Close and Slow Pt.7

A Weekly Appreciation of Poetry

**Warning: this week’s poem contains one instance of very strong language¹, and also deals with issues of childhood trauma, adoption and displacement**

Many of us feel a bit inadequate when it comes to reading poetry, perhaps suspecting that there is some higher learning or personal initiation required to appreciate verse. ‘Close and Slow’ is a regular feature here on ‘The Sounding Board’ providing some pointers as to how to read and enjoy poetry, taking an individual poem for each post and highlighting some ways in which it can be read. I trust that these articles might open poetry to those keen to read it but a little overwhelmed- and provide a mustering point for those of us already convinced of the centrality of poetry to life. Previous editions of ‘Close and Slow’ can be read here.

‘A Flowering Absence’ by John Montague

John Montague is a towering figure in twentieth-century Irish poetry. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1929 to Irish parents and sent back to Co. Tyrone while still a child, Montague’s work is warm, lyrical and technically accomplished while still maintaining a conversational tone. Our poem for consideration this week in ‘Close and Slow’ is his autobiographical piece ‘A Flowering Absence’. As will be seen below, this is an emotionally devastating piece of work, but one which provides a path through trauma and adversity.

In most ‘Close and Slow’ appreciations of poetry, we follow a simple process that allows us to be attentive to the context, contours and application of each poem. This consists of the following imperatives:

1. Listen to the voice of the poem

2. Put form first

3. Identify clear themes

4. Piece it all together

Listen to the voice of the poem

When it comes to the work of John Montague, ‘voice’ is of the utmost importance. There is an inherent music in his poetry, an easy lyricism and melody which allow the poem to sing as well as say the truth. Perhaps more than any poet in this series so far, reading Montague aloud will go a long way towards understanding what he is saying and how he is saying. ‘A Flowering Absence’ was one of the first poems that I ever ‘got’ as a teenager, directly receiving its language and latent emotion without much need for explanation or study.

I am confident that readers will find the same reality for themselves as they engage with this week’s poem. As always, taking time with this step in the process of appreciating poetry is indispensable and lays a powerful foundation for our understanding and enjoyment of the work. Reading ‘A Flowering Absence’ out loud two or three times in a row will do more work for us than engaging with a dozen critics about the poem:

Put form first

This week’s poem is quite plain in expression, with refreshing narrative transparency. This means that formal commentary is more brief than usual, offered with an encouragement to readers to dive deeply into the poem for themselves and discover its treasures.

In terms of how it is expressed, ‘A Flowering Absence’ is laden with verbal flourishes, but liberated from formal rules. This is typical of Montague’s overall style, which insisted that line length be governed by the sound and feel of conversational language rather than the opposite. This gives the poem a natural voice but we attribute informality to Montague at our peril. No formal scheme is adopted, but rhyme pieces the meaning of the poem together, creating a sensation by how certain words are linked.

Taking the first verse as an example we can see how much weight Montague places on words like ‘bloom’, ‘room’ and ‘womb’. The idea of blossoming in the desert is linguistically tied to his mother’s sickness (‘room’) and his connection with her by birth (‘womb’). As we will see later, the poet believes that his birth was a factor in his mother’s failed health, and these connections give an early sense of culpability on his part. It is also striking that the first stanza is the only one in the whole poem that carries consistently full rhyme - perhaps a nod towards the disjunction and dissonance in which the rest of the piece traffics.

Lines three and four use alliteration to devastating effect, ‘taut’, ‘terror’ ‘time’ and ‘taken’ tick like a clock mid-stanza, giving a sense of the long separation Montague has endured from his mother. This device also foreshadows the poet’s stammer that follows the traumas of childhood, which is only resolved in the last verse. The poet’s skill here is consummate, weaving very elaborate literary features into a verse which is heartfelt and plain in meaning. This is the unique genius of poetry where, in distinction from prose, words do much of the emotional work by themselves, leaning on texture and tone to provide meaning.

Montague’s humble precision of language, disarmingly descriptive terms like ‘flayed womb’, ‘lichened with sores’ or ‘dolphin delight’, and the steady emotional trajectory that the poem follows, all combine to render us emotionally raw in the light of the poet’s experiences.

Identify clear themes

The beating heart of this poem is ‘absence’, specifically that of the poet’s mother. Despite its technical dexterity, Montague writes in a transparently autobiographical way, laying bare in plain terms what he has suffered. The narrative of ‘A Flowering Absence’ sits right on the surface and invites us into the poet’s grief and struggle. In a sense, the whole poem is an answer to its opening question: ‘How can one make an absence flower,/lure a desert to sudden bloom?’ Montague wants to explore how he can negotiate with loss and make it something that expresses life and vitality.

The background details of the poem can be helpful here. Montague was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, James Montague and Molly Carney. With the failure of his mother’s health, and a lack of stability in his father (who is depicted as frequenting his own brother’s speakeasy in the poem), Montague (aged four) and his three brothers were sent back to Ireland by Molly. On arriving in Co. Tyrone, the three brothers were homed with family in Fintona, while John was placed with two kind aunts in Garvaghey (a townland that will receive repeated references in Montague’s work). Taking these factors into account the poem can be read again more profitably - click here for an online edition.

The big themes that Montague highlights are loss, trauma, insecurity, and marginalisation. The whole poem seeks to unpack the meaning of his being disowned by his mother ‘Year by year, I track it down/intent for a hint of evidence’. This search permeates his own parenting, and the questions that dislocation brings will not be lightly dismissed nor easily resolved:

There is an absence, real as presence.
In the mornings I hear my daughter
chuckle, with runs of sudden joy.
Hurt, she rushes to her mother,
as I never could, a whining boy.

All roads wind backwards to it.
An unwanted child, a primal hurt.

As we will witness in a moment, the only palliating factor in the piece is poetry itself - a medium which provides some form of expression of the wound which the poet has borne throughout childhood and adult life.

Piece it all together

The combination of Montague’s poetic skill and personal candour makes this an emotionally difficult read, but it also provides a pastoral point of entry for our traumas and troubles. We can powerfully bring this poem home by allowing it to instil empathy for others in our hearts and as a means of us expressing griefs of our own that are not easily articulated.

The close of the poem is a key to how we can see its message applied in our own lives and those of others. School for Montague was a place of ridicule, particularly concerning his way of speaking,

So this is our brightest infant?
Where did he get that outlandish accent?
What do you expect, with no parents,
sent back from some American slum:
none of you are to speak like him.

This scorn gives Montague a stammer which he cannot come to terms with for twenty years, labouring under his ‘lode of shame’ that the teacher heaped on him,

And not for two stumbling decades
would I manage to speak straight again.

It is here that poetry comes in,

Grounded for the second time
my tongue became a rusted hinge
until the sweet oils of poetry

eased it and light flooded in.

What is fascinating here is that the reader is invited into the process of the poet wrestling with his trauma and finding some resolution. We journey with him from Brooklyn to Ireland, from family to exile, from delight in language to avoidance of it, and the means of our inclusion is the very medium that oils the poet's ‘rusted hinge’ tongue and allows him expression once again. In this sense the poem incarnates the process it describes, giving expression to Montague’s sorrow even while it is being written, heard or read.

Montague’s generosity to us is that he shares his story, but also provides us with a way of coming to terms with our own. Where logic and the experience of life cannot bring us to a place of healing, expression can - particularly in this case the expressive power of art. Poetry opens the poet’s mouth, allows light into the darkness of abandonment and rejection, and sweetens what is irreducibly bitter.

We come to this poem receptive to Montague’s story but as bearers of our own history and the custodian of others’ griefs as well. What are the unavoidable and irresolvable issues in our own lives? What does our mind revisit without remedy over and over again? What inscrutable traumas and griefs stalk our own experiences and enjoyments in life and those of the people we care about?

‘A Flowering Absence’ allows us to see that things can even bloom in this space, that articulating our traumas in spaces that can safely receive them, bringing our terrors and trials to the restorative qualities of music, visual art, and song can be part of the process of coming to terms with things. This is a gift to us, a common grace call to see that in carefully visiting what has dogged our lives via creative beauty and curation, we can find a way to live with such things.

The poem’s voice and artistry can touch the nerves that are so raw and bare in us, and they can invite us into a fraternity with Montague and all of those around us who are likewise broken. This poem speaks the unspeakable, and shares the unshareable, in an authentic way, but also in a way that pastorally invites us to do the same. Art matters, and often art can uniquely make sense of our sorrows, our unspoken losses, our bitterly borne crosses.

1. Referencing strong language is a perennial dilemma for writers from a Christian background/worldview like mine. My policy is simple: if the language is contextually appropriate and not gratuitous, it is entirely allowable and, perhaps, essential. In the case of ‘A Flowering Absence’ the F-word used is crucially expressive of the poet’s experience of exile and dislocation.