which, I decided, after some thought, could only be shopping lists. Even her chance observations of the natural world are primitive, to say the least: “branches down,” “radishes poor,” “sun scorching.”
This from the woman whose whole aesthetic was a piece of grief! The woman who had become for me a model of endurance and survival. I felt let down, even betrayed, but reluctant to admit it. In the weeks after I acquired the notebook from Rose Hindmarch I turned over its pages again and again, imagining that one day they would yield up a key that would turn the dull little entries into pellucid messages. Perhaps I hoped for the same dislocation of phrase that frequently occurs in the poems, a skewed reference that is really a shrewd misguiding of those who read it. Herapple tree poem, for instance, which is actually a limpid expression of female sensuality, and her water poems that trace, though some scholars disagree, the clear contours of birth and regeneration. She is the mistress of the inverted image. Take “Lilacs,” her first published poem. It pretends to be an idle, passive description of a tree in blossom, but is really a piercing statement of a woman severed from her roots, one of the most affecting I’ve ever read.
Naturally I opened her notebook hoping for the same underwatery text, and the reason I’ve refused to share it casually with Morton Jimroy, or anyone else for that matter, is that I still hope, foolishly perhaps, to wring some meaningful juice out of those blunt weather bulletins and shopping lists.
I haven’t yet decided how I’ll present the journal at the symposium, whether to cite it as a simple country diary (“Swann had one foot firmly in the workaday world and the other …”) or to offer it up as a cryptogram penned by a woman who was terrified by the realization that she was an artist. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the clarity of vision visited on her in mid life or for what
things
she was about to make with the aid of a Parker 51 and a rhyming dictionary. (I won’t, of course, mention the dictionary, long since returned to dust and, I hope, forgotten.)
But no matter how I present the notebook, the response will be one of disappointment, particularly for Morton Jimroy with his holy attitude toward prime materials. He will be disappointed—I picture his collapsed face, its pursed mouth and shrunken eyes—disappointed by the notebook itself, disappointed by Mary Swann, and also, I have no doubt, by me.
But haven’t I been disappointed in turn by him and his biographical diggings? As yet he hasn’t turned up a singlething about Mary Swann’s mother, not even her maiden name, and he shows not the slightest interest in pursuing her. Doesn’t he understand anything about mothers? “Childhood,” he wrote in his second to last letter to me, “has been greatly overestimated by biographers in the past, as have family influences.”
It’s hard to know if this is a tough new biographical tack or if Jimroy is papering over a paucity of material. But one thing I’m sure of: Mary’s poems are filled with concealed references to her mother and to the strength and violence of family bonds. One poem in particular turns on the inescapable perseverance of blood ties, particularly those between mothers and daughters. It’s a poem that follows me around, chanting loudly inside my head and drumming on the centre of my heart.
Blood pronounces my name
Blisters the day with shame
Spends what little I own,
Robbing the hour, rubbing the bone.
15
What I need is an image to organize my life. A flower would be nice, an iris, a tender, floppy head of petals and a stem like a long green river. I could watch it sway, emblem of myself, in the least breeze, and admire its aloof purply state. The frilled mouth, never drooping lower than a few permitted degrees—it would put to shame my present state of despondency.
Just why am I sad tonight? I address this question to the
This from the woman whose whole aesthetic was a piece of grief! The woman who had become for me a model of endurance and survival. I felt let down, even betrayed, but reluctant to admit it. In the weeks after I acquired the notebook from Rose Hindmarch I turned over its pages again and again, imagining that one day they would yield up a key that would turn the dull little entries into pellucid messages. Perhaps I hoped for the same dislocation of phrase that frequently occurs in the poems, a skewed reference that is really a shrewd misguiding of those who read it. Herapple tree poem, for instance, which is actually a limpid expression of female sensuality, and her water poems that trace, though some scholars disagree, the clear contours of birth and regeneration. She is the mistress of the inverted image. Take “Lilacs,” her first published poem. It pretends to be an idle, passive description of a tree in blossom, but is really a piercing statement of a woman severed from her roots, one of the most affecting I’ve ever read.
Naturally I opened her notebook hoping for the same underwatery text, and the reason I’ve refused to share it casually with Morton Jimroy, or anyone else for that matter, is that I still hope, foolishly perhaps, to wring some meaningful juice out of those blunt weather bulletins and shopping lists.
I haven’t yet decided how I’ll present the journal at the symposium, whether to cite it as a simple country diary (“Swann had one foot firmly in the workaday world and the other …”) or to offer it up as a cryptogram penned by a woman who was terrified by the realization that she was an artist. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the clarity of vision visited on her in mid life or for what
things
she was about to make with the aid of a Parker 51 and a rhyming dictionary. (I won’t, of course, mention the dictionary, long since returned to dust and, I hope, forgotten.)
But no matter how I present the notebook, the response will be one of disappointment, particularly for Morton Jimroy with his holy attitude toward prime materials. He will be disappointed—I picture his collapsed face, its pursed mouth and shrunken eyes—disappointed by the notebook itself, disappointed by Mary Swann, and also, I have no doubt, by me.
But haven’t I been disappointed in turn by him and his biographical diggings? As yet he hasn’t turned up a singlething about Mary Swann’s mother, not even her maiden name, and he shows not the slightest interest in pursuing her. Doesn’t he understand anything about mothers? “Childhood,” he wrote in his second to last letter to me, “has been greatly overestimated by biographers in the past, as have family influences.”
It’s hard to know if this is a tough new biographical tack or if Jimroy is papering over a paucity of material. But one thing I’m sure of: Mary’s poems are filled with concealed references to her mother and to the strength and violence of family bonds. One poem in particular turns on the inescapable perseverance of blood ties, particularly those between mothers and daughters. It’s a poem that follows me around, chanting loudly inside my head and drumming on the centre of my heart.
Blood pronounces my name
Blisters the day with shame
Spends what little I own,
Robbing the hour, rubbing the bone.
15
What I need is an image to organize my life. A flower would be nice, an iris, a tender, floppy head of petals and a stem like a long green river. I could watch it sway, emblem of myself, in the least breeze, and admire its aloof purply state. The frilled mouth, never drooping lower than a few permitted degrees—it would put to shame my present state of despondency.
Just why am I sad tonight? I address this question to the
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