carried, withered, swept...

ten poems for changing eye and hand

Robert Hass

A Story About the Body


The young composer, working that summer at an artist’s colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, “I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy,” and when he didn’t understand, “I’ve lost both my breasts.” the radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity – like music –withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, “I’m sorry. I don’t think I could.” He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl – she must have swept them from the corners of her studio – was full of dead bees.

*

The poetry of Robert Hass is becoming one of my favorite reading stops. His voice has such a delicate ease, yet always commands my full attention. Beginning with Field Work, his first collection, Hass has built a powerful and accessible poetry that is personal and valid.

“A Story About the Body,” a disturbing prose poem in Human Wishes, brilliantly interlaces shock with delicate beauty – mistake-driven moments, regret, and careless words. The image that closes the poem, “a small blue bowl on the porch outside” a composer’s door, is a crosshaired reminder of the darkness that burrows underneath our lives. A bowl full of dead bees. And the terrible reality – not one of us can say that we’ve never been part of such a moment … either as the one who rejects another or as the one with such deep scars who must hear the words.

One of the aspects of the poem that I’m drawn to is the fact that I absolutely understand the composer’s reaction – though I cannot excuse it – and that makes the work all the more honest to me. Hass does want to unsettle the reader. In truth, the composer rejects – not the artist … rather – himself when he says, “I’m sorry I don’t think I could.” The limitation is not just his life, but is his art. That’s the strong human quality in this poem. A tiny sentence that impacts the rest of one’s living – a moment that eats away at whatever beauty or potential or evenness is present. The radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity – like music – withered.

The reader understands how the young man’s attraction to the woman begins with his identification with her art:

He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions.

The woman is strong-willed, creative, experienced, but also filled with physical longing. That longing – and we all have known it – also makes us vulnerable.

The most powerful action in the poem, the Japanese artist’s preparing the gift, is masterfully given an aside presence in the piece. Hass writes, interrupting the flow of the poem at the point where the young composer finds the gift on the morning following his totally despicable reaction to the woman’s body: “she must have swept them from the corners of her studio”. Art creating art. When the artist tells the young man about her body – the double mastectomy – she isn’t confessing or revealing secrets. This is who she is. Refusing to escape or turn away from the moment, she tells him because of her own tenderness, her own sense of worth and greatness, her own desire.

What I think Hass is trying to do in this work is present the creative artist – the young composer as the universal stand-in – as exposed and capable of betrayal. And betrayal in the poem is deeper than betrayal of person. It also touches artistic values. But most importantly – the betrayal is of a personal vision. The young composer’s music will never flourish or grow. Instead, his art will die – a mound of dead works, a bowl of dead bees. The studio cleaned of the useless, undesirable elements in preparation for other works, other artists, other voices.

Creative thinkers hold themselves – or certainly should – to a high standard. And the fall – if and when – is absolute and final.

*

This group focuses on the ten poems that, for a multitude of reasons, have had the greatest impact on my own work and my understanding of literature.