{"id":521,"date":"2014-12-21T14:49:08","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T20:49:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/?p=521"},"modified":"2017-12-28T22:31:15","modified_gmt":"2017-12-29T04:31:15","slug":"the-poem-as-locus-walking-through-donald-justices-memory-of-a-porch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/the-poem-as-locus-walking-through-donald-justices-memory-of-a-porch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poem as Locus: Walking Through Donald Justice\u2019s \u201cMemory of a Porch\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angela Narciso Torres, Series Contributor<\/h2>\n

Angela\u2019s series<\/a> attempts to explore through her own writing process and that of the other poets the ancient Roman construct of the \u201cgenius loci,\u201d a guardian spirit that enlivens a place, igniting and inspiring the creative imagination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The poet James Galvin has said that the poetry of place is really \u201ca poetry of self-annihilation.\u201d He writes: \u201cthe poet of place situates himself in place in order to lose himself in it\u2026The poet replaces self with situation, turning himself, as it were, inside out, so that the center of \u2018knowing who you are\u2019 becomes the circumference of uncertainty. The poem as locus mirrors this dynamic, since it is a measured place, possibly with stanzas which has an infinite capacity to contain everything outside it, including the poet.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the poem itself is a locus, then it follows from Galvin\u2019s logic that a poet replaces self with poem, losing himself in it in order to find herself. In no other poem is this more apparent for me than in Donald Justice\u2019s \u201cMemory of a Porch,\u201d in which he uses the economy of the stanza (from the Italian word meaning \u201croom\u201d), to affix a childhood memory onto a permanent world. While I would not consider Justice primarily a poet of place in the way James Wright, for instance, has been known for, Justice\u2019s poems are often reminiscent of his childhood Miami. Known for his use of formal elements and of reinventing traditional forms, reading his poems often feels, to me, like visiting rooms from one\u2019s past, at once familiar and strange.<\/p>\n

Memory of a Porch<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/b>Miami, 1942<\/i><\/address>\n
What I remember
\nIs how the wind chime
\nCommenced to stir
\nAs she spoke of her childhood,<\/address>\n
As though the simple
\nDeath of a pet cat,
\nBuried with flowers,<\/address>\n
Had brought to the porch
\nA rumor of storms
\nDying out over
\nSome dark Atlantic.\u00a0<\/address>\n
At least I heard
\nThe thing begin–
\nA thin, skeletal music–<\/address>\n
And in the deep silence
\nBelow all memory
\nThe sighing of ferns
\nHalf asleep in their boxes.<\/address>\n

\u201cMemory of a Porch\u201d consists of five concise stanzas that alternate between quatrains and tercets. If stanzas are likened to the rooms of a house, then Justice\u2019s first stanza is clearly the entry point, inviting the reader into a personal memory, the memory of, well–a porch. The porch, as we know, is the most public area of a house. An exterior room, it faces the street, inviting neighbors to stop by without feeling as though they have imposed.<\/p>\n

As the poem progresses, the speaker invites us on a journey into the most interior of spaces, where deep memory and feeling reside. The first stanza reveals a memory embedded within a memory–the sound of wind chimes coinciding with the memory of a \u201cshe\u201d who remains unnamed (one imagines an older relative\u2014aunt, mother, or grandmother\u2014speaking to a child).\u00a0 The stability of four lines establishes a sense of being grounded, as if to say, \u201cThis happened<\/i>\u201d with the authority and weight of narrative history. The two-beat lines reinforce this certainty, yet the stanza ends with a comma, like a door held open for the reader to proceed to the interior.<\/address>\n
This takes us to the second stanza, where the actual memory is recounted, though couched in a conditional clause. The stanza is a tercet, which some have deemed an unstable unit because it lacks the evenly balanced support of a couplet or quatrain.\u00a0 Here, the function of the tercet, to my mind, is two-fold. First, it reflects the fragile nature of memory; its mutability over time. The memory, a seemingly innocuous childhood event, (the \u201cDeath of a pet cat\/ buried with flowers\u201d) breaks the two-beat pattern to emphasize the dramatic moment central to the poem. The second function of the uneven tercet is to roll the action forward to the next stanza, heightening tension by increasing the reader\u2019s desire for the predicate of the \u201cas-though\u201d clause.\u00a0 In a poem where only the subtlest action occurs, this becomes an important source of movement.<\/address>\n
The predicate comes in a quatrain, returning to the stability of four two-beat lines. We are back at the porch, but now a darker emotion is introduced: \u201ca rumor of storms\/dying out over\/ some dark Atlantic.\u201d The gravity of those images stand in contrast with the simple childhood memory preceding it, amplified by the unevenness in stanza length. The heaviness of the metaphor suggests how memory can stir up emotional storms by the sheer act of remembering.\u00a0 Did the child notice this metaphorical storm in the woman\u2019s face as she recounted the death of her cat?\u00a0 Does the rumor of storms represent the child\u2019s feeling upon hearing the story, or the adult-child\u2019s, as he recalls the moment? We cannot know this, but can feel certain that the speaker attributes the stirred up chimes to memory\u2019s power to charge the atmosphere with deep emotion.<\/address>\n
The third stanza closes with a period, grounding the moment further. The white space that follows is an immense silence, like the lull after a storm. The sense of quiet that Justice achieves with the use of white space can be most appreciated here.\u00a0 Much happens in this space: reconsideration, followed by a return to the original memory, embodied in the sound of chimes from the first stanza. Here, the speaker qualifies what he remembers. \u201cAt least I heard\/The thing begin\u2014\/a thin skeletal music\u2014\u201d.\u00a0 Again, the unstable tercet. The speaker defers to memory as reflected by the halting phrases. The use of Dickinsonian long dashes contributes to the sense of trying to recover something lost. In this case, it is a \u201cthin, skeletal music\u201d\u2014fragile as memory.<\/address>\n
The white space that follows allows a pause, as one straining to listen. That silence is repaid by an even deeper silence in the last stanza.\u00a0 \u201cAnd in the deep silence\/ Below all memory\/ The sighing of ferns\/ Half asleep in their boxes.\u201d\u00a0 Here we see a solid return to the two-beat line.\u00a0 The stanza reveals what happens at a level \u201cbelow all memory,\u201d going to a deeper, darker interiority than the speaker\u2019s own memory of the porch or the woman\u2019s childhood memory.\u00a0 The use of personification (\u201cThe sighing of ferns \/ Half asleep in their boxes\u201d) rouses a deep, ineffable sense of melancholy and longing.\u00a0 But more than that, it speaks of how memory transforms our perception of the world, as well as our inner lives, in that instant of remembering.<\/address>\n
By using this structure of alternating stanza-shapes, Justice mimics how memories come back to us in waves, waxing and waning like the phases of the moon. What he has fashioned in this poem then is a container for memory, otherwise fleeting and evanescent. That he ends the poem in the box-like quatrain with the image of plant-boxes is no accident. The act of writing this poem, with its deliberate, alternating structure, creates a locus\u2014a holding environment\u2014affixing memory, and thus, the self, onto the glittering, hard objects of a permanent world.<\/address>\n

Works Cited<\/p>\n

Galvin, James. \u201cThe Poetry of Place: James Wright\u2019s, \u2018The Secret of Light. \u2019\u201d http:\/\/www.poets.org\/poetsorg\/text\/poetry-place-james-wrights-secret-light<\/a><\/address>\n

Justice, Donald. \u201cMemory of a Porch.\u201d Collected Poems. New York: Knopf. 2004.<\/p>\n

\u2245<\/p>\n

\"Angela<\/a>Angela Narciso Torres<\/span>\u2018s first book of poetry,\u00a0Blood Orange<\/i><\/a>, won the Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry. Recent work appears in\u00a0Cimarron Review, Colorado Review<\/i>, and\u00a0Cream City Review.\u00a0<\/i>A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Ragdale Foundation, and Midwest Writing Center. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in Chicago, where she teaches poetry workshops and serves as a senior poetry editor for RHINO.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angela Narciso Torres, Series Contributor Angela\u2019s series attempts to explore through her own writing process and that of the other poets the ancient Roman construct of the \u201cgenius loci,\u201d a guardian spirit that enlivens a place, igniting and inspiring the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[121],"tags":[188,186,187,189],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genius-of-place","tag-angela-narciso-torres","tag-donald-justice","tag-james-galvin","tag-memory-of-a-porch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":757,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions\/757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}