Lately in my English class, we've been focusing a lot on poetry. I never considered myself to be much of a poetry fan before, but I think that this class has fully turned me around into being a poetry lover. Although I have no idea about the meaning of some of the poems we talk about in class, I find myself drawn to others. I wanted to share this one, along with some of my own analysis, with you lovely people!
Poem:
Icarus
By Edward Field
Only the feathers
floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.
“That nice Mr.
Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?
And nightly Icarus
probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,
Serves on various
committees,
And wishes he had drowned.
And wishes he had drowned.
Analysis:
I love this poem for two reasons - 1, it's in
easy to understand language, which is very helpful for the novice poetry reader
and 2, it's so touching. If you haven't heard of the story of Icarus (which I
hadn't either, before I read this poem), it's basically the story of a father
and son, Daedalus and Icarus, who end up jailed for some reason or another. In
jail, they build wax wings and Icarus uses them to escape. Before he departs,
Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too high. However, consumed with the joy of
flying, Icarus soars higher and higher until he is close to the sun, whose rays
melt the wax in his wings. He immediately plummets and drowns in the water
below.
How's that for a downer of a story, eh?
Basically, Edward Field took the Icarus story and offered an alternative ending
to it- juxtaposing the mythical story with a modern-day setting. I think his
interpretation of the story in the context of the suburbs is very metaphorical.
Icarus is, in some ways, an example of the heroes in our society that fall
steadily out of the spotlight. The mundane is so tortuous to these people that
they prefer death to the prospect of being a nobody.
The lines of this poem that undoubtedly stand
out to me is the very last couplet:
"Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned."
And wishes he had drowned."
I mean, how freaking touching are those lines?
In the story, Icarus is not made out to be the kind of guy that you feel
sympathy for. He's an idiot- he flies towards the sun, for God's sake! But when
you read the ramifications of his actions - the fact that he tries and tries to
fly every single night even when he knows that he can't? That's tragedy
right there. I feel sympathy for a made up character!
"Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for
trying."
I keep re-reading this poem because I really,
truly feel for Icarus. I feel for the kind of person who goes from having
everything to having nothing at all. All of his glory (although this situation
could be applied to other things - money, power, influence) is gone within a
second. Just like the sun rapidly melted off the wax holding together his
wings, so his heroism fell. He fell both physically and metaphorically. And for
someone who spent his whole life being a somebody, the thought of being just
another friendly, vanilla nobody is a prospect worse than death.
Hope you enjoyed this poem! I'll see you when I
post next.
Love and light,
Mal
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