Water Picture By May Swenson


In the pond in the park

all things are doubled;

Long buildings hang and

wriggle gently. Chimneys

are bent legs bouncing

on clouds below. A flag

wags like a fishhook

down there in the sky.

The arched stone bridge

is an eye, with underlid

in the water. In its lens

dip crinkled heads with hats

that don’t fall off. Dogs go by,

barking on their backs.

A baby, taken to feed the

ducks, dangles upside-down,

a pink balloon for a buoy.

Treetops deploy a haze of

cherry bloom for roots,

where birds coast belly-up

in the glass bowl of a hill;

from its bottom a bunch

of peanut munching children

is suspended by their sneakers, waveringly.

A swan, with twin necks

forming the figure three,

steers between two dimpled

towers doubled. Fondly

hissing, she kisses herself,

and all the scene is troubled:

water-windows splinter,

tree-limbs tangle, the bridge

folds like a fan.

As with the Mark Strand poem that waltz 'n' capsize posted yesterday, this is a wonderful piece of writing, a string of inversions and reversals of stance that make the grace and balance of the world seem comical and awkward. Where there is equipoise in the world above the water, the surface of the pond has a universe that appears to constantly teeter for balance and negate the general cheerfulness of the forward-moving world; birds fly upside down, a swan seems to woo it's perfect visage, the sky is a hard ground and cherry blossoms bloom over a bottomless, blue-tinted void. This eases neatly from the comic to the threatening,the foreboding occurs, a warning sounds that one ought not look into a reflective surface too long:

Fondly
hissing, she kisses herself,
and all the scene is troubled:
water-windows splinter,
tree-limbs tangle, the bridge
folds like a fan.

What was comic rapidly becomes distorted, and the infatuation of one's image, revealed, I think, by the saga of the swan's seeming narcissism; you are sucked into a world of reversals and turn into yourself rather the world outside yourself. "The bridge folds like a fan" , and one's ability to hold their own in a world of appearances is compromised. All may be mere appearence, as Plato maintained, but there are proper dualisms with which we can navigate reality and common to mutual terms on how to cross the street,what restaurant to meet at, or if the parking spot is large enough for what he drive. "Water Picture" is a reminder that we need to turn our gaze from the reflective surface and and set toward the other side of the hill, where we can join the legacy of the bear who went over the mountain, to see what he could see.

This poem is terrible

(I'm grateful that you shared it)

This poem is terrible.

In the pond in the park

all things are doubled;

If the poet said

‘All things are changed’ ,

I might have been able to buy it.

But all things are not doubled

and the line is a lie

and a very cheap lie at that,

and my imagination nor mind

will accept it.

It’s as if the poet is making me stare

at a terribly trite painting

by a schlocky con named

Normy Rockwell.

Too bad this poem wasn’t thrown in the trash

before it found its way into the VFW Weekly Rag.

This poem not only lowers the bar, but it throws the bar

into the pond ,where you can sorta see it next to

the rusting tin can and the old bike tire.

.

.

Terrific commentary Ted, I think you've got it!

BBB, sorry it was not to your liking. Do Ted's comments change your mind at all?

Not sure what troubles you about "doubled" In the simplest sense the refelective quality of the water does "double" everything and as Ted alludes it also infers a heightened sense of reality. I agree that there is a sense of schlock at work here, but I think that's deliberate: this isn't as graphic as discovering that nice old grandpa in the Rockwell painting is a pedophile, but there is a shattering here, a scrambling or what you percieve as schlock. What do you make of that?

You want me to make a comment about a man whose brain comes up with this

by the saga of the swan's seeming narcissism;

Or

there are proper dualisms with which we can navigate reality and common to mutual terms on how to cross the street,

OMG

I am too and this too shall pass.

Yes, Ted's prose can be a thicket to get thru, but I was asking you to comment about what Ted said about the poem, not about Ted.

So getting back to the poem....do you think I'm off base in thinking there is more to this than the drippy reflection of a bad version of Sunday in Park with George? Is this just cutesy description or is there more to it?

Hi OneArt and Ted,

Unlike Ted, I don’t see this poem as a cautionary tale of how not to get caught up in appearances rather than reality. Yes, the allusion to Narcissus is there at the end, but for me the poem is merely Swenson’s delightfully quirky description of a summer afternoon at “the pond in the park.”

To me, that is one of the joys of reading poetry – it can charm me into taking a second, longer look at a supposedly common scene and seeing more there than I might have done without the poem.

Now that I am trying to concentrate more on the sounds of poetry, I’ll add that I liked the alliteration (pond / park, ducks / dangles, birds / belly, bottom / bunch, suspended /sneakers, forming / figure, water-windows, fold / fan), as well as the internal and half rhymes (bent / gently, bounce / clouds, flag / wag, sky / eye /by, bloom / roots, bunch / munch [almost too cute for words], hiss / kiss, window / splinter / limbs.

Thanks, 1A, for a cool drink of water on a warm summer day. Here’s another of her optical illusion poems for such a day –

JAPANESE BREAKFAST by May Swenson

The table of the pool is set.
Each cup quivers by a plate.

Some are filled with tea of sun,
some have pinks of liquor in;

some, thick and white, look upside down
as if put out to dry,

or not to use till morning
pours a thinner cream.

Lying out lopsided,
all the plates are green.

Immaculate as in Japan
the food is only dew,

but fountain-flounce, the table cloth,
shows a rainbow stain.

Some black-nosed goldfish passing through
on their way to shade

nudge the rocking saucers.
A wet ceramic toad,

descending stairs of moss
to breakfast on an insect,

upsets the level table top
but leaves the cups intact. (water lilies on a pond)

(the last parenthetical comment is obviously mine, not Swenson's)

Hi OneArt,

Thanks for picking a Thursday poem for us. Sorry to clutter up Thusday OPP with the Strand poem. when i posted it last night, it was with little thought to weekday-- it's a good poem but it coulda waited till the weekend.

Onto May Swenson's Water Picture:

(Much like how 'a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum...") a funny thing happened to me when I hit line 8: down there in the sky. that line evoked the deity-as-disinterested-Watchma­ker philosophy i.e., the deity who occasionally looks our way from a deteched perch in the heavens.

To my amazement, the next lines, drew an image of something very much like an all-seeing eye. The arched stone bridge / is an eye, with underlid / in the water. In its lens / dip crinkled heads with hats / that don’t fall off. Primarilly reflected in the all-seeing eye? People.

So the list of inversions continues, perhaps a little too long. Until the narcisistic swan swims in, whose neck, in reflection, forms the figure three, which seems a Trinitarian reference in keeping with the building theme of being one's own god. The swan demonstrates its egocentricity Fondly/ hissing, she kisses herself. (one of the better phases, here) and all the scene becomes troubled.

The bridge, which forms the eye, folds like a fan. It closes.

And that's it. This abrupt close (of both poem and eye) declares a finality. The god, who once may have been interested, now leaves man to his own favorite hobby-- perceiving himself as god.

My principal annoyance with this piece-- that there are too many examples illustrating the same issue of looking down into world-- bolsters my quirky interp in this: Creator, (disinteresed or not,) looking into the world would notice all the details.

Secondary complaints are these: the alliterations in this piece are too obvious and some even too cute i.e, pond/ park; bent/ bouncing; flag/ fishook; balloon/ bouy. dimpled/ doubled.

If, in order to reiterate the doubling images, Swenson meant for the interior rhymes to be as obvious as they are, that was a mistake: buildings/ wriggle; bouncing/ clouds; bunch/ munching; hissing/ kisses.

This one's unsubtleties make it less than satisfying to me.

monica

Is this just cutesy description or is there more to it?

i vote: more to it.

I was asking you to comment about what Ted said about the poem

I thought I did.

I guess the bottom line is that

I don’t feel like talking about the poem or ted. Sorry.

It could represent that there are always two ways of looking at things or that there is a hidden side of us that is troubled and not seen on the surface. I think the poet was sitting on the edge of a lake and wrote a poem about water reflections.