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8.2
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(17
votes)
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Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red-bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand-lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street—
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
Stanley Kunitz
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Read poems about / on: school, mother, red, family, father, sad, children, green, sky, world, god, night, sister, child
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Comments about this poem (Halley's Comet
by
Stanley Kunitz
) |
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Austin Bailey
(3/2/2009 2:41:00 AM) |
I keep a mental inventory of favorite poems and this poem is on that inventory's short list. The poem is what I would call a 'perfect poem.' Perfect in the sense of length, of metaphor and imagery and of pitch. Kunitz, as is the case in Halley's Comet, balances on that fine line of lyricism/memory and sentimentality, or of being overly sentimental. He isn't overly sentimental in my opinion, thus the pitch of the poem is perfect because it has so much emotion packed into it-emotion that comes from recalling a memory and turning that memory of shared event into a complex narrative about life and time and desire and familial relations-without being sappy or over-the-top sentimental. One doesn't get bored or complacent when reading this poem. As aspiring poets, myself being in that reprehensible category, as are, perhaps unfortunately, most avid readers of poetry are, we inevitably read a lot of poetry-and do so daily. Thus we are always hungry for what is currently being written and for new poems that we haven't read and new poets we haven't heard of. Yet, all this stimuli can lead us to both being more active and interested readers and also, at times, at least as far as myself is concerned, restless with the amount of work some contemporary poems demand while at the same time offering very little rewards. Thus, for me, a perfect poem, as I mentioned before, is one that says what it needs to say efficiently and transmits a powerful image and idea with language that is both sturdy and flexible. Sturdy in delivery but flexible in meaning. All the fat has been burned off of this poem. It doesn't read like a meta poetic lecture rather than a poem, as some (and of course not all) contemporary poems do.
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Cody LeGros
(11/16/2006 9:48:00 PM) |
I agree with you except that I think there could be another meaning to the poem, depending on how you want to interpret it. I think this poem in is very, very sentimental. When refering to father, I believe he is talking about his own father, who killed himself 6 weeks before he was born. So I think this is yes about the confusion that comes along with childhood, it may show his longing to actually be able to finally meet his father. He talks about feeling excited at dinner and the way in which he describes where he lives might show that he had moved since his dad died, this though is purely speculation. I suggest reading the poem The Portrait after reading this, if one is not familiar with Kunitz.
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Eric Paul Shaffer
(7/22/2005 4:04:00 PM) |
This is a clear and honest poem about childhood. There is no sentimentality here, just the familiar misunderstandings we all had when we listened to what adults said about a world to which we were still new. What I like about this poem most is that these lines recall that most of us have never come down from that midnight roof.
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