Carmel Point Analysis

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

.: :.

Ok this message is BS.
"The extraordinary patience of things! " You are going to open your poem with a reference to "things"? That is so nondescript as to be meaningless
"This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-"
These are not just houses they are homes. To you know people. People like to live amid beauty. What is ugly are attitudes like the one expressed.
"How beautiful when we first beheld it," Who is we? ANother meaningless reference with no bearing on the topic.
"Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-"
Why couldn't the poem have started like this. Why not use the license to stimulate the imagination?
"Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve" Now the topic turns ugly. Since there is no beauty to speak of if it cannot be beheld. The poet is exposing ugliness at the core of his being.
"Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite" And just exactly how does an image live in an inanimate object?
"Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-" And just exactly how does a seemingly endless ocean conjure up the image of safe? More BS
"We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;"
WTF - This must be the drugs kicking in
"We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident as the rock and ocean that we were made from." Oh gimme a break. Unhumanize? I don't think the poet is human. Confident? That's out of left field. How does that relate? Where does that take this poem?
Into the garbage can as quickly as possible.
And tell Jeffers to ease up on the drugs and start loving poeple a little more.

| Posted on 2008-08-05 | by a guest