And that, of course, is one of the "secrets" of creating a truly remarkable poem-- utilizing one's own feelings in such a masterly way as to speak to many related kinds of emotional contexts.

Hardy for the most part wrote his poems in the first person, but that first person, that "I," was almost never Hardy. Rather it was Ralph Blossom, or a "trampwoman," or a young lover, or the adulterer of "The Two Wives." Occasionally, however, Hardy placed himself into his poems, and the 21 lyrics of "Poems of 1912-13" are the most notable examples of this occasion. And yet, for all their specificity of detail, their emotional sources are so broadly human, and Hardy so loath to write autobiography instead of poetry, that there is virtually nothing within them that smacks of the dreary confessionalism we have come to know so well.
     The best poems of the sequence-- the most musical, the most vividly imagistic, the most involving-- are three spoken by "Hardy" and one spoken by the deceased "Emma," though her name, like Hardy's, nowhere appears in the poems. Such reticence is typical of Hardy, as is his decision to name the grouping flatly and mechanistically, rather than with some florid allusion (*All My Pretty Ones*, anyone?). Likewise the opening poem-- and one of the best-- is simply entitled "The Going."

Why did you give no hint that night
(Hardy begins by asking)
That quickly after the morrow's dawn
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone [. . . ?]

The emotional directness is notable, as is the "universal" application-- Hardy, here, could be any grieving man who has lost a somewhat estranged wife and has realized, following her death, how much he still needed her and how much he now regrets their estrangement. For that, truly, is what the poem is about-- not simply the loss, but the loss compounded by the bad years that preceded it. In fact, with the exception of a couple of pronouns and nouns, the speaker of this poem could as well be a widow as a widower, or a child mourning a parent. And that, of course, is one of the "secrets" of creating a truly remarkable poem-- utilizing one's own feelings in such a masterly way as to speak to many related kinds of emotional contexts.

Hardy, who insists in poem after poem upon the finality of death, nonetheless imagines the ghost of Emma shadowing him ...

Even so, "The Going" would not be a fine poem, for all its applicability, were Hardy's language and music not so nearly flawless-- for it is language, and not psychology, that creates poetry. And I say "nearly flawless" because the first stanza, which opens so well, stumbles badly immediately following the quote above:

. . . up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow. . . .

Ugh! you might well say-- and quite rightly. Hardy here allows his devotion to music and stanzaic complexity to overrule his critical eye. But he recovers his grip on the poem, and it moves on with grace and precision.
     He follows "The Going" with "Your Last Drive," a poem which I cannot help but think must have been an indirect, if not direct, inspiration for one of the most famous of W. S. Merwin's poems, "On the Anniversary of My Death." Here Hardy mourns, not the date of Emma's death, but the fact that on her last drive she passed the place where she would soon be "resting in peace"-- without, of course, knowing it. He imagines that, if he had taken that ride with her, a sort of writing would have shown on her face, a message of what was about to be, though neither he nor she would have been aware of it.

"I go hence soon to my resting-place;

You may miss me then. But I shall not know
How many times you visit me there
Or what your thoughts are, or if you go
There never at all. And I shall not care."

He freely agrees with her, acknowledging that she will not know what he will do after she dies, but he will keep his private commemorations anyway. The poem is full of ashes, both in Emma's "hard" deliberations denying any consciousness beyond death and in Hardy's stern refusal to flinch from the space that separated them even when Emma was alive. But the calm, evenly pitched movements of its verse make the bitterness easier to stand.
     In "Rain on a Grave" he contemplates Emma's resting place again, this time during a downpour. He anthropomorphizes the rain clouds which

     spout upon her
Their waters amain
In ruthless disdain

and considers how she, if living, would have

     shivered with pain
As at touch of dishonour
If there had lit on her
So coldly, so straightly
     Such arrows of rain.

This leads him to remember, with a touching romanticism, her past actions to avoid being drenched in a summer shower. He concludes by imagining the grass and flowers that will grow not simply on the ground above her, but actually from her, who loved the natural world

     beyond measure
With a child's pleasure
     All her life's round.

In this poem, despite its bleak title and harsh beginning, Hardy is able to see a kind of substantive continuance past death, but-- more to the point-- he is able to move backward into memory, and then to bring that almost humorous memory forward into a new, and much lighter and more accepting, rumination upon death.
     The fourth of the strongest poems in the sequence, "The Haunter," gives its entirety into Emma's voice. Hardy, who insists in poem after poem upon the finality of death, nonetheless imagines the ghost of Emma shadowing him-- almost like a guardian angel-- listening to the words he speaks to her who is gone, traveling wherever "his fancy sets him wandering," including "places / Only dreamers know." Perhaps most remarkable is the engaging, and heartbreaking, sweetness of Emma's care, the lack of anger or bitterness at their difficult marriage, the tenderness of her solicitation. And just as Hardy had noted her love of nature in "Rain on a Grave," here she takes the time to mention the "shy hares" and night rooks that live where dreamers go. There is, for me, an irresistible aura to this poem that suggests over and over the "spirit" most of us imagine Emily Dickinson to have been, and I cannot help but wonder if Hardy had read any of the early editions of her work.

"Poems of 1912-13" should be much more widely known, especially among poets who wish to learn how to craft the raw material of their emotions into "poems", instead of mere vignettes cast in flat prosy lines.

"Poems of 1912-13" should be much more widely known, especially among poets who wish to learn how to craft the raw material of their emotions into "poems", instead of mere vignettes cast in flat prosy lines. I would like to see a day when these mostly marvelous poems are set to music-- as so many of Heinrich Heine's poems have been-- and I would like to end this essay by suggesting that readers looking to study the most powerful twentieth century evocation of "negative" emotions abandon "The Waste Land" and look instead to this sequence.

Mail to Cooper Renner

Cooper Renner also reviews books and engages in various critical activities for the online magazine 'elimae', under the name b. renner. He is a published poet and a very eclectic fellow.