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Issue/Publication: Asheville Poetry Review, Vol 14, No 1, Fall 2007

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A CREEK, BACKWARD FLOWING*

Robert B. Cumming

 

First Published in The Asheville Poetry Review, vol. 14, no. 1, 2007

 

Over 30 years ago Allen Tate commented: "In my opinion George Scarbrough is one of the few genuine poetic talents to appear in the South in the past generation." About the same time James Dickey remarked: "George Scarbrough's poems have carried him deep into the very heart of the Southern land. The medium is words, and on the superbly imaginative use of these, he has arrived at the deepest roots, beyond what could be imagined by anyone less than a true poet." Two additional generations of poets have come and gone, and the Scarbrough canon continues to expand both in size and importance as his most recent work is collected and studied, and as the overall shape of his accomplishment becomes better understood.

 

George Scarbrough is approaching his ninety-second birthday as I write this. Though he is no longer writing, the spark and intelligence that has infused so much of his writing for so long, is still apparent. His poetic voice is unique in a way that makes it almost instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent much time reading his work. Most of the commentators on George's work have mentioned his lush extravagance of language, the precision and originality of expression, the creative use of metaphor, and the wide range of other rhetorical devices that make his poems both a joy and a challenge. Beneath the "pyrotechnics" is a vision so steadfast and clear that, though some aspects have evolved with time, the core of the message has never changed. I believe that George's work, which appears to start with an isolationist regionalism, has such wide appeal and universal meaning because of the unwavering consistency at the core of the poems. In his poem "Though I Do Not Believe," Scarbrough finds the conventional religious myths compelling, but not believable in any objective sense, serving as a way of organizing and talking metaphorically about the true meaning of life, which for him centers on nature and human relationships.

 

I want to examine the musicality, intensity, and originality of George Scarbrough's work, through the lens of a single poem which has not yet appeared in any of his books: Good Friday: New Mexico, 1955. The poem was originally published in The Sewanee Review in 19671, so it has just passed its fortieth anniversary. Hailed just after its publication as one of the most important poems of the 20th century by several well known poets, it surprisingly has never been widely discussed outside of the literary community.

 

Scarbrough's poetry raises inevitable questions about his poems' meaning and original intent. The poems are rich and dense enough that they often give rise to multiple interpretations, which may all be valid. There is no right or wrong; interpretation is not a zero sum game. However, it is interesting to see what the poet himself has had to say about the remembered impulses that drove "Good Friday" into being. The following is a previously unpublished excerpt from a passage of George Scarbrough's journals that discusses "Good Friday." As in many of the passages from George's journals, this one is not dated, but it was probably written in the mid 1990s, about thirty years after the poem was originally published.

 

From the Journal of George Scarbrough:

 

Last night at my house, reading "Good Friday, New Mexico, 1955," Jim Britt called the poem a great mythic construction. It is certainly mythic. Whether it is great is an opinion. The myth of the boy and the man is entrapped in the greater myth of Christianity, whose central aim is to be interpretive of all other myths that have gone before and those still to come. Free from school for the summer, the travelers, student and mentor, have come west to a strange, dry land on a journey of search and enlightenment, only to be dazed by a place that, in its barren waste, reminds the mentor of some Dantean Hell, with its blasted landscape and the dark terrors of the flat western earth after the sun has plummeted out of sight and the darkness surges up from the earth to cover all day things.

 

The man and the boy seek cover in an abandoned house on the edge of the arroyo in whose potholes of water they have gone fishing. Between the failure of light and the uprushing darkness, they have an instantaneous glimpse of a bright-skinned antelope leaping across a still-lit corridor of light, and fleeing away. The man thinks of the myth of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Whatever the boy surmises in terms of myth, he says nothing. The knife in his hand, however, in the startlement of the wisdom, moves and pierces his palm. The aloneness, the darkness, the sickle moon over a butte only confuse the issue further, for the man. Some beast is howling in the darkness. Coyote, the man says. Myth fails as a shield against the terror and nothingness of sudden night. The man kisses the child's hand in grief as he tries to staunch the hand's wound. Love, he knows, is the only answer available to him and his ward. In the bleakness of the place, all reference to myth fails except the myth of love. Neither the Indian myth nor the white man's myth stand up to comfort. They no longer fit the circumstance, no longer offer a mythic comfort. Redemption is not in chant or other ritual.

Together, they sleep in the abandoned house, whose windowpanes have so recently flooded with the glares of sundown, and are now indiscernible in the darkness. They sleep on the rim of the arroyo, on the edge of explanation. Far away, high on a hill, they can see, still faintly illuminated, a tamarisk tree. Under Jim's persuasive reading, I could see quite plainly, again, that only human love is redemptive in whatever time or place. Under whatever kind of tree. There are always little trees, even in the strangest of countries.2

 

The importance of the sonority, the sound of the language, in "Good Friday" as well as in other Scarbrough poems, is easily demonstrated by taking a passage and reading it aloud and comparing the experience with reading the same passage silently. The difference is profound. A number of critics have commented on the musicality of the phrasing in Scarbrough's poems, and that property is beautifully apparent in "Good Friday." Forrest Gander remarked: However various their forms, Scarbrough's poems are all remarkable for a vocabulary so richly sonorous, so elegant and exact, they have few contemporary equals. And later in the same article he added: The generous reader must allow Scarbrough's poems their own agency, for they develop not in linear fashion, but heuristically. We encounter the poem as a sheer force. Measured in heavily stressed accents, the intoning voice is hieratic. The unconventional language borders on ecstasy. Compulsive rhythms wax and wane, regulating the poem's intensity according to Scarbrough's deft deployment of punctuation.... Living in the shadow of the Appalachians, opposing what he calls "the meagre, strictured, fundamentalist life I was born to in the county," Scarbrough discovered that language itself was freedom.3

 

* * *

 

George Scarbrough's attitude toward the shaping of language is illustrated in a brief excerpt from an interview published previously in Asheville Poetry Review in which he discussed a different poem with Robert Cumming:4

 

RBC: But as it turns out that is a very interesting poem for other reasons. ["The Motion of Thought" Ed. note] I think the reason that your poetry is so successful is the very marvelous and creative way that language is used.

 

GS: It's more the language, even in the narrative poems. It's more the language than the narrative.

 

RBC: And I think not only in your poetry, but all really good poetry, it has to be the way the language is used.

 

GS: The way the language is put together. I do like, however, a narrative to begin with, to have in the back of my mind for reference. But language is totally crucial because anything stated in one fashion may be stated in another, but in better style, better diction, better syntax. I think it's all words in a way.

 

***

 

So for Scarbrough, language is the artistic medium he uses to create the effect he seeks, like a composer uses sound, or a sculptor uses clay to create the desired effect. The denotive message must be there as a seed, but it is always expressed in a structure that goes well beyond any simple statement of "fact." In his introduction to the 2nd edition of Tellico Blue, Rodney Jones expressed it this way: Scarbrough's exile is within the language that his countrymen reject, in the place he calls Eastanalle, in body, and most notably, in his exacting and musically compelling intellect.5

 

 

Few poets compare with George Scarbrough with regard to intensity of emotion; it is expressed in the entire body of his work. When Scarbrough's New and Selected Poems was published by Iris Press in 1977, it precipitated a flurry of reaction, and most of the comments focused on the omnipresent passion of the entire three-hundred page book. Rodney Jones, in a review published in the following year6, said: When I first read the book, I was staggered by Scarbrough's pyrotechnics and by the power of his images. I wondered why I hadn't heard more about the man before. Then, when I read the book two more times and had understood more of his obsessions and eccentricities, I was still too awed to begin a review. Later in the same review, Jones comments: These poems, among the finest written in the South in the past few decades, are a direct chronicle of the development of a poetic style so individual that it invites comparison with Hopkins or Thomas. These comments are not atypical and, a careful reading of "Good Friday" reveals the same passionate involvement throughout, in the pacing, diction, and content.

 

George Scarbrough's work has fluttered in and out of public consciousness for over 60 years, and is now experiencing a period of resurgence. The work will endure, and perhaps be considered in the future even more important than it is today, partly because it is stylistically unique and has influenced so many other important literary figures. Rodney Jones commented in a1999 article5 on the Scarbrough legacy: In Southern country poetry, Scarbrough's early work is a lonely representative of the generation between the Fugitive Poets and James Dickey. At its best, it deserves comparison with Hardy, Robinson, and Frost more than with Ransom and Tate. It is of such precise focus that it does not seem to represent any place so large as a region. Its emphasis is on the natural order more than the aesthetic landscape, and community relations more than regional politics. And later in the same article discussing the impact of George's early poems: Much of "Tellico Blue" will seem antique to contemporary readers, but those who look beyond the manners of the lesser poems will discover the stuff that James Dickey described as 'a landmark of American poetry.' Scarbrough's genius has been well served by a life lived so close to the source of his poetry.5 The same set of issues were addressed by Malcolm Glass in comments on Scarbrough poems published in Spirit magazine:7 As I read his "New and Selected Poems," back when it was published in 1977, I came to see that attempts to identify this great body of poetic work as regional were futile and silly.... Here was a man who sees clearly (and in true color), the elements and events of everyday life, the matters of a home-like world, such as dead cats; who knew well the understanding and wisdom of people intimate with simple life, the folk he has lived among since his birth. Yet Scarbrough sees beyond the facts life presents us to perceive the mysteries, and to give them back to us in the only possible way, in metaphor. I had come to see, then, that George was not only a poet of nature, or Nature, but a transcendentalist as well.

 

"Good Friday" then, is a microcosm that puts on display the major features that have richly textured the vast and complex body of George Scarbrough's work for six decades. Fresh nuances are added from time to time, as in the period from about 1995 to 2004, when Scarbrough wrote almost exclusively in the voice of an alter ego, Han-Shan, the ancient Chinese poet. The same search for meaning in nature and in human relationships, the same passion and intensity, the same complex and inventive use of language, and the same ingenious use of metaphor are seen in the Han-Shan poems as were seen forty years ago in "Good Friday."

 

* For a reference to the origin of the title of this essay see my blog post of March 1, 2009.

 

REFERENCES

 

1. Scarbrough, George, "Good Friday: New Mexico, 1955," The Sewanee Review, vol. 75 (1967) pg. 232.

 

2. Scarbrough, George, Excerpt from unpublished, undated journal entry. Probably from about 1995.

 

3. Gander, Forrest, 1996, "The Inflorescence of Variety: Four Iconoclastic Southern Poets." New Orleans Review, 22: 105-114.

 

4. Cumming, Robert B., 2000, "A Conversation With George Scarbrough." Asheville Poetry Review, 7: 122-129.

 

5. Jones, Rodney, 1999, "Entering Tellico Blue," Introduction to 2nd edition of Tellico Blue by George Scarbrough, Iris Press, Oak Ridge, TN: vii-ix.

 

6. Jones, Rodney, 1978, "Stafford and Scarbrough: In the Contemporary Sense. "Black Warrior Rev, 5.1: 99-108.

 

7. Glass, Malcolm, 1984, "George Scarbrough: A Retrospective."Spirit, 50 (Fall-Winter): 71-75.

APPENDIX

 

GOOD FRIDAY

(New Mexico, 1955)

 

George Scarbrough

 

The fish leaped toward the hand in lightness

And finished in dark, wet splendor

The little journey:

Sudden deep dark took the house from the land,

The willow from the waterhole:

There was nothing, in the steep ditch

But a voice, wondering,

And a step seeking reassurance

Among stones: then he came to me,

Bringing the bright fish conquered in darkness,

The cold hand,

The turned face, startled by sunset,

The swift faring in this day-dead land.

 

Are you there?

He said, beside me, the wet fish at my neck

As he found an answer in the thin curve

Of his arm, as his hands

Throttled the head once source of all this world:

 

I am here, I said, myself wondering

Where here was.

 

But the fish, dead already in the searing air,

Stenched at my nostrils, and over his

Shoulder I gagged at the new moon:

In the dark, his smile murmured

At this small devilry, but his hands held,

And his face, over the thin tree of his neck,

Had silver in it, as I held him,

Fish-forced in knowledge:

 

Here was now, New Mexico, 1955,

And spring turned odd, out of its context coming.

 

Only the new moon above the tamarisk in the bare yard

Rose equably: the moon that awed him,

The house he would not enter,

And the tree whose plumes kept the creaking wind

In a stage of music.

 

My poem begins with Larry:

A dry month in a dry country spent

With a loving child;

Begins here, now, at dark this evening,

On this prairie in a steep ditch,

Important as transfiguration,

Under a new moon.

 

It is no mere matter of speech,

The world is shaking: under

The skin of things a motion flicks

Mightily at the outside,

A streaking surge fulminating in the willows,

A flurry arising in the immediate darkness.

 

Yet the house incorporates the swell,

The tamarisk does not affect its music,

And no rock falls.

We have been dashed together in another land

Where earthquake eyes precipitate a landscape:

No tremor here unless the grouse, bellowing,

Are seismic counters of the world's malaise.

 

II

 

Look, Larry, the new moon,

Lighter than wood made in the light west,

Is thinner than a tree-ring in a dry year.

We will make a torque of it for the doe

Your heart owns as of this evening, a light torque

That will lean upon her neck

Without breaking the finest hair,

Even on the aghasting leap in the red

Ditch your blood ran shame to when the eyes

Looked beyond the knife's periphery

And the hand received.

 

How your blood dropped, Son,

In the crucible of my hands holding

Your hand!

How the bright wetness sang

In the sand between us,

I cursing the knife,

You praising the deer with your eyes,

While the hot sand sang

Of usual crucifixions, the wind

Blew in the ditch and a scrap

Of weed bounced towards the mountains.

 

Larry, forgive me if I saw the face

Of love and fury wedded in the west,

Kissing the welling wound to make

It well again.

I am not sorry, Son, I loved you.

 

But we will make a halter of the moon

To lead the calf by in those arroyos

Where your young heart will now be finding her forever:

Make it with our words now

Under the tamarisk tree while we wash

The bloody knife in water.

 

Come to the basin in the hollow stone,

Son, the font where love's faith

Will cleanse the instrument of love's disloyalty:

Dip the knife in the cloudy stream

A scarlet second in the stream's hour,

Son, Son, my Son, 0 Larry!

The sediment darkens and sinks away

In the gray face below the stone

That is not either of our faces,

But a third face drinking the sweetened

Flow. See it going, parabled,

Down among the sediments and fishes

Drowning its own poor lightning in less light!

The trinity has fed again!

 

The art is over, and the glimmering blade

Dries in the dead air. Clean, dean

Is the footed nail under the cactus hill,

The spiked knoll of evening glowing anguish

Where the light is. The wind stirs

The tamarisk tree to subtle music, your eyes,

Grayer than the fruits of wind, look

Beyond me, higher than the sun, to

The sunrays, pass to the peak,

Then to the mesa where the priest fell

Down hard walls to soften anger.

The art is done, Larry.

I see again that I am alone.

 

Son: speaking:

Why have you forsaken me,

Animal with the feet rare as rain?

The wind blows in the red ditch;

The tamarisk heaves soundlessly;

By the dry well,

The house leans, one-eyed, on the land:

There is no vision left

After the wild earnest leaping.

Why have you gravely forsaken me?

Father: answering:

Beware the vision repeated, Son!

Made plural, it decorates odd houses

Whose disciples, tying your dream

To a drift of their exploded stars,

Compose strange letters to the folks at home.

Look at me now:

I sit at your feet, not to correct your vision,

But to follow it.

The antelope will not come again.

 

Son: in bewilderment:

Not come again!

Animal with the teasing feet

And the shinbone round as a branch of broom,

Not come again!

In the evening when the light,

Going west like stars,

Hangs in the wake of your flying feet,

Not come again!

 

Father: in pain:

I have washed your hands, Larry.

I would wash your feet as readily

To prompt the vision, once again

Raising the bright accidents of fortune

To the reach of both of us.

I would do this, knowing better.

But the antelope will not come again,

Not for a year of summer only,

Not for a day of only morning:

Not come again.

 

Son: not believing:

Not come again, Father?

Say, not come again?

 

Father: determined:

Though you give the knife away,

Though you throw in the rocks

The knife you love, the six-inch lover

Against your loin, the white steel

Gleaming in its deerhide cover,

Tipped with a doe's heel,

The antelope will not come again!

Not come again to heart's flurry,

Or hand's hurt in this tamarisk land,

For each man holds the death of his vision

In a dirty hand:

No washing will obscure it,

No praise or prayer cure it:

The antelope will not come again.

 

Son: in desperation:

She went with the light, Father,

And the light will come again.

 

Father: finally:

Son, the gulch darkens to obsidian:

In blood is the color of darkness,

The rich blackness of dry love.

The land leans over the rainpool;

In sweet, heavy water a fish leaps

But not for lovely leaping: the dean

Coolness of night air

Calls him from the gathered tilth

Into the living open.

But it is not so for us.

Under the tamarisk tree is no heaven,

By the rainpool is no harbor

But of ghosts, and of one

Ever so lightly, gravely leaping.

Let us go, Larry, into the house

Where we shall find such blessings

As are granted us. Goodnight

To the whole round question growing

In the dark, the huge, the houseless.

In the house we shall find protection

From the painful interest of love

Which the antelope flees now

In the cracks of the hills.

She too is the death of her vision,

We too are the death of our vision,

As God was, at the murder of His.

There is nothing left but a corner,

A low corner in an old house,

Where love combats the source of its healing.

And always a tree somewhere crowning

The slope of a hill.

Somewhere, Son, always a tree.

 

III

 

Total darkness, like total war,

Aimed at the house its black fallacies,

Or dark modes of truth, where

Interpretation slept in its half-rounds:

The tamarisk bruised the house

With windy music all night,

Letting the smother of plumes

Into the low corner, making

A distance for the heart to fall in;

And, stung by strident plumes,

Pelted by peacock color, the heart

Rolled the hours forward

In the beginning

To invarious midnight,

To wayward two o'clock in the morning:

Arch time when between

The object and its art is a gulf

Too monstrous for conception,

Arroyo beyond which, in the icy world,

Goes the last fable;

To the hour when the pool settles

In cavern blackness, and the heart,

Like a blind fish, nosing its way through the night,

Rests. In total darkness. In total peace.

No longer breaking for a hand,

In the androgynous peace of worms,

The heart rests in the great

Solitariness of night.

In a gust of sleep forgiven.

 

Night. Unprevious night. When man

And boy slept in a small place

Under the whips of the tamarisk tree,

And small crucifixions kept their times

On the little trees of memory,

Until a deer, returning, drank from a bright pool

And the dream failed,

In a gust of sleep forgiven.