So, I'm in two poetry classes...a Creative Writing Poetry class and a Studies in Poetry class...so combined they're very interesting. In the Studies class, we're reading some Stanley Kunitz, someone who I can't decide if I like or not.
Today, we read
The Wellfleet Whale and I ended up very sad inside. I can't find it online anywhere, or I'd post a link to it....but I would like to put the first numbered section up (yeah, it's one of those poems that's sooo long it has numbered sections...) so I'm typing it out. Anyway, enjoy.
You have a language too
an eerie medley of clicks
and hoots and trills,
location-notes and love calls,
whistles and grunts. Occasionally,
it's like furniture being smashed,
or the creaking of a mossy door,
sounds that all melt into a liquid
song with endless variations,
as if to compensate
for the vast loneliness of the sea.
Sometimes a disembodied voice
breaks in as if from distant reefs,
and it's as much as one can bear
to listen to its long mournful cry,
a sorrow without name, both more
and less than human. It drags
across the ear like a record
running down.
