Stanley Kunitz's "The Layers": Reflections for the New Year
I want to take a moment and talk about something I think is important: the future. And I'm going to do so by talking about something I love.
My love of poetry didn't set in until I was a college student. For years before that, having read nothing but fiction, I actually hated poetry--most of it anyway--because it didn't make sense to me. It was the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle (one of those old ones you find a yard-sales and flea markets in cloudy plastic bags with no box with a image to guide you).
However, as an English major, I knew I was going to be reading a lot of it. So, I set out to cultivate, at the very least, an understanding of it. I took courses in the mechanics of poetry, I read stuff from every period of the history of Anglophone literature, and in the end, I came to enjoy a lot of it.
The biggest thanks I owe for that belong to two terrific professors--Drucilla Wall and Steve Schreiner--I had during my undergrad years. Nothing will instill a passion for a subject quite like a great teacher. (A great teacher is, by my definition, someone who can imbue their students with both knowledge and enthusiasm for their expertise).
I didn't, however, discover my favorite poem until I was a semester or so away from graduating.
The last course in poetry I took was one about Post-WWII poetry, a era I wasn't too familiar with (oddly enough). I knew the Beats, and I knew Sylvia Plath, but nothing much beyond that. In that course, we studied the poetry of numerous other poets: Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, John Barryman, Elizabeth Bishop, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Donald Hall, Louise Erdrich, Yusef Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Adrianne Rich etc..
Among those was a poet I'd never heard of named Stanley Kunitz. And, though we weren't required to read this particular piece of his, the poem that spoke to me the loudest and most elegantly was a long piece of free-verse he wrote in the late 70s called, "The Layers":
When I first read this piece, in particular those first lines (I have walked through many lives / some of them my own / and I am not who I was), I wouldn't have been able to tell you what it was that spoke to me so profoundly. My reaction was entirely visceral, something straight in the gut and the heart.
I became obsessed with this poem to the point that I took pains to memorize it (not an easy feat with free-verse). To this day, I can still quote it, verbatim. In fact, if I were ever in an accident, and the doctors were concerned about whether my faculties were compromised, all they'd have to do to check is ask me if I could still recite "The Layers". If I could, they'd know I was still all there.
If I had to describe that feeling now (something very hard to do in words), I'd describe that feeling as recognition. It was an acknowledgement of someone else understanding what I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I was going through at the moment when I read the piece, and doing so in a highly articulate and elegant way.
Thinking back, the feeling that I first recognized in this poem was an anxiety toward change. The images he evokes in this poem speak of that. The ideas of you, as a person, constantly undergoing changes, and yet remaining ever yourself, and of lingering on the past while knowing you cant return to it and needing to always move forward, with the passage of time, whether you wish to or not--those sorts of things rattled me often in my early twenties (and still do now).
I think its something we all face at that age. We're a smidge away from leaving school (some of us for good, some of us until we can get into the safety of grad-school), and we have no clue what's next. All we know is that it's this terrifying thing called LIFE. It's messy. It's complicated. And, if you fail at it, you'll be stuck in your mom's basement forever.
I can still see that anxiety in the poem, namely in what I think of as the first half (before the line "Yet I turn, I turn"). Now, however, nearly five years removed from that first reading, that's not the section of the poem I linger on is everything that comes after. That half of the poem, the response you might say to the anxiety, isn't fearful. It's joyful.
The speaker (that's what we call the narrator of a poem--thank you otherwise useless English degree), says,
In a little over a day, when 2019 arrives, I intend to top that. That's what I've done, so what could I possibly do next? I don't know, but I have plans I mean to make reality.
We all fear change, yet we all acknowledge, willingly and, more often, begrudgingly, that it's inevitable. Change frequently brings difference, which can be positive and negative, and that makes us fear it because we don't know what we'll get. It's like that famous line from Forrest Gump: "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Maybe it'll be nasty coconut. Maybe it'll be caramel-filled goodness.
Whatever you wish to do, whatever goals you want to accomplish in the new year, walk into it with a champagne glass held aloft and your head held high You are not done with your changes.
(As a small bonus, check out the video below to hear Mr. Kunitz himself recite his great poem).
My love of poetry didn't set in until I was a college student. For years before that, having read nothing but fiction, I actually hated poetry--most of it anyway--because it didn't make sense to me. It was the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle (one of those old ones you find a yard-sales and flea markets in cloudy plastic bags with no box with a image to guide you).
However, as an English major, I knew I was going to be reading a lot of it. So, I set out to cultivate, at the very least, an understanding of it. I took courses in the mechanics of poetry, I read stuff from every period of the history of Anglophone literature, and in the end, I came to enjoy a lot of it.
The biggest thanks I owe for that belong to two terrific professors--Drucilla Wall and Steve Schreiner--I had during my undergrad years. Nothing will instill a passion for a subject quite like a great teacher. (A great teacher is, by my definition, someone who can imbue their students with both knowledge and enthusiasm for their expertise).
I didn't, however, discover my favorite poem until I was a semester or so away from graduating.
The last course in poetry I took was one about Post-WWII poetry, a era I wasn't too familiar with (oddly enough). I knew the Beats, and I knew Sylvia Plath, but nothing much beyond that. In that course, we studied the poetry of numerous other poets: Robert Lowell, Anne Sexton, John Barryman, Elizabeth Bishop, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Donald Hall, Louise Erdrich, Yusef Komunyakaa, Li-Young Lee, Adrianne Rich etc..
Among those was a poet I'd never heard of named Stanley Kunitz. And, though we weren't required to read this particular piece of his, the poem that spoke to me the loudest and most elegantly was a long piece of free-verse he wrote in the late 70s called, "The Layers":
"I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angles
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly tings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes."
When I first read this piece, in particular those first lines (I have walked through many lives / some of them my own / and I am not who I was), I wouldn't have been able to tell you what it was that spoke to me so profoundly. My reaction was entirely visceral, something straight in the gut and the heart.
I became obsessed with this poem to the point that I took pains to memorize it (not an easy feat with free-verse). To this day, I can still quote it, verbatim. In fact, if I were ever in an accident, and the doctors were concerned about whether my faculties were compromised, all they'd have to do to check is ask me if I could still recite "The Layers". If I could, they'd know I was still all there.
If I had to describe that feeling now (something very hard to do in words), I'd describe that feeling as recognition. It was an acknowledgement of someone else understanding what I was feeling, what I was thinking, what I was going through at the moment when I read the piece, and doing so in a highly articulate and elegant way.
Thinking back, the feeling that I first recognized in this poem was an anxiety toward change. The images he evokes in this poem speak of that. The ideas of you, as a person, constantly undergoing changes, and yet remaining ever yourself, and of lingering on the past while knowing you cant return to it and needing to always move forward, with the passage of time, whether you wish to or not--those sorts of things rattled me often in my early twenties (and still do now).
I think its something we all face at that age. We're a smidge away from leaving school (some of us for good, some of us until we can get into the safety of grad-school), and we have no clue what's next. All we know is that it's this terrifying thing called LIFE. It's messy. It's complicated. And, if you fail at it, you'll be stuck in your mom's basement forever.
I can still see that anxiety in the poem, namely in what I think of as the first half (before the line "Yet I turn, I turn"). Now, however, nearly five years removed from that first reading, that's not the section of the poem I linger on is everything that comes after. That half of the poem, the response you might say to the anxiety, isn't fearful. It's joyful.
The speaker (that's what we call the narrator of a poem--thank you otherwise useless English degree), says,
"Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me."
This speaker isn't fearful about what the future will bring. They see it as an opportunity, as something toward which we should look forward, something for which we should feel grateful. The next section hammers that home:
"In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter.""
However you view that nimbus-clouded voice (be it the voice of God, or the voice of the speakers own moral conscious), I view it as their own inner voice telling them not to linger. Don't linger on the disappoints, the failures, on the negativities of their past. Instead, reflect briefly and then move forward. Take the knowledge, better yet, the wisdom you need from what's been, and move on. Go forward into what's next, take advantage of the new opportunities, and make new mistakes.
With 2018 close to concluding and 2019 eager to begin, we'll all soon be making our New Year's Resolutions (which we may, or may not, uphold). Whatever your resolution is, one sub-resolution that I think we should all carry forward with us is this: don't be afraid of the future. Instead, embrace the uncertainty. Don't view it as an eerie shadowland that should be feared, but as a blank canvas on which you can being to paint the reality you want.
See it as a place on which you can build upon your recent past accomplishments. That's certainly how I'm viewing it now.
2018 has been one hell of a good year for me. I began it in utter terror, with no idea if it would turn out well. Yet, in the last twelve months I've:
1. Attended a great workshop
2. Met some wonderful and supportive colleagues
3. Improve my craft and confidence
4. Started this blog
5. Sold my first few pieces of writing
6. Begun, and written a huge portion of, my first novel in earnest
(That's a major feat every two months).
In a little over a day, when 2019 arrives, I intend to top that. That's what I've done, so what could I possibly do next? I don't know, but I have plans I mean to make reality.
We all fear change, yet we all acknowledge, willingly and, more often, begrudgingly, that it's inevitable. Change frequently brings difference, which can be positive and negative, and that makes us fear it because we don't know what we'll get. It's like that famous line from Forrest Gump: "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Maybe it'll be nasty coconut. Maybe it'll be caramel-filled goodness.
Whatever you wish to do, whatever goals you want to accomplish in the new year, walk into it with a champagne glass held aloft and your head held high You are not done with your changes.
(As a small bonus, check out the video below to hear Mr. Kunitz himself recite his great poem).
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