Aug 27, 2023·edited Aug 27, 2023Liked by Devin Kelly
Thanks for the poem, and for the commentary. What you have to say here about about knowing and distance echoes what W.S. Merwin has to say in "Search Party," which is, of all the poems I have ever read, by a considerable margin my favorite:
(Note: the original poem has stanza breaks after each iteration of "where Maoli is" that this comment window won't show.)
Search Party
By now I know most of the faces
that will appear beside me as
long as there are still images
I know at last what I would choose
the next time if there ever was
a time again I know the days
that open in the dark like this
I do not know where Maoli is
I know the summer surfaces
of bodies and the tips of voices
like stars out of their distances
and where the music turns to noise
I know the bargains in the news
rules whole languages formulas
wisdom that I will never use
I do not know where Maoli is
I know whatever one may lose
somebody will be there who says
what it will be all right to miss
and what is verging on excess
I know the shadows of the house
routes that lead out to no traces
many of his empty places
I do not know where Maoli is
You that see now with your own eyes
all that there is as you suppose
though I could stare through broken glass
and show you where the morning goes
though I could follow to their close
the sparks of an exploding species
and see where the world ends in ice
I would not know where Maoli is
There are interesting formal and structural features in this poem, but what really speaks to me here is Merwin's gentle insistence that no matter how much we think we know, no matter how smart we think we are, there are some things (personified here as Maoli) that we can not and will not ever know. That's the nature of our minds, and the nature of the world we live in. It would be possible to read and respond to the poem as some kind of metaphor without knowing what the Hawaiian word "Maoli" actually means, but it certainly confirms my intuitions when I look it up and discover that "Maoli" in Hawaiian means "what is real," "what is natural" or "what is true." And my sense is that Merwin is not expressing our inability to see the real as a lament, but rather framing it as a kind of ode to uncertainty, or, as Lameris puts in, to its paragraphs of cloud and alphabets of dust.
This is lovely. I read the last line "Not, I’m sure, that it was meant for me." as a sly way of saying of course I think it's meant for me. That's what we humans do, even when we try not to.
Thanks for the poem, and for the commentary. What you have to say here about about knowing and distance echoes what W.S. Merwin has to say in "Search Party," which is, of all the poems I have ever read, by a considerable margin my favorite:
(Note: the original poem has stanza breaks after each iteration of "where Maoli is" that this comment window won't show.)
Search Party
By now I know most of the faces
that will appear beside me as
long as there are still images
I know at last what I would choose
the next time if there ever was
a time again I know the days
that open in the dark like this
I do not know where Maoli is
I know the summer surfaces
of bodies and the tips of voices
like stars out of their distances
and where the music turns to noise
I know the bargains in the news
rules whole languages formulas
wisdom that I will never use
I do not know where Maoli is
I know whatever one may lose
somebody will be there who says
what it will be all right to miss
and what is verging on excess
I know the shadows of the house
routes that lead out to no traces
many of his empty places
I do not know where Maoli is
You that see now with your own eyes
all that there is as you suppose
though I could stare through broken glass
and show you where the morning goes
though I could follow to their close
the sparks of an exploding species
and see where the world ends in ice
I would not know where Maoli is
There are interesting formal and structural features in this poem, but what really speaks to me here is Merwin's gentle insistence that no matter how much we think we know, no matter how smart we think we are, there are some things (personified here as Maoli) that we can not and will not ever know. That's the nature of our minds, and the nature of the world we live in. It would be possible to read and respond to the poem as some kind of metaphor without knowing what the Hawaiian word "Maoli" actually means, but it certainly confirms my intuitions when I look it up and discover that "Maoli" in Hawaiian means "what is real," "what is natural" or "what is true." And my sense is that Merwin is not expressing our inability to see the real as a lament, but rather framing it as a kind of ode to uncertainty, or, as Lameris puts in, to its paragraphs of cloud and alphabets of dust.
This is so lovely. I love your commentary. Thank you for sharing.
One of my favorite. This is so deep.
This is lovely. I read the last line "Not, I’m sure, that it was meant for me." as a sly way of saying of course I think it's meant for me. That's what we humans do, even when we try not to.