Forgive the long quote but one of the strands of your beautiful essay, how we cry over fictions, reminded me of the soliloquy from Hamlet above. I'm really intrigued by what you say about memory and imagination, and how our departed loved ones become imaginary...Perhaps at some level our brains cannot distinguish fact from fiction, after all. It's a scary thought, though. Maybe we just live in Hamlet's "dream of passion."
Thank you for the Hamlet speech which is so appropriate. As I write more narrative works I realize how much tension is created by our perceptions of reality, particularly in relationships with other people. This is why betrayal stings so terribly—assumptions about our security or someone’s love for us can be wrong. However, in the case of those who pass away, our need to feel loved and love another doesn’t go away. One realizes that a relationship is created by two imaginations. Each party will never know how much the other loves them. It is all based on assumption, on imagination. For instance, I cannot truly know how much my husband loves me. I must believe it given the ample evidence that I have. Likewise, he will never completely know my love but our marriage is based on the truth that it is there. Imagination is amazing. It can drive fear and anxiety, but it can be the engine of hope and faith.
“In the case of those who pass away, our need to feel loved and love another doesn’t go away. One realizes that a relationship is created by two imaginations.“ That's a lovely reflection, Zina.
"Given the faulty nature of recollection, this is terrifying. Complete loss is all but inevitable as one loses the ability to reliably recall the details of the one you love."
So much new and interesting and touching in this. My children and I loved Charlotte's Web too. It's amazing to learn that E.B. White himself cried so much when trying to record the ending. I love the idea of the single thread of a web in the poem connecting him to his wife, Katherine, when they were apart. BTW, she wasn't divorced when they met. Her husband was a frank in-your-face philanderer. By Catholic lights, there is no such thing as the end of a valid marriage, for any reason. And divorce was a scandal in those days, as it should still be in ours. She was a phenomenal editor and The New Yorker owes its classy identity to her, because she elevated it above the comic paper the founder envisioned. Since her love was with literary matters, she was not a distant mother and not interested in making a home. But they lived according to the lights they had.
Thank you, Roseanne! Yes, I had the impression when I was doing research that Katharine was in a miserable marriage, not divorced. Andy was six years her junior. And their first meeting in the waiting room of The New Yorker she was still with her terrible husband. It also seems that her husband raised the children after the divorce, although her son ended up following in her footsteps—even literally working from her old office. Interesting story. I think for me I was trying to convey that she was divorced from her husband prior to running away with White. I did not articulate that successfully in my essay. Mea culpa.
No big deal. My thought is that E. B. White's marriage with a divorced woman, no matter how miserable, who neglected her children because her interests lay in New York and a literary life is not laudable, even though it's romantic from a worldly point of view.
I am SO HAPPY you like this essay! I hope people who have not seen your poem will remember it and look up more of your work (and Tim’s and the Whites).
For the record, there are tears in my eyes. Thank you for sharing these poems! Wondrous got the tears going, but your comment on love poems turning to grief poems is going to stay with me. I have fond memories of crying through the end of Charlotte’s Web with my children and so many other books as well. It is true that the imagined tragedy of books hits adults differently than children while preparing them at the same time for tragedy in their futures. Wondrous makes me wonder how my children will remember all of those read aloud sessions when someone had to fetch mom a tissue. They know it is coming when I slow my reading pace and pause before continuing. I am sure my nose turns red before the tears begin to fall. Sometimes I know it will happen and other times, if the book is new to me as well, it comes from left field. Shared books are one of the threads that tie us to each other and your post served as a memento mori moment for me, a reminder that the bookish threads I weave will outlast my physical presence.
Thank you so much for your comments. I am so glad that Sarah’s poem resonated so much with you. I just love it, and it was years ago when I first saw it — but I still think of the poem often, especially as a poetry student now. I was thinking of posting this essay to the Close Reads thread on Substack and the group on Facebook because the reason why the poem came up is because Coley had asked the name of this poem, and I had it off the top of my head.
“I believe all love poems, if you wait long enough, become grief poems.”
That’s a line that could be in a poem.
Wondrous somehow sits in a spot in my brain next to Ada Limon’s poem The Raincoat. I suppose because both are about adult children thinking back lovingly about their mothers.
Oh thank you! Definitely going to listen to this. Wondrous has been one of those poems that has stuck in my heart. I can't remember when or where I stumbled across it.
Also, both poems involve the speaker driving in the car, listening to the radio. And both involve the adult child having a sudden deep insight or illumination about their mother's experience. Suddenly realizing a depth that wasn't accessible to them as a child, but now a door opens, a light clicked on, and they see. Oh maybe I need to write an essay about Wondrous and The Raincoat....
I had gotten permission to reprint Sarah’s poem. She will likely let you reproduce it if you ask her. I don’t know about Ada Limon, but if you just use select lines then it is fair use. I get around this by linking to the full text of the poem.
Was there a finer writer of prose than E.B. White? I love the way this essay wanders with grace and purpose between love and mourning, poetry and prose. White’s silken thread binding him to Katharine reminds me of Robert Frost’s “The Silken Tent,” which has grown on me over time. https://allpoetry.com/The-Silken-Tent
I have never seen that Frost poem before! That is so beautiful and very much related to what I wrote. E. B. White was such an exquisite prose writer. I borrowed his collection of verse and essays, and the pieces just delightful. It’s very much what the husband of a keen, witty editor of The New Yorker would write. Charlotte’s Web is as close to a “perfect” novel as one could ever create. Not a spare word. Every scene significant and every character is bone and flesh (or exoskeleton in the case of Charlotte). Thank you for your kind comments. I admire your writing so much! And thus, your words mean so much to me.
"O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wann'd,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing!
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak,
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damn'd defeat was made."
Forgive the long quote but one of the strands of your beautiful essay, how we cry over fictions, reminded me of the soliloquy from Hamlet above. I'm really intrigued by what you say about memory and imagination, and how our departed loved ones become imaginary...Perhaps at some level our brains cannot distinguish fact from fiction, after all. It's a scary thought, though. Maybe we just live in Hamlet's "dream of passion."
Thank you for the Hamlet speech which is so appropriate. As I write more narrative works I realize how much tension is created by our perceptions of reality, particularly in relationships with other people. This is why betrayal stings so terribly—assumptions about our security or someone’s love for us can be wrong. However, in the case of those who pass away, our need to feel loved and love another doesn’t go away. One realizes that a relationship is created by two imaginations. Each party will never know how much the other loves them. It is all based on assumption, on imagination. For instance, I cannot truly know how much my husband loves me. I must believe it given the ample evidence that I have. Likewise, he will never completely know my love but our marriage is based on the truth that it is there. Imagination is amazing. It can drive fear and anxiety, but it can be the engine of hope and faith.
“In the case of those who pass away, our need to feel loved and love another doesn’t go away. One realizes that a relationship is created by two imaginations.“ That's a lovely reflection, Zina.
"Given the faulty nature of recollection, this is terrifying. Complete loss is all but inevitable as one loses the ability to reliably recall the details of the one you love."
This reminds me of a science fiction story by John Crowley on that theme: https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/snow/
Thanks for the link! I will check it out.
So much new and interesting and touching in this. My children and I loved Charlotte's Web too. It's amazing to learn that E.B. White himself cried so much when trying to record the ending. I love the idea of the single thread of a web in the poem connecting him to his wife, Katherine, when they were apart. BTW, she wasn't divorced when they met. Her husband was a frank in-your-face philanderer. By Catholic lights, there is no such thing as the end of a valid marriage, for any reason. And divorce was a scandal in those days, as it should still be in ours. She was a phenomenal editor and The New Yorker owes its classy identity to her, because she elevated it above the comic paper the founder envisioned. Since her love was with literary matters, she was not a distant mother and not interested in making a home. But they lived according to the lights they had.
Thank you, Roseanne! Yes, I had the impression when I was doing research that Katharine was in a miserable marriage, not divorced. Andy was six years her junior. And their first meeting in the waiting room of The New Yorker she was still with her terrible husband. It also seems that her husband raised the children after the divorce, although her son ended up following in her footsteps—even literally working from her old office. Interesting story. I think for me I was trying to convey that she was divorced from her husband prior to running away with White. I did not articulate that successfully in my essay. Mea culpa.
No big deal. My thought is that E. B. White's marriage with a divorced woman, no matter how miserable, who neglected her children because her interests lay in New York and a literary life is not laudable, even though it's romantic from a worldly point of view.
Charlotte's Web is timeless. I reread it every year.
Thanks so much, Zina, for this beautiful essay. I love Tim Steele's work and am honored to share a post!
I love your poem, Sarah!
Thank you!
I am SO HAPPY you like this essay! I hope people who have not seen your poem will remember it and look up more of your work (and Tim’s and the Whites).
For the record, there are tears in my eyes. Thank you for sharing these poems! Wondrous got the tears going, but your comment on love poems turning to grief poems is going to stay with me. I have fond memories of crying through the end of Charlotte’s Web with my children and so many other books as well. It is true that the imagined tragedy of books hits adults differently than children while preparing them at the same time for tragedy in their futures. Wondrous makes me wonder how my children will remember all of those read aloud sessions when someone had to fetch mom a tissue. They know it is coming when I slow my reading pace and pause before continuing. I am sure my nose turns red before the tears begin to fall. Sometimes I know it will happen and other times, if the book is new to me as well, it comes from left field. Shared books are one of the threads that tie us to each other and your post served as a memento mori moment for me, a reminder that the bookish threads I weave will outlast my physical presence.
Thank you so much for your comments. I am so glad that Sarah’s poem resonated so much with you. I just love it, and it was years ago when I first saw it — but I still think of the poem often, especially as a poetry student now. I was thinking of posting this essay to the Close Reads thread on Substack and the group on Facebook because the reason why the poem came up is because Coley had asked the name of this poem, and I had it off the top of my head.
“I believe all love poems, if you wait long enough, become grief poems.”
That’s a line that could be in a poem.
Wondrous somehow sits in a spot in my brain next to Ada Limon’s poem The Raincoat. I suppose because both are about adult children thinking back lovingly about their mothers.
Ada actually read "Wondrous" in an early episode of THE SLOWDOWN. September 2021, I'm thinking . . .
She did! https://www.slowdownshow.org/episode/2021/09/24/509-wondrous
Thanks! Forgot to drop the link . . .
Oh thank you! Definitely going to listen to this. Wondrous has been one of those poems that has stuck in my heart. I can't remember when or where I stumbled across it.
Thanks so much! That poem has gone places!
Here's my contribution to the conversation:
https://open.substack.com/pub/melaniebettinelli/p/the-wondrous-raincoat?r=6loo5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Also, both poems involve the speaker driving in the car, listening to the radio. And both involve the adult child having a sudden deep insight or illumination about their mother's experience. Suddenly realizing a depth that wasn't accessible to them as a child, but now a door opens, a light clicked on, and they see. Oh maybe I need to write an essay about Wondrous and The Raincoat....
I had gotten permission to reprint Sarah’s poem. She will likely let you reproduce it if you ask her. I don’t know about Ada Limon, but if you just use select lines then it is fair use. I get around this by linking to the full text of the poem.
You need to write this on your own substack! This would be great.
I just need to find the time....
Such a full essay: the poems and a bit of history and a love story, to boot!
Was there a finer writer of prose than E.B. White? I love the way this essay wanders with grace and purpose between love and mourning, poetry and prose. White’s silken thread binding him to Katharine reminds me of Robert Frost’s “The Silken Tent,” which has grown on me over time. https://allpoetry.com/The-Silken-Tent
I have never seen that Frost poem before! That is so beautiful and very much related to what I wrote. E. B. White was such an exquisite prose writer. I borrowed his collection of verse and essays, and the pieces just delightful. It’s very much what the husband of a keen, witty editor of The New Yorker would write. Charlotte’s Web is as close to a “perfect” novel as one could ever create. Not a spare word. Every scene significant and every character is bone and flesh (or exoskeleton in the case of Charlotte). Thank you for your kind comments. I admire your writing so much! And thus, your words mean so much to me.
My mother used to teach that poem. It’s a bit obscure, which compounds its specialness.