Strange Sexuality Makes
Memorable Lyricism
There
are many things that people consider to be memorable, from a particularly
well-crafted song lyric, to a horrific experience, extreme joys to births,
deaths, and everything in between. So it
is no surprise that something as taboo as sex and sexuality, when used as
subject matter in poetry, becomes a striking and memorable thing. Sexuality becomes particularly fascinating
when an author or poet shows it as skewed or twisted, something most would find
abnormal. There are a great number of
poems that discuss such twisted sexuality, however, the ones I feel to be most
relevant in this instance are Robert Browning’s Porphyria’s Lover, DH
Lawrence’s Love on the Farm, and Allen Ginsberg’s Please Master. What, then, makes these poems so
memorable? I believe Robert Frost
addresses the memorability of poetry in terms of emotion, shock and surprise,
and expression of the artist in his essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes,” which
will aid in explaining why these poems are memorable to readers.
Frost
gives a basic assessment of what exactly poetry is, saying, “If it is a wild
tune, it is a Poem.” He implies that poetry that only sounds good, with pretty
words and lacking substance, is hardly poetry at all, in the lines, “No one but
a humanist much cares how sound a poem is if it is only a sound.” So, what does Frost think poetry ought to be
all about? “It should be of the pleasure
of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in
delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can
really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place.”
Frost claims that poetry must be dynamic, offering the reader a story that
twists and changes, not giving them exactly what they are expecting, but
instead giving them a surprise. Without
this element of surprise, poets cannot expect their readers to remember what
they have read. Frost also argues that
the writer must put real emotion into the poem, “No tears in the writer, no
tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,”
if a poet cannot be moved by their own work, they cannot expect their readers
to be moved. Since Frost expresses that
poetry must be surprising and emotional to be memorable, I think he would agree
that poetry with darkly sensual themes fits the These poems often depict people
in compromised emotional states, relaying their fear or pleasure in great
detail, causing empathy and revulsion in the reader. And with subjects like murder and sexual
domination, it seems that he would agree these poems are surprising and
shocking, or at least would be at the time they were written.
In
Porphyria’s Lover, Robert Browning’s speaker utilizes a dramatic
monologue, describing his act of madness and dark passion. It starts on a dark, wicked night, “The
sullen wind was soon awake/ It tore the elm-tops down for spite/ And did its
worst to vex the lake,” and the speaker’s mood seems to reflect the weather as
he, “listen'd with heart fit to break.” The
speaker is sullen as the wind, then in blows Porphyria, the man’s beautiful
love interest. There are early signs of
his strangeness, though current cultural and social norms would make them far
less noticeable, beginning to emerge as, “She shut the cold out and the storm/ And
kneel'd and made the cheerless grate/ Blaze up, and all the cottage warm,”
which would be a big societal shock, at the time. He lets her light the hearth-fire, which
should have been his task, as the man, and continues to reveal oddities, as he
violates another social norm in the lines, “she rose, and from her form/ Withdrew
the dripping cloak and shawl/ And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied/ Her hat
and let the damp hair fall,” failing to help her off with her outer
garments. The poem gets even more
strange as Porphyria seems to be putting the moves on the speaker in the lines,
“She put my arm about her waist/ And made her smooth white shoulder bare/ And all
her yellow hair displaced/ And, stooping, made my cheek lie there/ And spread, o'er
all, her yellow hair/ Murmuring how she loved me.” This would have been very untoward at the
time this poem was written, hinting at some sort of bizarre relationship
between the speaker and Porphyria. All
of this seems a little off, but nothing yet has been extremely memorable, only
laying the groundwork of their strange intimacy, hinting at sexuality. The shock that Frost demands of the poet
comes at the sudden twist, after her admission of love, in these lines, “That
moment she was mine, mine, fair/ Perfectly pure and good: I found/ A thing to
do, and all her hair/ In one long yellow string I wound/ Three times her little
throat around/ And strangled her.” The
speaker, after realizing that his secret admiration for her was mutual, decided
to preserve her, as perfect as she was in that moment, and strangled her. As though that wasn’t shocking enough, the
speaker goes on to kiss and touch his love’s now-lifeless body, as though she
were still alive, in the lines, “her cheek once more/ Blush'd bright beneath my
burning kiss:/ I propp'd her head up as before,/ Only, this time my shoulder
bore/ Her head, which droops upon it still:/ The smiling rosy little head,/ So
glad it has its utmost will,/ That all it scorn'd at once is fled,/ And I, its
love, am gain'd instead!/ Porphyria's love: she guess'd not how/ Her darling
one wish would be heard.” This,
certainly, offers the sort of shock and surprises that Frost demands poetry
must have. Browning makes the reader
feel revolted, and at the same time, bizarrely fascinated, unable to stop
reading. A concept such as this,
murdering his lover with no provocation so that he can keep her perfect forever
and continue cuddling and touching her, is absolutely a picture of warped
sexuality, a very memorable sort of shock.
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