unracked, the wet still-dripping creels being tipped
into the grading tray, alive with life.
Our seas provided black-eyed velvet crabs
with small horns ridging their top plates. The work:
to grade by size, Those big as a fist, they pointed -
big as a heart, I saw - were lifted out
as worth a better price. Hours, you would weigh
by hand and eye and a slow part of the mind,
young jeweller at a tray of breathing stones;
arbiter at the filling, refilling box.
The night progressing until the shed light
drew out thick moths. To work was to find yourself
drawn in - or was it drawn back - to something
careful and mysterious, hard-shelled and resistant.
My difficulties with this poem begin with the first line. I’m assuming the ‘job’ was not to watch the tipping of crabs at all, but to sort them.
The word ‘unracked’, has no qualifier, as the review above points out, so I don’t know who or what the ‘unracked’ refers to.
I can guess it is the ‘wet still-dripping creels’.
I am not sure why the writer needs both ‘wet’ and ‘still-dripping’ when ‘dripping’ would probably be enough.
The creels are ‘being tipped/ into the grading tray, alive with life.’ Is it the creels being tipped, or is it actually their contents that are being tipped? It must be the later. And it must be the grading tray that is ‘alive with life’. The tray wouldn’t be alive with death, would it? The life in question is explained in the next stanza.
‘Our seas provided black-eyed velvet crabs’. This seems a strangely detached and prosaic line. When I reached the end of the poem, I really wanted to have some idea
of what velvet crabs looked like as I didn’t really get a sense of them, alive or otherwise, from the poem. I looked them up and found they have
‘vivid red eyes, dark blue stripes on their legs and a blue lapis lazuli
tint to the tips of its claws. The short, soft hairs that cover the velvet crab’s body make it appear velvety, hence its name.’
I’m not sure why none of this detail is of interest to the poet, but it isn't my poem, so there we go.
I do find it strange that the (very distinctive) red eyes of these crabs are black in his poem.
The poem continues ‘The work’ (followed by a colon, although I’m not sure why) is to ‘grade by size’ (or just to size, because that is all that is happening) Those big as a fist, (I’m not sure why this is capitalized and italicized) they pointed-
Who are ‘they’, I wonder? People presumably pointing ‘to’
or ‘at’ or ‘out’ the crabs that were ‘big as a fist’.
‘big as a heart, I saw’ - (again, why the italics?).
Can the speaker see the crabs that are as big as a heart, but
not the ones as big as a fist? Why are ‘they’ pointing out some and not others? What are ‘they’ doing there? Is their ‘work’ to point?
Another problem here, is that the human heart is approximately the size of a fist. I might know this because when I was nurse I learnt some anatomy, but any check on ‘how big is the heart; usually gives the answer ‘about the size of a fist’.
These crabs were ‘lifted out’, but by whom? I find myself wanting to know or see or feel a little detail- salt smell maybe, where the crab is gripped to avoid it’s flailing pincers, and is the person lifting them wearing gloves, I wonder?
The phrase ‘as worth a better price’ strikes me as having odd
syntax, but I guess that’s because it is there to half-rhyme with ‘mind’ a couple of lines further down.
I’m not sure how fast the work can be, because it involves ‘a slow part of the mind.’
The speaker appears as ‘young jeweller at a tray of breathing stones’
I wonder, in what way is a crab sorter like a jeweller? I have a family member who worked in a jewellery shop, and I can’t make the connection. Nor can I make a connection with someone working with jewels to make jewellery, a very skilled task. Anyway, jewels are not ‘alive with life’. Not that these crabs seem to be, as they are described as ‘stones’.
The word ‘arbiter’ bothered me in this context , and I wasn’t sure why until I looked it up and confirmed that it is generally used for someone who solves an argument and decides what is to be done in a disagreement. I suppose it is used as an alternative to ‘sorter’ or ‘grader’, but it doesn’t really fit the job or crab in hand.
To work was to find yourself
drawn in - or was it drawn back - to something
careful and mysterious, hard-shelled and resistant.
I’m not sure what the ‘something’ is that the self in question is drawn in or back to.
The careful, mysterious ‘thing’ remains a mystery to me. Presumably the sorter of crabs is careful, but not the crab, which is probably a bit mysterious, and is certainly hard-shelled and, despite being like a stone in this poem, presumably resistant.
I don’t always react badly to abstracts, but I’m lost here.
Then we have the repetition, in italics, of ‘Big as fist or heart’,
which we know to be roughly the same size. Why is this line repeated? Is it because hearts and fists are somehow symbolic things, and merely mentioning them might conjure something of a feeling of depth and gravitas for some readers? I don’t know.
The same rain falls
on that shed and on this house. I did it five years,
and then did it for the rest of my life.
The ending seems a little rushed in terms of pace
I’m guessing the ‘same rain’ is a link between two places.
It seems rather obvious and not much of a revelation
to state that clouds move across the land and drop rain on a couple of places. ‘I did it’ refers to crab sorting, ‘and then did it….’
to something else, not crab sorting at all. The ‘it’ or crab sorting
has become a metaphor for another ‘it’, which I am guessing
is choosing words or writing poems? The only thing is, the crabs that were sorted were as ‘big as a heart or fist’ (the same one-sized, easily identified thing, essentially) so I don’t think the metaphor succeeds. And the fishing, of course, was done by others.
How does the title ‘Apprenticeship’, fit? Was the writer an apprentice crab sorter for five years? I think not, so the inference must be that the work prepared him, metaphorically, for writing poems, but I can’t make the leap myself, much as I would like to ‘buy into’ the poem.
For poems that use metaphor brilliantly, see Don Patterson’s ‘Why Do You Stay Up So Late?’ ,
where Patterson's son 'played the jeweller' with stones in a conceit that carries through the poem, or anything from Heaney’s debut, ‘Death of a Naturalist’.
A beautiful poem to open with! It improved my day.
Can a bee quiver 'like a just struck match'?
The flame can quiver,but does a match? Visualise a match burning. It wilts and blackens and shrivels and drops away.
I found the Gerald Manley Hopkins poem nonsensical, and not in a good way.
The quote from Hopkins that is the title is
'I am so happy- I loved my life'
Campbell writes
I read/ this strange, this hard emphatic
'life is good'.
But Hopkins didn't say 'life is good'. He said exactly what he said in the quote and it wasn't that.
Hopkins, according to the poem,said this 'at the door to nothingness'.
But Hopkins was religious, and so it seems unlikely that he would have considered death to be 'the door to nothingness'.
The nothingness answers, and suddenly there are deserts. Why?
Hopkins is 'auraed' in sweat.
Isn't the definition of aura something that 'seems' to exist? A fever sweat drenches, soaks etc. and is tangaible.
The end makes no sense to me at all. I sometimes like poems that don't make sense , but not this one.
A beautifully written article about one of my all time favourite poets. Niall's poem 'Beginnings', loose and lyrical, brought the sun to my afternoon.
I would like to offer a take on this poem.
Apprenticeship
Dusk on the water, the job was to watch,
unracked, the wet still-dripping creels being tipped
into the grading tray, alive with life.
Our seas provided black-eyed velvet crabs
with small horns ridging their top plates. The work:
to grade by size, Those big as a fist, they pointed -
big as a heart, I saw - were lifted out
as worth a better price. Hours, you would weigh
by hand and eye and a slow part of the mind,
young jeweller at a tray of breathing stones;
arbiter at the filling, refilling box.
The night progressing until the shed light
drew out thick moths. To work was to find yourself
drawn in - or was it drawn back - to something
careful and mysterious, hard-shelled and resistant.
My difficulties with this poem begin with the first line. I’m assuming the ‘job’ was not to watch the tipping of crabs at all, but to sort them.
The word ‘unracked’, has no qualifier, as the review above points out, so I don’t know who or what the ‘unracked’ refers to.
I can guess it is the ‘wet still-dripping creels’.
I am not sure why the writer needs both ‘wet’ and ‘still-dripping’ when ‘dripping’ would probably be enough.
The creels are ‘being tipped/ into the grading tray, alive with life.’ Is it the creels being tipped, or is it actually their contents that are being tipped? It must be the later. And it must be the grading tray that is ‘alive with life’. The tray wouldn’t be alive with death, would it? The life in question is explained in the next stanza.
‘Our seas provided black-eyed velvet crabs’. This seems a strangely detached and prosaic line. When I reached the end of the poem, I really wanted to have some idea
of what velvet crabs looked like as I didn’t really get a sense of them, alive or otherwise, from the poem. I looked them up and found they have
‘vivid red eyes, dark blue stripes on their legs and a blue lapis lazuli
tint to the tips of its claws. The short, soft hairs that cover the velvet crab’s body make it appear velvety, hence its name.’
I’m not sure why none of this detail is of interest to the poet, but it isn't my poem, so there we go.
I do find it strange that the (very distinctive) red eyes of these crabs are black in his poem.
The poem continues ‘The work’ (followed by a colon, although I’m not sure why) is to ‘grade by size’ (or just to size, because that is all that is happening) Those big as a fist, (I’m not sure why this is capitalized and italicized) they pointed-
Who are ‘they’, I wonder? People presumably pointing ‘to’
or ‘at’ or ‘out’ the crabs that were ‘big as a fist’.
‘big as a heart, I saw’ - (again, why the italics?).
Can the speaker see the crabs that are as big as a heart, but
not the ones as big as a fist? Why are ‘they’ pointing out some and not others? What are ‘they’ doing there? Is their ‘work’ to point?
Another problem here, is that the human heart is approximately the size of a fist. I might know this because when I was nurse I learnt some anatomy, but any check on ‘how big is the heart; usually gives the answer ‘about the size of a fist’.
These crabs were ‘lifted out’, but by whom? I find myself wanting to know or see or feel a little detail- salt smell maybe, where the crab is gripped to avoid it’s flailing pincers, and is the person lifting them wearing gloves, I wonder?
The phrase ‘as worth a better price’ strikes me as having odd
syntax, but I guess that’s because it is there to half-rhyme with ‘mind’ a couple of lines further down.
I’m not sure how fast the work can be, because it involves ‘a slow part of the mind.’
The speaker appears as ‘young jeweller at a tray of breathing stones’
I wonder, in what way is a crab sorter like a jeweller? I have a family member who worked in a jewellery shop, and I can’t make the connection. Nor can I make a connection with someone working with jewels to make jewellery, a very skilled task. Anyway, jewels are not ‘alive with life’. Not that these crabs seem to be, as they are described as ‘stones’.
The word ‘arbiter’ bothered me in this context , and I wasn’t sure why until I looked it up and confirmed that it is generally used for someone who solves an argument and decides what is to be done in a disagreement. I suppose it is used as an alternative to ‘sorter’ or ‘grader’, but it doesn’t really fit the job or crab in hand.
To work was to find yourself
drawn in - or was it drawn back - to something
careful and mysterious, hard-shelled and resistant.
I’m not sure what the ‘something’ is that the self in question is drawn in or back to.
The careful, mysterious ‘thing’ remains a mystery to me. Presumably the sorter of crabs is careful, but not the crab, which is probably a bit mysterious, and is certainly hard-shelled and, despite being like a stone in this poem, presumably resistant.
I don’t always react badly to abstracts, but I’m lost here.
Then we have the repetition, in italics, of ‘Big as fist or heart’,
which we know to be roughly the same size. Why is this line repeated? Is it because hearts and fists are somehow symbolic things, and merely mentioning them might conjure something of a feeling of depth and gravitas for some readers? I don’t know.
The same rain falls
on that shed and on this house. I did it five years,
and then did it for the rest of my life.
The ending seems a little rushed in terms of pace
I’m guessing the ‘same rain’ is a link between two places.
It seems rather obvious and not much of a revelation
to state that clouds move across the land and drop rain on a couple of places. ‘I did it’ refers to crab sorting, ‘and then did it….’
to something else, not crab sorting at all. The ‘it’ or crab sorting
has become a metaphor for another ‘it’, which I am guessing
is choosing words or writing poems? The only thing is, the crabs that were sorted were as ‘big as a heart or fist’ (the same one-sized, easily identified thing, essentially) so I don’t think the metaphor succeeds. And the fishing, of course, was done by others.
How does the title ‘Apprenticeship’, fit? Was the writer an apprentice crab sorter for five years? I think not, so the inference must be that the work prepared him, metaphorically, for writing poems, but I can’t make the leap myself, much as I would like to ‘buy into’ the poem.
For poems that use metaphor brilliantly, see Don Patterson’s ‘Why Do You Stay Up So Late?’ ,
where Patterson's son 'played the jeweller' with stones in a conceit that carries through the poem, or anything from Heaney’s debut, ‘Death of a Naturalist’.
Thanks.
Loved this...shall look for more from him.
Niall has been travelling in my jacket pocket for weeks, and it is a delight to see him pop up on my phone this Friday.
Very sound foundations, deftly built on