An example of the power of the short poem to rattle around one's head is Randall Jarrell's wonderful 1954 poem "The Meteorite":
Star, that looked so long among the stones
And picked from them, half iron and half dirt,
One: and bent and put it to her lips
And breathed upon it till at last it burned
Uncertainly, among the stars its sisters--
Breathe on me still, star, sister.
While syntactically a simple address and request of a star to do one thing (Star...Breathe on me...), what that star is and does is very complicated. The star "looked", "picked", "bent", "put", "breathed upon" a stone. That stone is itself special (or is it?). It is has been "picked from" others, is "half iron and half dirt", "burn[s] / Uncertainly, among the stars" who have now become "its sisters". In the end, the speaker's request that the star "Breathe on me" is capped with the wonderfully complex "still, star, sister". To keep breathing upon the speaker, and to address that to a "star" who is a "sister" in a poem titled "The Meteorite" is to send us back again and again through the short lyric to sort out who begins a star, who becomes a star, and who remains a star.
That is the point, and that is the beauty of poetry.
Star, that looked so long among the stones
And picked from them, half iron and half dirt,
One: and bent and put it to her lips
And breathed upon it till at last it burned
Uncertainly, among the stars its sisters--
Breathe on me still, star, sister.
While syntactically a simple address and request of a star to do one thing (Star...Breathe on me...), what that star is and does is very complicated. The star "looked", "picked", "bent", "put", "breathed upon" a stone. That stone is itself special (or is it?). It is has been "picked from" others, is "half iron and half dirt", "burn[s] / Uncertainly, among the stars" who have now become "its sisters". In the end, the speaker's request that the star "Breathe on me" is capped with the wonderfully complex "still, star, sister". To keep breathing upon the speaker, and to address that to a "star" who is a "sister" in a poem titled "The Meteorite" is to send us back again and again through the short lyric to sort out who begins a star, who becomes a star, and who remains a star.
That is the point, and that is the beauty of poetry.
RSS Feed