Two Poems, & A Few Thoughts

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned

into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -

A white cross Streaming across the skyt, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

Explication of Mary Oliver’s poem “The Swan”

This poem dramatizes the speaker’s memory of seeing swan and being struck by its beauty. Using metaphors and similes, the author recreates the vision for the reader. Beyond this, though, the speaker also uses the vision of the swan to make a point about life, what beauty means, and how something as a simple as a swan can change a life.

           

The contrasts of light and dark play an important role in the poem’s purpose. Oliver uses adjectives that will highlight the contrast, using only white and black words and never anything pertaining to color. Her dark adjectives and subsequent nouns are “black river” (line 1), “black beak” (line 6), “dark music” (line 8), “black ledges” (line 9), and “black leaves” (line 12). Likewise, her light adjectives and subsequent nouns are “silvery air” (line 2), “white blossoms” (line 3), “a snow bank” (line 5), “bank of lilies” (line 5), and “white cross” (line 11). These contrasts, drawn from many different pictures of life, serve to support Oliver’s conclusion that in life darkness and light exist side by side.

           

Oliver’s verb choices exemplify a struggle between dark dread and natural beauty. In line one, she draws attention to the swan “drifting” through the night, but in line two, the swan is “rising” from is purposelessness. In line six, the swan is shown “biting the air,” creating a violent of a bird commonly depicted as serene. Line seven, though, resolves this tension, remembering the “fluting and whistling” of the swan. The next few lines alternate the description of the swan as dark and light. The music the swan sings is “shrill and dark” in line eight, but also compared to beautiful images of water found in rain and a waterfall. Waterfalls, though, are found “knifing down the black ledges” in line nine. In contrast, the next three lines describe it as a white cross, “like the light of the river.” Again, light and dark are intertwined throughout the lines of the poem, just like in life.

          

If the reader stopped at line twelve, this poem would be considered an eloquent description of a swan. However, the last three lines of the poem invite a more in-depth reading:

                        And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

                        And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

                        And have you changed your life?

These lines state that Oliver’s purpose in writing is spur the reader’s thoughts towards what the deeper meaning of the swan is. Here there is no mention of the light and dark comparison previously discussed. Rather, through the speaker’s own conclusions about the swan, Oliver is pointing to the longing within all people to find purpose in life through looking at nature. Dough Burton-Christie, a spirituality professor at Loyola University, has written that Oliver wants to know if “seeing more clearly can lead to living more deeply” (Christie 3). Through her poem “The Swan”, Oliver does just that. The speaker sees the swan and understands its meaning: beauty exists despite the presence of darkness with the light. This “seeing more clearly” changes the speaker’s life.

My response to "The Swan":

White Cross

I saw nothing, drifting, all night, save for flashing lights and wild men.

And when the sun rose in smoke filled air,

An orb of conscience burning,

Revealing the chaos mistaken for bliss,

I found myself imprisoned to opinions and desires.

Then I heard it, a fleeting cry across the golden water,

A shrill dark music that shook my soul awake,

Knifing away my heart’s false paint.

And I saw it, finally, where the blue sky pulsed through a gap in the clouds

A white cross streaming, black beak and feet, soft wings all reaching.

And I, who searched for answers in the mad world of happiness,

Found my truth in the white and black flight of a bird.

Then I wanted beauty, hope, life

Wanted meaning with all my being

Because I had seen the swan.

In my response poem to Mary Oliver’s poem “The Swan”, I chose to mimic her in a few different ways. First, I kept to her form of fifteen lines with an italicized last three lines. I also borrowed many of her words as a point of departure for my poem, as in the case of “drifting” (line 1), “in the morning” (line 2), “A shrill dark music” (line 7), “Knifing” (line 8), and “A white cross streaming” (line 10). I also waited to present the ideas of beauty and life in the final three lines in the same way that Oliver did.

           

This poem is meant to differ from Oliver’s poem in that I do not use ambiguity. Oliver chose to phrase her entire poem in questions, but I chose direct statements instead, seeking to convey the speaker’s emotions and thoughts directly to the reader. My response uses much of the same language as the speaker in the “The Swan”, but that language comes out of a different context, although with the same result. The speaker in my poem is inspired, much as Oliver’s speaker, to want meaning as a result of seeing the swan.

Secondary Source

Burton-Christie, Douglas.Cross Currents 46. 1 (Spring 1996): 77.