March
28, 2003
The
Many Meanings
of Things in Robert Shaw's Solving for X
Following the ubiquitous
symbol x from mathematician's chalkboard, to Christian mosaic,
to railroad crossing and beyond in his poem "Solving for
X," MHC Professor of English Robert Shaw asks, "Protean
emblem, how to pin you down?" The poem, which appears at
the midpoint of Shaw's latest book, Solving for X (Ohio
University Press 2002), presents an idea as central to Shaw's
new collection as it was to his earlier works The Wonder of
Seeing Double (1988) and Below the Surface (1999)—the
idea that even the most familiar things carry multiple meanings.
Just as x conveys many cultural, linguistic, and mathematical
meanings, a simple shirt conveys multiple truths about human nature
in "Buyer's Remorse." A too-formal shirt that
"mopes" in the closet, unworn and out of place among
its "humbler neighbors," is as much a symbol of human
error as it is a reminder of life's possibilities—of
"another life / one might have had (or still might), / waiting
to be tried on."
Similarly, annual catalogue orders for spring flowers—placed
despite weeds, pests, and "perennially slipshod husbandry"—signify
both human folly and, at the same time, an endearing and enduring
hopefulness in "Seed Catalogues in Winter."
In "Making Do," Shaw scrutinizes a bootlace that lifts
a piano pedal, onions that replace "seldom-bought shallots,"
and the "spiderweb of circuitry" that covers basement
ceilings. Such repairs and replacements by "clueless amateurs"
deserve the scorn of "well-equipped professionals,"
he concedes, but they also suggest something honorable, even heroic,
about people doing the best they can with what is at hand. "Making
do, we don't always do badly," he concludes.
"Shaw's images repeatedly surprise," says Mary
Jo Salter, Emily Dickinson Senior Lecturer in the Humanities,
"for instance, the hammer and nails of a man tacking up
a Christmas garland, which metamorphose into 'Instruments
of the Passion'. . . . When Shaw finds, at the bottom of
a wishing well, a 'copper-scaled leviathan,' I find
myself wishing I'd thought of that—and of so much
else in this excellent book."
While Solving for X shares the themes, compact language,
and formal versification of Shaw's earlier collections,
its poems range broadly in tone. Several are elegiac tributes
to people and places that have been lost, such as four western
Massachusetts towns razed to create the Quabbin Reservoir ("Drowned
Towns"), all memory of a former student ("Letter of
Recommendation"), and an irritating colleague who leaves
a "present absence" after his sudden death ("Out
of Character").
Many others are humorous,
even satirical. "Maybe my sense of absurdity is getting
sharper, as happens as people get older," says Shaw, "but
I do think satire can be constructive."
In "Anthology Piece," for example, an overanthologized
poem speaks for (and about) itself. A series called "Ten
Epigrams" includes such playful couplets as "Reception
After the Reading": "After prolonged obeisance to
Apollo / a nod to Dionysus ought to follow."
"Anthology Piece" isn't the only poem about
the process and business of writing poetry. A poet called from
his writing desk to rescue a kitten finds an elusive final word
high in a tree in "The End of the Sonnet." In "Espalier,"
a fruit tree thriving on a "crucifying" trellis mirrors
the way a poet's words "spread to the light"
within the restraints of versification. "Remainders"
describes the experience of seeing piles of literary masterpieces
discounted to $3.98 for the remainder shelf.
"The more you publish, the more experience you have with
the commercial life of books and with the strains and embarrassments
of the profession of writing," says Shaw of his poems about
poetry. "Fortunately, 'Remainders' is not a
personal experience of mine, and I have enjoyed plenty of encouragement
at Mount Holyoke and in the Pioneer Valley. For me it is not particularly
hard to keep on writing."
In addition to poetry,
Shaw is currently working on a number of critical pieces, including
a review of the collected poems of Robert Lowell, who was one
of his teachers at Harvard University.
Shaw will read from Solving for X, winner of the Hollis
Summers Poetry Prize, at the Odyssey Bookshop on Tuesday, April
1, at 7 pm.
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