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| Sufi Dancing |
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
Essay - “The Waking”: a Hymn to Life.
The poem “The Waking” by Theodore Roethke brought back many memories to me. Thirty years ago, when I was a student in San Francisco, I took a class in poetry writing. One of the assignments was to read a poem in a traditional form and then write one ourselves. I chose the “villanelle” because the sing-song and repetition of lines - usually words of advice - had a “sassy” quality to it. I still remember the refrain I used in my poem, addressing a boyfriend who thought he was superior to me: “You say that I still have to be born / If you can teach, I always learn.”
“The Waking” is a villanelle. This type of poem was originally written as a country dance, but the form has been adopted by modern poets, such as Roethke and Dylan Thomas, who wrote in the fifties. The fifties were buoyant times, right after World War Two. The eighties were happy times too, with their economic boom fueled by deregulation, which would prove disastrous in our time, many years later. I was young and I had just come to the U.S. to study. I was full of joie de vivre, and the villanelle was the perfect medium for me to impart my “wisdom.”
The most striking feature of the villanelle is that two lines are repeated throughout the poem. This gives the poet all the advantages of writing an epigram (the shock effect of two strong, opinionated lines), and all the advantages of writing a longer poem (the rest of the verses give depth and meaning to the epigram).
In the two repeating lines Roethke, the “I” in the poem, states his attitude toward life: “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow./I learn by going where I have to go”(1, 3). The lines sound like a riddle, and indeed the whole poem is a playful puzzle. My paraphrase has an echo of Buddhism/Taoism: “life is a cycle, I savor every moment / I follow the Way (learn as I go)” Even the title, “The Waking,” can be interpreted as a Zen “awakening,” or attaining enlightenment.
Another line that reminds me of Eastern religions is, “I hear my being dance from ear to ear” (5). Last year I was invited to a Sufi group in Berkeley. We read love poems by the Sufi poet Rumi and danced by swirling around like Dervish mystics. The group was very playful, full of hippie types. Roethke wrote this poem before Eastern philosophies became popular in the U.S. - they were introduced in the sixties – but, being an educated person, probably he was familiar with Sufi poetry.
Metaphors add to the playful aspect of the poem. None of the images in the poem are literal; “Light takes the Tree”(10) or “God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there” (8) are figurative images open to interpretation. There could be Biblical undertones: the “Tree” could be the Tree of Life or the Tree of Knowledge, and God could be the Light. In my interpretation, there is a Garden of Eden (the Ground), but instead of an evil serpent tempting us to perdition, we see a lowly worm (perhaps us?) climbing up a stair (11). We are invited not to take from the tree of knowledge, but to experience life. The invitation is to dance, to breathe “the lively air” (14), and to be with people
To accentuate the riddle quality of his poem, the author poses three questions, situated in the three central tercets: “We think by feeling. What is there to know?” (4), “Of those so close beside me, which are you?” (7), and “Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?” (10) They might be rhetorical (no answer is expected); however, all three questions could be taken as philosophical points for discussion.
This impression of openness to dialogue is created by the poem's meter, the iambic pentameter, which mimics speech in the English language. Also, readers don't need a dictionary or knowledge of historical background to understand the words. Yet, understanding the meaning can be an intellectual exercise. I can almost imagine Socrates and his students walking in Athens discussing something similar to Roethke's assertions. As a child I was fascinated with Socrates, and, together with my best friends, I used to write and perform in plays where he was the hero. For the hemlock we used chamomile.
Like Socrates, who said that true knowledge is the realization that we know nothing, Roethke enjoys shaking us with paradoxes. The beginning of the poem is shocking to us, who belong to a Western - especially the American - culture. We tend to value ourselves for what we do; we don't want to waste time. But Roethke “take[s his] waking slow” (1). He “think[s] by feeling” (4), (which can be interpreted as “trust your feelings”), while in the West we are taught that rationality is everything. He also “wake[s] to sleep” (1), an assertion over which rivers of words have spilled, but that remains a mystery to me.
Throughout the poem, mystery is not created by unusual words, but by the juxtaposition of common words in an unusual manner. In this Roethke reminds me of e. e. Cummings and his play with words, for example in the poem “my father moved through dooms of love.”
“The Waking” is a lyric poem, not just because it is based on a dance form, the villanelle, but also because it celebrates life. The poem does not narrate an incident (narrative); indeed every moment of life for the speaker is worthy of being noticed. Nor does the poem present a conflict (epic). The writer is at peace with himself and with others close to him, and he enjoys nature.
Being true to its song-like form, "The Waking" is full of features that enhance musicality, such as alliteration in “I feel my fate in what I cannot fear” (2), and assonance: “What falls away is always” (17) (which is another Buddhist concept, that everything is impermanent but the essence of life is eternal).
There is a surprising gentleness to this poem. It employs the anaphora “I” (eight lines start with “I”) which gives the impression that Roethke does not want to impose his ideas on people. He uses “you” twice: once, to ask “Of those so close beside me, which are you?/ God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there” (7,8) which can be interpreted as “Of the people close to me, who will be the love of my life?/God bless the ground where you walk! I will treat you with respect.” Then Roethke gives the only direct advice in the poem, calling the “you” “lovely” (beloved?). The advice is: “And, lovely, learn by going where to go” (15). It is almost a Sufi love poem to the Beloved – no wonder I chose this form to address my boyfriend a long time ago.
As a hymn to life, the poem toward the end gives us the classic reminder that life is short, so we should enjoy it. In the only enjambment (one line continues to the next line) in the poem, it says: “Great Nature has another thing to do/ To you and me” (13,14), the “thing” being “death.” Roethke did not have an easy life. According to Wikipedia, he lost his father at a young age, and he suffered from manic depression. However, his poems are not sad, and they are an inspiration for many readers. In “The Waking” all the other lines, with the exception of line 13, end with a positive assertion.
Would it have been possible for a contemporary poet to write a poem like “The Waking”? I don't think so. Poets now write (and rightfully so) literal works to denounce the social quagmires that plague us. When they write about personal philosophy, their scope is much more limited. For example, in his collection Billy Collins is “Sailing Alone Around the Room,” instead of sailing around the world.
Did I select “The Awakening” for my essay because I feel the same way as the author? No, try as I may, I cannot “feel my fate in what I cannot fear” (2), that I have a mission I will naturally fulfill, without worries. The times are different, I am much older, and I selected this poem because it reminded me of the best period of my life. But, the ones we are living in, are not “sassy” times.
Works Cited
Roethke, Theodore. “The Waking.” The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems. Ed. Frances Mayes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2001. 337. Print.
Collins, Billy. Sailing Alone Around the Room. New York: Random House, 2002. Print.
Cummings, e. e. “my father moved through dooms of love.” Poetry.org. 24 Oct. 2013. Web.
“Theodore Roethke.” Wikipedia. 24 Oct. 2013. Web.
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