Methods & Muses Vol. 27
November Night
by Adelaide Crapsey
Listen.
With faint, dry sound,
like steps of passing ghosts,
the leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
and fall.
Ah, can you hear this?
I love how the first line of this poem is a simple, direct invitation.
I love the adjectives faint and dry.
Of course I love the steps of passing ghosts, and I especially love the music in line four:
the leaves, frost-crisp’d, break from the trees
into the last line
and fall.
I can feel this. All the deciduous trees of November letting go, letting go…
This beautiful cinquain was written 100 years ago, and Adelaide Crapsey was most likely influenced by the 1,200-year-old Japanese tanka to compose this little gem. Now, English teachers (including yours truly) use these time-tested forms to introduce young writers to poetry.
On behalf of them, and from me too, thank you, tanka poets, and thank you, Adelaide.
November has been quiet, perfect for wandering and poetry.
As I walked around this month, Sylvia Plath spoke to me.
I heard her say, November Graveyard, and I stopped in my tracks, as I did 20 years ago, when I first heard a recording of her reading this poem. Thanks to the book and CD collection, Poetry Speaks, a gift from my husband-art-partner, I heard Sylvia, and her voice bewitched me, as in, I listened to her being a witch, or better, I heard her being, a witch.
I can’t accurately describe Sylvia’s voice. It’s better that you listen for yourself.
Take a moment, close your eyes and press play.
Or keep your eyes open and follow along:
November Graveyard
by Sylvia Plath
The scene stands stubborn: skinflint trees
hoard last leaves, won’t mourn, wear sackcloth, or turn
to elegiac dryads, and dour grass
guards the hard-hearted emerald of its grassiness,
however the grandiloquent mind may scorn
such poverty. No dead men’s cries
flower forget-me-nots between the stones
paving this grave ground. Here’s honest rot
to unpick the elaborate heart, pare bone
free of the fictive vein. When one stark skeleton
bulks real, all saints’ tongues fall quiet:
flies watch no resurrections in the sun.
At the essential landscape stare, stare
till your eyes foist a vision dazzling in the wind:
whatever lost ghosts flare,
damned, howling in their shrouds across the moor
rave on the leash of the starving mind
which peoples the bare room, the blank, untenanted air.
How was that? I hope you heard the mystic. I hope you feel anointed.
Now, her subject is not cheery, but we knew this from the title. Yes, Sylvia did write about a lot of sad things, her life was far from perfect, but in my opinion, she is too often associated with her tragedies, so here, I sing her craft.
As a quick aside, if you’re not into her work, or if delving deeper into a poem to celebrate its structure is not your thing, take a hall pass, stop reading and have yourself a beautiful day.
For those of you who want to dance around a Plath fire, come along with me.
Let’s play stanza by stanza!
Right away in stanza one, the music, the alliteration of that triplet of s’s - scene, stands, stubborn – invites me into the snake of Sylvia’s tongue. Then, she adds a bit more hiss with skinflint.
Oh, the clever use of a word you might have to look up in a dictionary!
Oh, the personification!
While other folks might insist on accessibility, or not using words that challenge the reader, this poet loves learning new words. This poet also knows that personifying trees is not the only way to go. While we can’t take ourselves out of our personhoods, we can try to see the tree for the tree, an independent being to love and respect.
A skinflint is: a stingy person, a miser.
I don’t see trees this way, but I understand why Sylvia did.
If you study her heartbreaks, winter was not a good time for her, and her view of the natural world reflected her sorrow and frustration. I get it. When I lived in Chicago, my bandmates noticed that ‘winter Michelle’ was as a sad, heavy-hearted gal who desperately needed sun and blue sky. She needed to get her ass back to Florida. Now, after living in the Northern clime for years, and after immersing myself in nature poetry, I have learned to embrace snow, celebrate how it quiets the humans, and I try to accept the dreamy gray of winter.
But this is November.
I’ll be craving colors by February, so again, I extend empathy to Goddess Plath.
And I turn back to her skills.
Sylvia offers more delicious alliteration throughout stanza one – last leaves, grass guards – and her vocabulary continues to nudge. Even with context clues and breaking down the word, I wasn’t exactly sure what a sackcloth was, and I had never encountered the word grandiloquent. A sackcloth is: a coarse cloth worn for mourning or penitence, and grandiloquent is defined as: speaking or expressed in a lofty style, almost to the point of being pompous or bombastic.
Does anyone else find this funny? I think our girl is being cheeky here, she might be laughing at herself, having a bit of fun, because she’s used a word that means lofty and we have to look it up!
Next, in stanza two, whew! Look at that first verb! There’s so much to say about flower:
1. What is more commonly used as a noun, Sister Sylvie chooses to use as a verb.
2. Flower then connects to stanza 1 in a surprising way. Keeps you reading.
3. Flower is thematic. Flowers are part of graveyards.
4. And she follows flower with forget-me-nots! Perfect, alliterative cemetery flora!
I can’t take the brilliance! This entire stanza is chewy with alliteration – unpick, pare and free, fictive – breathy with assonance – the long a’s of paving, grave, the short o’s in honest, rot - and I don’t even know what to do with that last line:
flies watch no resurrections in the sun.
Sylvie, are you kidding me? Tell us how you really feel. What a punch.
Lastly, in stanza three, Queen Poet commands the reader and herself to stare at the essential landscape – to face the inevitable November, see death for what it is, scary, yes, and a closing, important part of the life cycle.
I love how she repeats stare and lets it hang on the end of the line. I should say here that Sylvia’s line breaks throughout the poem are stunningly crafted. One of my mentors, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, calls lines that shine on their own SALS, or Stand Alone Lines. November Graveyard is loaded with SALS – from the skinflint trees to the flies and through to one of the strongest penultimate lines ever:
rave on the leash of the starving mind
and into her brilliant closing line
which peoples the bare room, the blank, untenanted air.
Yes, these lines break my heart, because I hear Sylvia’s fight. I read her courage. I hear a loneliness, a hard, existential truth, but again, an equally important aspect of these two beautiful lines is how she’s written them. Once more, Sylvia chooses a word commonly used as a noun -peoples- and she verbs it. There’s alliteration again - bare and blank - and that adjective – untenanted – is perfect to drive it home – as if she’s saying with a single word, we only rent this life, children, we do not own it.
Whew. I gotta sit down.
Yes, I would have loved to attend a Sylvia Plath reading, and yes, I often wonder how her work might have grown had she not left so young, but I do not judge her.
I honor her work.
Thank you, Sylvia.
Thank you, Readers. May your month be poetic.