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To
review a selected Thomas Merton of any description is somewhat daunting; the
prolific Catholic convert and Trappist monk was a legend in his own lifetime
and since his untimely and unusual death his cult has increased, drawn to the
tensions he embodied: an extreme outsider with his finger on the political
and cultural pulse, a deeply religious soul who travelled the whole journey from
fervent traditionalism to radical embracing of renewal, revision, and
interfaith dialogue; a man who was never quite sure he was in the right job -
being a busy monk instead of a reclusive hermit; and- perhaps most intriguing
to the casual reader or even those who think they have the measure of Merton
- the wise contemplative, vowed to celibacy, who could fall in love with a
young woman and write a stream of lyrical love poetry.
Merton the poet, if fact, embodies all these tensions, and this New
Selected Poems walks the reader through the Merton poetic
spectrum. I liked the section headings - 'Poems of the Sacred'; 'Songs of
Contemplation' containing some of the most lyrical, spiritually sensitive
poems; 'History's Voices'; 'Engaging the World', comprising the grounded
wisdom of the politically engaged thinker. Don't be put off by the apparent
specialism of other sections, either. 'Poems from the Monastery', for
instance, is neither over-localised nor over-pious, but has the eloquently
beautiful 'Elegy for a Trappist' with its vivid, fresh metaphor of truck
headlights flooding the monastery garden for that 'dark before dawn' instant.
It also has the genially casual 'Solitary Life', which, instead of engaging
with spiritual formation has its narrator divulge that '[I] Shave twice a
week / Maybe'. As for prayer: 'I don't talk / About all that / What is there
to say?' - a nicely disingenuous account of silent contemplation.
It's relatively easy to detect a 'Beat' cadence or two in some of Merton's
more dry, laconic lines. But literary influences and acknowledgements in his
writing are far and wide: Merton was a well read man, and not just in English
language poetry, as other sections show. There are his tribute poems, his
translation poems, the Taoist fables which address such questions as:
Is it better
to give up one's life
And leave a
sacred shell
As an object
of cult
In a cloud of
incense
Three
thousand years,
Or better to
live
As a plain
turtle
Dragging its
tail in the mud?
(find out Chang Tzu's answer in 'The Turtle')
Merton is more than a ventriloquist, however; he feels his way into his
subjects, his voices, and even when whimsical the poems are accessible,
memorable. This from a poet who could also publish the shocking anti-poetry
of 'Original Child Bomb': the stark, numbered, prose-poetry paragraph by
paragraph account of the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima, also included in
this volume.
Merton as a poet is vast, and contains multitudes. And he also has an
affinity with the pure emptiness, the nothingness, which poetry, as well as
mysticism, touches on. Hence his love of the night - his exalted journal
passage about being alone on the monastery 'fire watch' comes to my mind. It
is not included here, though the spirit of the night watch runs through the
more contemplative pieces. But what of the personal Merton, the use of all
his vast skill and assuredness in written communication when it comes to the
personal, the raw, and the fresh perspective which is the blood jet of
poetry? I've saved looking at this Merton until later just as Merton himself
discovered personal love, it would seem, in his mid fifties, in the young
nurse referred to as 'M'. She moved him both spiritually and physically, and
the previously barely-circulated poems written for her are included in this
selection, and are all the more moving for their sense of late-learned wonder
and innocence.
Because I am
always broken I obey my nurse
Who in her grey
eyes and her mortal breast
Holds an
immortal love the wise have fractured
('I
Always Obey My Nurse')
And this love which was of course, in the long term, impossible ('If only you
and I / Were possible') generates the soft longing of 'Evening: Long Distance
Call'; the poignant consolation of parted lovers looking at the same moon,
and the ephemeral sensuality a brief meeting provides: 'Your blue skirt / Is
wet with melted ice / And Sauterne'; '...let me lie down / Under the fragrant
tent / Of your black hair' ('May Song'). Who was it who said that poets were
in love only with love when they wrote such poetry? Perhaps these vulnerable
fragments prove the point, perhaps its opposite. But in the context of this
substantial selection they certainly confirm that Merton was unafraid to
witness to his own experience. And, for all his learning, religious
dedication, and legendary reputation, Merton's poetic heart was a very human
one, and all the more compelling for that.
© Sarah Law 2005
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