Drewest

Abstract

In "Tradition and the Individual Talent," T. S. Eliot wrote, "[Tradition] cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour." This injunction hovers over these poems. They are working for a tradition--something to belong to. In a sense, the subject of their problem is their work--poetry. Therefore that is the work that has had a need to be done. On the one hand these poems represent three years of working to understand one's own tradition; on the other, they represent the struggle of maintaining one's identity in the face of an ever present lineage. Think of identity as a bird's nest--A singular place to return to. The bird nest as subjectivity preferred strict objectivity; although the social aspect of a bird's nest is certainly important, something forces a return to the nest. Moving further inward, the songbird's syrinx, the lyric mode, as opposed to the epic. A sole singer, Sappho and her lyre, and so poetic identity. A bird's nest, a personal tradition, a linguistic conundrum. The opacity of language a paradox: the need language to communicate, ideate, the world; yet the semiotic condition persists, and a thing which signifies is not the thing which it signifies, and so there is a gap. John Clare's "Thee Nightingales Nest" [sic], describes a speaker "creeping on hands and knees through matted thorns / to find her nest. . . ." and so crawls into a tradition. The nightingale's nest is hidden, but curiously so, "where rude boys never think to look." In the grass, not in a tree. On hands and knees "all [seem] as hidden as a thought unborn." The speaker has "nestled down / And watched her while she sung." From the nest issues a song. We hear the song, but we don't see the singer. The bird's nest is an idea and a thing--it is, and stands in for, a thing: clarifying and obscuring. The bird will be outlived by its nest, its singing; the problem, the work; a tradition, an individual; poetry, making.