[Ttha-potm] "Lying Awake'

[Betty Cortus]

While it is true that too-literal a reading can have its limitations,  
it is also dangerous to read more into a poem than is actually  
there.  Reading as closely as I can, I still fail to find evidence of  
the benignity and sweetness that others do.  In my own experience,  
night-time thoughts whilst experiencing insomnia, are not always  
pleasant. Everyday events can become disturbingly distorted.  I find  
no sign of human life in the poem, and its place is taken by  
inanimate objects undergoing a necromantic vivification. Nor do I  
find evidence of love. In place of eros I sense  thanatos — or as I  
observed in my introduction a kind of life-in-death, as those cold,  
engraved names take on an eerie lifelike quality, creating a pull  
towards the grave.  The poem is not without a strange beauty. The  
stark branches silhouetted against the lightening sky are picturesque  
enough to entice the speaker to want to draw them.  But the landscape  
is empty of humanity, and human emotions are absent. After the  
colorless neutrality of the main body of the poem the final line has  
an ironic reversal that brings with it a shudder.  Am I the only one  
who reads the poem this way?

Betty

On Mar 12, 2009, at 4:15 PM, Rosemarie Morgan wrote:
>
> In feel we have been rather misled this month by too many literal  
> readings, too much focus on the macabre..
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