Thursday, May 8, 2014

I like this word "Redolence"

I had never heard this word before, "Redolence" I had to look it up. I like this word, very much so.

I read a poem by Michael Burch with the title, "Redolence" so I looked up the word.


There ya have it. 

So after I read the definition and read the poem I thought about William Carlos Williams' poem "The Great Figure" because it is sort of imagist. Williams simply describes with emotion a firetruck with sirens blaring moving through the streets of a dark city. But it was more than that. It brought back the feeling of me seeing a firetruck, and the anxiousness I feel. The poem made me see the truck #5 with all its glory moving through the town, attending to the person or family who called 9-1-1. I don't want to over examine the poem, but his simplicity is what makes this poem so effective. There is no b.s. There just is a great figure:

"Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city."

In relation to that is Burch's poem "Redolence." Except, Burch uses similar conventions of sight, but also adds the sense of smell (hints the name). His poem is beautiful:

"Now darkness ponds upon the violet hills;
cicadas sing; the tall elms gently sway;
and night bends near, a deepening shade of gray;
the bass concerto of a bullfrog fills
what silence there once was; globed searchlights play.

Green hanging ferns adorn dark window sills,
all drooping fronds, awaiting morning’s flares;
mosquitoes whine; the lissome moth again
flits like a veiled oud-dancer, and endures
the fumblings of night’s enervate gray rain.

And now the pact of night is made complete;
the air is fresh and cool, washed of the grime
of the city’s ashen breath; and, for a time,
the fragrance of her clings, obscure and sweet."


The sights, the smells. It's like I am there, standing with him and looking out and seeing everything. Now,  Burch uses a few more descriptive words than Williams does, which makes me think of it less an imagist poetry, however there is definitely a clear image and emotion created. I am at peace looking upon the violet hills, listening to cicadas and bullfrogs and watching the trees sway in the wind. I am at peace seeing night creatures dance. I am at peace in the fresh, cool, air, smelling the sweetness of the city. 

Peace vs. Anxious. but both desirous emotions that I loved feeling when reading. And created in a similar way- through simple imagery. I can almost smell the sweet city. 

Maybe I will, maybe I will go out upon the city in the evening and listen, and see, and smell. And maybe I will see a firetruck moving/tense/unheeded 

through the dark city.

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