" makes me think about the significance of the poem. Milk is obviously important to the theme of the poem, but the question makes me think in a different way about the poem. To me, it almost makes the line say that people at home were helpless to the soldiers and  almost naïve towards helping them. Was the poet trying to say that people at home just continued on with their daily lives with fresh milk because they thought they couldn't do anything to help?

The Halo That Would Not Light

Mrs. White, I am fully aware that this post is late. However, on my defense, today felt like Sunday. I naturally thought to do my blog the day before we go back to school, and once again, my logic failed me. So please, go easy on me. :)

The Halo That Would Not Light

Lucie Brock-Broido

When, after many years, the raptor beak

Let loose of you,

He dropped your tiny body 

In the scarab-colored hollow

Of a carriage, left you like a finch

Wrapped in its nest of linens wound

With linden leaves in a child’s cardboard box.

Tonight the wind is hover-

Hunting as the leather seats of swings go back 

And forth with no one in them

As certain and invisible as 

Red scarves silking endlessly

From a magician’s hollow hat

And the spectacular catastrophe

Of your endless childhood

Is done.

What strikes me about this poem is the haunting detail that the poet describes the metaphors with. The lines “hunting as the leather seats of swings go back and forth with no one in them,” reminds me of a scary movie - the creaking swings with wind throwing them back and forth with a dark, abandoned park as the background. Is the first line talking about a stork, maybe?

The format of the poem is difficult to understand, so I had to break it up differently and read it as sentences, not stanzas. It’s hard for me to decipher the actual story of the poem. I don’t know if it is that a baby was abandoned in a carriage and will not have a childhood, or if it is a child growing up and no longer being a child. I think it is the latter, because the former is to depressing to think about. However, the details make me believe it is the former. I really need to discuss this poem with someone to maybe come up with an answer, even though there is not just one answer. 

I’m not sure what the point is of all the description if the child is simply growing up. Why would the poet describe such haunting images of a childhood. Maybe the child in the poem came from a dark past and had many catastrophes in his or her life, and there is now relief that he or she is finally done with childhood. I think the title also contributes to this theory because children are supposed to be little angels, but the child had so much darkness, that the child's halo would not light.