workshop redux: if some is good, less (more) is better

by David Moolten

The topic of Dana’s inaugural “Workshop Redux” column was specificity — the role specific language plays in making a poem more (or less) successful. The topic of this month’s column is a close relative, embellishment. Here the choice for the writer is how much detail to provide rather than how general or specific to make it. The antipode of embellishment I would call minimalism. I don’t mean minimalism with a capital M, which refers to various artistic movements in which visual art, music, literature etc are stripped of traditionalist elements — a far larger discussion. Rather I limit the term here to simply mean less detail: a sparer approach to words and phrasing.

Minimalism exploits some of the same advantages (and suffers from some of the same drawbacks) as the use of more universal language. With a minimalist approach one often enjoys a stark tone, which can bring with it powerful solemnity. There’s a reason why the “Gettysburg Address” fits on the back of an envelope. Compression tends to be a feature of a minimal style, enhancing both tension and ambiguity, as one can’t explain as much. Moreover, as with formal prosody, the writer is coerced into the cogitation necessary to find the right words to fit in a small space, which fosters not only economy but also precision. Lastly, poems that avoid embellishment tend to flow nimbly, whether through a discursive list of scenes or sub-topics, or an overarching narrative. Since the prime directive in writing is to get the reader to go from Point A (the beginning) to Point B (the end) without deciding in between that the piece isn’t worth the effort, a minimalist approach has the simple-minded though practical advantage of not scaring off one’s audience with a lot of text. Consider the intimidating effect of some of those long descriptive passages in 19th century fiction … .

Embellishment on the other hand allows more latitude and space — a bigger canvas on which to daub, and the freedom to more fully create oneself. Concomitantly, one tends to find more clarity, greater amplitude of emotion, and a more nuanced voice. While a poet can register a certain immediate gravitas with a minimal style, it is often difficult to achieve the intensity of emotion possible with expansive phrasing. Embellishment when effective is like color and detail in a painting, providing the chance for expression both richer and truer to the real world or to the imagined world of the writer. While a terser style allows one to move quickly, and a more embellished piece takes the risk of bogging the reader down, if successful it can be more engrossing, and more transforming.

Which is better? Well, the answer is … it depends (poetry being, unfortunately, full of decisions between equally defensible choices, like those two maxims, look before you leap, and, he who hesitates is lost).

So without further hesitation, let’s look at this month’s poem, “Crucifixion” by Hayden Carruth, and its evil twin, a version of the piece I’ve edited (vandalized) in various not so subtle ways.

Crucifixion

The colors on the hillside have faded,
the fruit trees lost their leaves, the mist
often with us, as today when I gazed into
the orchard, thinking of how I died
and was revived. I saw a cross there
with a man nailed to it, and I said: “Are you
the Christ?” He must have heard, for in his
agony, he nodded. Farther off
I saw another cross with another man
nodding, and another, a legion of crosses
in the trees, each with a nodding figure
nailed to it. I know about death now,
how silent it is, even when the pain
is screaming. Tonight is silent, dark;
And when I looked, I saw nothing, just my own
nodding in the window. It was as if Christ
had nodded to me, and I had nodded back.

Crucifixion

You understand the colors on the hillside have faded,
we have the gray and brown and lavender of late autumn,
the apple and pear trees have lost their leaves, the mist
of November is often with us, especially in the afternoon
and toward evening, as it was today when I sat gazing up into
the orchard for a long time the way I do now,
thinking of how I died last winter and was revived.
And I tell you I saw there a cross with a man nailed
to it, silvery in the mist, and I said to him: “Are you
the Christ?” And he must have heard me for in his
agony, twisted as he was, he nodded his head affirmatively,
up and down, once and twice. And a little way off
I saw another cross with another man nailed to it,
twisting and nodding, and then another and another,
ranks and divisions of crosses straggling like exhausted
legions upward among the misty trees, each cross
with a silvery, writhing, twisting, nodding, naked
figure nailed to it, and some of them were women.
The hill was filled with crucifixion. Should I not be
telling you this? Is it excessive? But I know something
about death now, I know how silent it is, silent, even
when the pain is shrieking and screaming. And tonight
is very silent and very dark. When I looked I saw
nothing out there, only my own reflected head nodding
a little in the window glass. It was as if the Christ
had nodded to me, all those writhing silvery images
on the hillside, and after a while I nodded back to him.

Hayden Carruth (1921 – 2008) was a distinguished American poet and critic. A New Englander and a political radical, Carruth was noted for the range and sympathies of his voice. His poetry is often bucolic but hard-hitting and engaged, confronting both the pragmatic and the existential. His weighty themes include social inequality, war, aging, grief and death.

“Crucifixion” was one of Carruth’s later poems, published in 1990, shortly after a suicide attempt via pills and liquor.

Carruth led a hard life, performing manual labor, often working long hours but insisting on writing nocturnally. He suffered both physical and psychological ailments, including alcoholism, anxiety, depression, tobacco related emphysema and cardiovascular disease, and ultimately the strokes that killed him.

Which version of “Crucifixion” did he write? Hopefully you said the second, or I didn’t do a good enough hack job in the first.

This is one of my favorite Carruth pieces, but let me point out that this is so despite the fact that I’m not religious, and that “Crucifixion” doesn’t resonate with me for any votive aspects it may have. My interpretation tends to suggest Carruth himself is talking here about wholly human suffering. A quote from another of his poems tends to confirm a secular, and even romantic adaptation of religious icons for purposes of consecrating the secular:

Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind…
I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.

What I experience reading “Crucifixion,” is remarkable composure and dignity, in spite of the autobiographical facts. To suffer is neither erudite nor ignorant, and self-destruction is usually foolish, yet in their aftermath the poem’s meditative perusal of them is wise and benefits from a long life and a social conscience. Despite the deliberate even leisurely diction, and plenitude of detail, I sense the poet’s restraint. The tone is level. The phrase “You understand” is intellectual, conversational.

You understand the colors on the hillside have faded,
we have the gray and brown and lavender of late autumn,
the apple and pear trees have lost their leaves,

He speaks like a guide, a Vermont local to a “flatlander.” He holds back, not out of reticence but for the sake of pacing, his desire to let the story take its time as it tells itself. His details put you in his shoes, but his emotional reserve lets you remain in your own, lets the poem, and his experience, accumulate and stir inside you.

Why should a poem describing this kind of agony exhibit such patience? For me the answer lies in the perception of the sufferer that one’s suffering is endless, whatever its duration. Here Carruth looks back on trials that have lasted decades, but which in aggregate finally became too much to bear in spite of his successes, his admirers. This is why I think he chose the cross with its excruciating public display and private experience — we live among others who witness and even understand our pain, yet can’t begin to feel it (or so we believe). And even a moment of this pain lasts a very long while. Forever doesn’t mean hereafter, but here and now.

the mist
of November is often with us, especially in the afternoon
and toward evening, as it was today when I sat gazing up into
the orchard for a long time the way I do now,
thinking of how I died last winter and was revived.

This poem deserves its embellishments because visual acuity in the sufferer approaches omniscience — every detail in the sick room, every crack in the ceiling, every leaf on the tree blowing in the window glass is evident and noticed. Carruth conveys this persuasively. But the irony he also communicates is that the sufferer observes (as part of his environment) other sufferers in their agony and desolation.

And I tell you I saw there a cross with a man nailed
to it, silvery in the mist, and I said to him: “Are you
the Christ?” And he must have heard me for in his
agony, twisted as he was, he nodded his head affirmatively,
up and down, once and twice. And a little way off
I saw another cross with another man nailed to it,
twisting and nodding, and then another and another,

Every movement is accounted for, not just the nodding, but how many times, and that there is acknowledgment, affirmation. Also ironic is his choice of conceit. For the crowded hillside of crucifixions he uses terms that might have described Roman soldiers:

ranks and divisions of crosses straggling like exhausted
legions upward among the misty trees, each cross
with a silvery, writhing, twisting, nodding, naked
figure nailed to it, and some of them were women.
The hill was filled with crucifixion.

So those who inflict pain are also its recipients, collectively, and in slow solitude.

Finally we reach the core of Carruth’s epiphany, which is his simple statement as a witness, and as a victim. Again, the stylistic embellishments are deserved, essential, because they describe his ambivalence, his stoicism. Pain is something one doesn’t talk about, doesn’t confess. To do so is weak, self-betraying, “excessive.” But he does so, stating the paradox of communal indifference with eloquence reminiscent of Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts.”

Should I not be
telling you this? Is it excessive? But I know something
about death now, I know how silent it is, silent, even
when the pain is shrieking and screaming. And tonight
is very silent and very dark

Given his proletarian fealties, Carruth intends the poem’s circumstances to be amply extrapolated. This isn’t just a hillside for the despondent, but for anyone who suffers.

Carruth isn’t finished though, because the other half of his revelation about anguish concerns each person’s relative insignificance. Thus the poem arrives at and ends with this still deeper reflection:

When I looked I saw
nothing out there, only my own reflected head nodding
a little in the window glass. It was as if the Christ
had nodded to me, all those writhing silvery images
on the hillside, and after a while I nodded back to him.

This closing embellishment allows Carruth to reveal what mortal anguish looks like once the personal elements are withdrawn, how it is at last accepted, humbly and without drama. After the nadir of his overdose, Carruth recovered, remarried and went on to live and work successfully for nearly twenty years. I wonder if he’d have found the wherewithal to write “Crucifixion” in the way that he did had he merely survived his near-death, and not triumphed over it. Perhaps he wrote this as if he really did die — metaphorically — so that everything that followed came from an inner place of serene comprehension. Perhaps it was this that allowed him to be so liberal with the materials of his experience, and his poetry.

Reprinted from Collected Shorter Poems, 1946-1991 (1992, Copper Canyon Press) with permission of the publisher.

David Moolten’s latest book, Primitive Mood, won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press. His work has been widely anthologized, and his honors include a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. David is also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine. He writes at Edible Detritus.