Thursday, February 12, 2009

A Little Foggy

I'm so sorry that I haven't written in a while. I have had the flu, of all things, and it took me several days to recover. This was a nasty little bug, if I may add, and it controlled me for quite some time. There's no rest in rest when you're sick, but being sick does intensely focus one's mind, although only for short periods of time. The majority of time, though, is always spent in a fog. So the bug can, at once, be a blessing and a curse. The curse is easy to prove. We've all been there. Feeling lousy dulls the senses, causes time to lapse unknowingly, makes you lose yourself somewhere between dawn and dusk. It's like a fog hovering over a harbor. At the same time, though, at the most unexpected instance, there comes intense focus, and during those fevered moments of awareness, things become clear like they've never been before.

That is where I have been. Caught between two realms of misery and clarity. Unfortunately, there was more misery than clarity during the ordeal. The whole experience reminded me of a poem that I've always loved, and since I've been reading Carl Sandburg so much, this particular short poem stuck in my head. Oddly enough, he titled it Fog. And since I've been spending time talking about Sandburg, I thought I'd share this twenty-two word poem with you and talk about it.

Fog

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

What a beautiful little poem. Sandburg wrote it while sitting in a waiting room of a juvenile court judge. He was a journalist, and he was waiting for an interview. As was his habit, he always carried a notebook or some scrap of paper with him to write down his thoughts , and on these bits of paper, he left some of America's best poetry.

What made this little poem so striking was its simplicity. It was a poem that everyone could understand, even the simple people of America. The language was plain, and it was also a short, descriptive poem that everyone could relate to through their daily experiences. Sandburg was not known as a great poet when he wrote Fog, but this was the moment when the symphony inside him began to play. After reading it to a few folks on the street, he knew that he had something special to give to "his" people.

You can over-analyze poetry, and I've alluded several times in the past that this is one of the problems with critics today. I don't' want to over-analyze this poem. As a poet myself, I can see that he was probably motivated by his senses. Perhaps that very morning, he saw the fog rolling in steadily over the lake, and perhaps, before he looked up again, the fog had vanished as it gave way to the sun.

The important thing is that he wrote it for everyone to appreciate. Sandburg was a friend of the down-trodden, the laborer, the bum, and the poorly educated. He wrote about them extensively through his newspaper articles, and, somehow, in some way, something told him to give art to those people in a language they could understand and about things they could relate to. He wanted to add beauty to their lives in a way they could appreciate, and, as a poet, he knew that no other poet had reached for this audience. He wasn't interested in the metaphysical interpretation. He just wanted to paint a colorful picture of words on a plain canvas that would evoke emotion in those who never had that opportunity to experience the art.

As a poet, I know that is the job of a poet. Capturing life around me is my job, but catching it in a musical or picturesque way to make it stand out is the goal because that is how you take the "usual" and make it create an emotional response. He would have felt the same. He believed, as I do, that the only other level of interpretation is the poet's inner voice working throughout. Looking at Sandburg as being a part of the poem, then I would say this poem is also a reflection of him. His life was like the fog. He was always active, shifting, and moving onto something new. He was a free-spirit who did not adhere to the rules and expectations of society. So, perhaps if you wish to dig so deep, this poem was about him too.

I wouldn't take it any further though. The poet's persona will always imprint his interpretation of what he sees, but I don't think it needs to go any further than that. The poem, itself, stands on its own. It captures life, and it captures the fleeting nature of nature. The beauty of nature is that it is there for everyone to enjoy, and the beauty of Sandburg is that he gave his poetry to everyone as well. He was able to do so because he was like the "fog."

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