The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me Analysis

     "the withness of the body" --Whitehead


The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

.: :.

The heavy bear is, of course, the body that is always with a person.
In stanza one, it “goes with me”; in stanza two, it “sleeps with me”; in stanza three, it “walks with me.” The poet stresses the “withness” of the body by the epigraph from the philosopher, Whitehead.
The heavy bear also represents the uncivilized primitive core of the human personality. It is the "id" of Freud, the "unconscious mind" of the psychologists, the hard-to-control brute within each one of us. Altogether, the poem gives a frank and unflattering twentieth-century view of human life.
The poem is not merely an appraisal of the individual, it is also severe social criticism of our times, as shown by the bear boxing “his brother in the hate-ridden city” and by the final line, “The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.” Heavy bears go with all of us.
Appropriately, the verse is highly irregular and the rhymes are sparse until the climactic last lines. Throughout, the diction is violent, gross, and unprettty.
Saints and poets through the ages have chronicled the endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit, but nowhere in modern verse has this struggle been portrayed with greater power than it is in “The Heavy Bear.”

| Posted on 2009-04-22 | by a guest