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My Grave
In the margins of the text, I am including notes that I took while reading, which should serve to stimulate a deepr reading of the poem.
"My Grave"
Philip Levine
Just outside Malaga, California,
Lost among the cluster of truckstops
There is a little untended plot
Of ground and weeds and a stone
That bears my name, misspelled,
And under the stone is dirt, hardpan,
More dirt, rocks, then one hundred
And one different elements
Embracing each other in every way
They can imagine so that at times
They remind me of those photographs
I saw as a boy and which I was assured ---------------photos= memories=intangibility=nothing
Were more expensive and stimulating
And meant nothing. There are also
Over a thousand beer bottle caps
One of my sons was saving until
He calculated that he would never---------------------- Hint of alcoholism is family
Reach a million and so quit. (Quite
Saving, not drinking.) One document
Is here, ceremoniously labeled
“My Last Will & Testament.” My sister
So hated it she threw it into
The bare hole and asked that it be
Shoveled under. Not one foolish hope
Of mine is here, for none was real
And hard, the hope that the poor
Stalked from their cardboard houses
To transform our leaders, that our flags
Wept colored tears until they became ---------------Working class hope turns to defeat
Nothing but flags of surrender.
I hoped also to see my mother
A long distance runner, my brother
Give his money to the kids of Chicago
And take to the roads, careless, hatless,
In search of a task that befits a man.
I dreamed my friends quit lying
And their breath took on the perfume
Of new-mown grass, and that I came
To be a man walking carelessly
Through rain, my hair tangled, my one
Answer the full belly laugh I saved
For my meeting with God, a laugh I ------------------Beyond the grave?
No longer need. Not one nightmare
Is here, nor are my eyes which saw
you rise at night, barefoot and quit,
And leave my side, and my ears which heard
You return suddenly, your mouth tasting
Of cold water. Even my forehead
Is not here, behind which I plotted
The overthrow of this our republic
by means of the refusal to wipe.
My journals aren’t here, my right hand
That wrote them, my waist that strained------------ Systematic subtraction of assets
Against so many leather belts and belts
Of cloth that finally surrendered.----------------------- Time measured by work and deterioration of clothes
My enormous feet that carried my safely
Through thirty cities, my tongue
That stroked and restroked your cheek
Roughly until you said, “Cat.” My poems,
My lies, my few kept promises, my love
For morning sunlight and dusk, my love-------------- “my love” repetition, emphasizing this specific loss
For women and the children of women,
My guiding star and the star I wore
For twenty seven years. Nothing of me --------------Star of David?
Is here because this is not my house,
This is not the driver’s seat of my car
Nor the memory of someone who loved me
Nor the distant classroom in which I
Fell asleep and dreamed of lamb. This
Is dirt, a filled hole of earth, stone --------------------Reduction to dirt.
That says return to stone, a broken fence
That mumbles Keep Out, air above nothing,
Air that cannot imagine the sweet duties
Of wildflowers and herbs, this is cheap,
Common, coarse, what you pass by
Everyday in your car without a thought,
This is an ordinary grave. --------------------------------(shortest line--emphasis) Return to beginning of poem, as if implying a cycle
.
SUMMARY - In Levine’s richly nostalgic poem “My Grave,” the speaker confronts his own mortality. He does so by recalling past experiences and memories of life in a way that encapsulates his own essence within the lines, then perforates them with reductive thoughts and realizations about his arriving death. By the end of the poem, the body, life, works, and love of the speaker are ultimately deduced to nothing but the dirt of “an ordinary grave”.
.
ANALYSIS - Initially, we have the image of a grave marker: a tombstone with the speaker’s misspelled name. At first look, the misspelling of the name can be interpreted to imply that a gravestone is a inaccurate representation of who a person was, however on second take, that misspelling is yet another example of the corrosive nature death inflicts--suggesting even a name cannot escape its rapacious clutches.
From this idea of the irreducibility of death, which is even described in terms of elements, the most basic components of matter, the thought process is driven down memory lane. Since photos are seized moments of the past, we can assume by concluding that once “stimulating” photographs ultimately “meant nothing” the speaker is assigning an empty value to things in life that were once cherished.
This perspective of the speaker is suspiciously confident in its pessimism, as if it were stating facts known from the experience of being dead. Support for this comes in several forms throughout the poem. The first example occurs when his sister asks if his last will and testament can be thrown into the grave and “shoveled under”. The language used to describe this reaction gives the reader a sense of dissatisfaction on the sister’s behalf, showing disregard for her willed assets as if they were as worthless as dirt. Conversely, this reaction could also be read as a rejection of the inevitable, dismissing assets as valueless without the life of the person they belonged to. The most indicative example of a posthumous narrator lies in the lines, “…my one/ answer the full bellied laugh I saved/ for my meeting with God, a laugh I/ no longer need.” If the laugh was one he saved for the meeting of God, that is, after he died and met God, claiming to no longer need the laugh means one of two things: the speaker has already died, or he will never meet god when he does--the later of which has heavy atheistic tones appropriate to the momentum of the poem (if he is not imply a meeting with the opposite: the devil). What is more persuasive to the posthumous narrator hypothesis is the verb tense used. The speaker says “even my forehead is not here,” and “nothing of me is here”. It is important to note that he does not use the future tense by saying “nothing of me will be here”.
The systematic subtraction of the speaker’s assets, ranging from a forehead to journals, poems, and love, is not the only subtraction going on. There is a much more general “air” to the poem that carries an omnipresence of defeat. This is best captured in the line, “Not one foolish hope of mine is here, for none was real and hard, the hope that the poor stalked from their cardboard houses to transform our leaders, that our flags wept colored tears until they became nothing but flags of surrender.” That generalness Levine is writing about is the American dream. It is something, like all of ones hopes and memories and loves, that is intangible. Unlike what is commonly associated with the American dream, however, Levine is not speaking about a rags to riches model. The change those is cardboard hope for is one more ideal, one that would have to do with the spirit of America, an internal change beginning with the leaders. Though, like everything else is the poem, that too is drained of life until it resembles the ghostly pale defeat of a surrendered flag.
At the conclusion of the poem, there is a return to the opening. Maybe ending at the beginning is meant as some to suggest a sort of cyclic nature of birth and death, but maybe not. In the end, the reader is left with the image of the grave as it sits atop the dirt distinguished only by commonness. As readers, Levine has left us staring at a common gravestone--that could very well be our own--pondering the universality and inevitability of death, as both the poet and speaker have.
"My Grave"
Philip Levine
Just outside Malaga, California,
Lost among the cluster of truckstops
There is a little untended plot
Of ground and weeds and a stone
That bears my name, misspelled,
And under the stone is dirt, hardpan,
More dirt, rocks, then one hundred
And one different elements
Embracing each other in every way
They can imagine so that at times
They remind me of those photographs
I saw as a boy and which I was assured ---------------photos= memories=intangibility=nothing
Were more expensive and stimulating
And meant nothing. There are also
Over a thousand beer bottle caps
One of my sons was saving until
He calculated that he would never---------------------- Hint of alcoholism is family
Reach a million and so quit. (Quite
Saving, not drinking.) One document
Is here, ceremoniously labeled
“My Last Will & Testament.” My sister
So hated it she threw it into
The bare hole and asked that it be
Shoveled under. Not one foolish hope
Of mine is here, for none was real
And hard, the hope that the poor
Stalked from their cardboard houses
To transform our leaders, that our flags
Wept colored tears until they became ---------------Working class hope turns to defeat
Nothing but flags of surrender.
I hoped also to see my mother
A long distance runner, my brother
Give his money to the kids of Chicago
And take to the roads, careless, hatless,
In search of a task that befits a man.
I dreamed my friends quit lying
And their breath took on the perfume
Of new-mown grass, and that I came
To be a man walking carelessly
Through rain, my hair tangled, my one
Answer the full belly laugh I saved
For my meeting with God, a laugh I ------------------Beyond the grave?
No longer need. Not one nightmare
Is here, nor are my eyes which saw
you rise at night, barefoot and quit,
And leave my side, and my ears which heard
You return suddenly, your mouth tasting
Of cold water. Even my forehead
Is not here, behind which I plotted
The overthrow of this our republic
by means of the refusal to wipe.
My journals aren’t here, my right hand
That wrote them, my waist that strained------------ Systematic subtraction of assets
Against so many leather belts and belts
Of cloth that finally surrendered.----------------------- Time measured by work and deterioration of clothes
My enormous feet that carried my safely
Through thirty cities, my tongue
That stroked and restroked your cheek
Roughly until you said, “Cat.” My poems,
My lies, my few kept promises, my love
For morning sunlight and dusk, my love-------------- “my love” repetition, emphasizing this specific loss
For women and the children of women,
My guiding star and the star I wore
For twenty seven years. Nothing of me --------------Star of David?
Is here because this is not my house,
This is not the driver’s seat of my car
Nor the memory of someone who loved me
Nor the distant classroom in which I
Fell asleep and dreamed of lamb. This
Is dirt, a filled hole of earth, stone --------------------Reduction to dirt.
That says return to stone, a broken fence
That mumbles Keep Out, air above nothing,
Air that cannot imagine the sweet duties
Of wildflowers and herbs, this is cheap,
Common, coarse, what you pass by
Everyday in your car without a thought,
This is an ordinary grave. --------------------------------(shortest line--emphasis) Return to beginning of poem, as if implying a cycle
.
SUMMARY - In Levine’s richly nostalgic poem “My Grave,” the speaker confronts his own mortality. He does so by recalling past experiences and memories of life in a way that encapsulates his own essence within the lines, then perforates them with reductive thoughts and realizations about his arriving death. By the end of the poem, the body, life, works, and love of the speaker are ultimately deduced to nothing but the dirt of “an ordinary grave”.
.
ANALYSIS - Initially, we have the image of a grave marker: a tombstone with the speaker’s misspelled name. At first look, the misspelling of the name can be interpreted to imply that a gravestone is a inaccurate representation of who a person was, however on second take, that misspelling is yet another example of the corrosive nature death inflicts--suggesting even a name cannot escape its rapacious clutches.
From this idea of the irreducibility of death, which is even described in terms of elements, the most basic components of matter, the thought process is driven down memory lane. Since photos are seized moments of the past, we can assume by concluding that once “stimulating” photographs ultimately “meant nothing” the speaker is assigning an empty value to things in life that were once cherished.
This perspective of the speaker is suspiciously confident in its pessimism, as if it were stating facts known from the experience of being dead. Support for this comes in several forms throughout the poem. The first example occurs when his sister asks if his last will and testament can be thrown into the grave and “shoveled under”. The language used to describe this reaction gives the reader a sense of dissatisfaction on the sister’s behalf, showing disregard for her willed assets as if they were as worthless as dirt. Conversely, this reaction could also be read as a rejection of the inevitable, dismissing assets as valueless without the life of the person they belonged to. The most indicative example of a posthumous narrator lies in the lines, “…my one/ answer the full bellied laugh I saved/ for my meeting with God, a laugh I/ no longer need.” If the laugh was one he saved for the meeting of God, that is, after he died and met God, claiming to no longer need the laugh means one of two things: the speaker has already died, or he will never meet god when he does--the later of which has heavy atheistic tones appropriate to the momentum of the poem (if he is not imply a meeting with the opposite: the devil). What is more persuasive to the posthumous narrator hypothesis is the verb tense used. The speaker says “even my forehead is not here,” and “nothing of me is here”. It is important to note that he does not use the future tense by saying “nothing of me will be here”.
The systematic subtraction of the speaker’s assets, ranging from a forehead to journals, poems, and love, is not the only subtraction going on. There is a much more general “air” to the poem that carries an omnipresence of defeat. This is best captured in the line, “Not one foolish hope of mine is here, for none was real and hard, the hope that the poor stalked from their cardboard houses to transform our leaders, that our flags wept colored tears until they became nothing but flags of surrender.” That generalness Levine is writing about is the American dream. It is something, like all of ones hopes and memories and loves, that is intangible. Unlike what is commonly associated with the American dream, however, Levine is not speaking about a rags to riches model. The change those is cardboard hope for is one more ideal, one that would have to do with the spirit of America, an internal change beginning with the leaders. Though, like everything else is the poem, that too is drained of life until it resembles the ghostly pale defeat of a surrendered flag.
At the conclusion of the poem, there is a return to the opening. Maybe ending at the beginning is meant as some to suggest a sort of cyclic nature of birth and death, but maybe not. In the end, the reader is left with the image of the grave as it sits atop the dirt distinguished only by commonness. As readers, Levine has left us staring at a common gravestone--that could very well be our own--pondering the universality and inevitability of death, as both the poet and speaker have.
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| jwong999 | My Grave | 0 | Nov 22 2008, 11:44 PM EST by jwong999 | ||
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Thread started: Nov 22 2008, 11:44 PM EST
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II
My Grave Just outside Malaga, California, lost among the cluster of truckstops there is a little untended plot of ground and weeds and a stone that bears my name, misspelled, and under the stone is dirt, hardpan, more dirt, rocks, then one hundred and one different elements embracing each other in every way they can imagine so that at times they remind me of those photographs I saw as a boy and which I was assured were expensive and stimulating and meant nothing. There are also over a thousand beer bottle caps one of my sons was saving until he calculated that he would never reach a million and so quit. (Quit saving, not drinking.) One document is here, ceremoniously labeled “My Last Will & Testament.” My sister so hated it she threw it into the bare hole and asked that it be shovelled under. Not one foolish hope of mine is here, for none was real and hard, the hope that the poor stalked from their cardboard houses to transform our leaders, that our flags wept colored tears until they became nothing but flags of surrender. |
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