Swan and Shadow | Poem Explanation | John Hollander

About 'John Hallander

John Hollander (b. 1929) is Professor of English at Hunter College, City University, New York. Well-known as a poet, his most recent collection is The Night Mirror. He is the author of The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry 1500-1700. He is the co-editor with Frank Kermode of the Modern British Literature volume of the Oxford Anthology of English Literature. 'Swan and Shadow' is clearly a poem by an academician and poet who has responded positively to the tradition of English poetry. It is a 'pattern' or 'shape' poem. The shape poem dates from classical antiquity, its most recent history beginning with George Herbert's poems. 'Easter Wings' by Herbert is included in this anthology. Among others who use the pattern poem form is Lewis Carroll in 'Fury said to Mouse' and the mirror stanza Jabberwocky', both of which are comic in nature. The best exponent of shape poetry today is John Hollander who writes more like Herbert. Shape poetry may seem a sort of game and it is fun but not necessarily funny.

'Swan and Shadow' is an example of how modernism, though it meant something different from the past, something essentially new, also meant a continuity in the seemingly discontinuous.

The typographical shape of the lines of the poem represents some part of the subject. It stands for what it says, i.e., if the poem reflects a swan poetically its visual expression is also a shadow of the swan. One of the main problems the poem poses is how to read it and establish meaning through its 'modernist' syntax. The poet has used a kind of morse code by combining visual and verbal experiments. Read from the top of the printed page to the bottom, the 18th line differentiates the object from its reflection and also represents the surface of the water on which the swan floats. Separated by this line each part contains seventeen lines and appears to be a swan floating on water with its exact shadow or reflection.

'Swan and Shadow' Poem Explanation

Dusk

Above the

water hang the

loud

flies

Here

O so

gray

then

What A pale signal will appear

When Soon before its shadow fades

Where Here in this pool of opened eye.

In us No Upon us As at the very edges

of opened eye of where we take shape in the dark air

this object bares its image awakening

ripples of recognition that will

brush darkness up into light

even after this bird this hour both drift by atop the perfect sad instant now

already passing out of sight

toward yet-untroubled reflection

this image bears its object darkening

into memorial shades Scattered bits of

light No of water Or something across

water Breaking up No Being regathered

soon yet by then a swan will have

gone Yes out of mind into what

vast

pale

hush

of a

past

sudden dark as

if a swan

sang

Glossary

Line 1. Dusk the darker stage of twilight, shade, gloom, shadow, dim

Line 15. bares uncover, undisguise, unadorn

Line 16. ripples series of waves; ruffling of the water's surface

Line 18. instant precise moment

Line 23. No of water absence of water

Line 24. No Being a being called No Being, some being that cannot be identified

Line 25. swan a white paddling water bird; (lit.) poet

Lines 34-35. swan song a person's/poet's last performance, work or act.

Explanatory Notes

Lines 1-17 The object of the reflection is the swan on the surface of the water during the darkened hours of dusk. It is the time when things lose their swift, busy movement of the day and remain silent, suspended upon the surface of water. The loud flies also seem to fall silent and float upon the surface of the water. The verb 'hang' suggests the ease and casual suspension of the loud flies. The image that appears in the pool of water is also the one that appears upon the pool of the opened eye. The water will forget the shadow as soon as the swan the object-moves away. But the one embossed upon the eye shall be stored by the memory and shall create waves of recognition turning darkness into light, ignorance into knowledge. The light shall continue to shine ever after 'this bird, this hour' both fade away into the past and are removed from the perfect sad instant 'now'. The relationship between the object and its reflection is exactly the same as that between experience and memory, thought and reflection and the whole poem represents, visually, this process along with its timelessness. The line of demarcation between the bird and its reflection, the thought and its image, the experience and its memory is now but a perfect and sad instant that will slowly move away into the past when the object will no longer remain but its reflection shall have been permanently caught in the pool of memory.

The reflection passes out of immediate sensual experience but gets rooted and solidified in memory. The memory of the object, here the swan, then flashes back as a combination of light and dark.

Lines 19-35. It then attains a stage where no water is required to reflect the object, not even the object itself, breaking up into 'No Being regathered'. The real swan will have faded into the dark past, and would remain in the memory as an abstraction, as if it were a swan song rather than a tangible, objectified swan.

The 'instant now' is 'perfect sad' as mentioned in the eighteenth line because the swan that fades out may be the poet who has presented his swan song. He would then fade out of actuality because of death only to remain in the memory and reflection of those who hear the song. Then the world would become a 'No of water', across which this being will become a 'No Being regathered' in memory. In this sense the swan shadow is a swan song.

The poet has very successfully reproduced the complex relationship between the object and its reflection both verbally and visually. The time of the day, the cool atmosphere, the silence can all be objectively experienced with the use of 'wh' questions such as what, when and where and their reflections being soon and gone.

All the verbs in the poem describe an effortless, easy activity, for example hang, will appear, take shape, bares, brush-up, drift, passing- nothing is forced either in the swan and shadow, or in the relationship between experience and memory. What is initially a shadow then becomes an object and yet it resists all finality of definition.

The poem begins with a concrete moment in time, 'dusk', but draws attention to the abstract experience of the dusky reality. It ends with an abstract experience that of the song of a swan - but the sense of sound can help objectify it. It could also be considered as the final performance of the image which is then preserved eternally as a vision.

In short, the whole poem tries to put forth, through its pattern, the experience and relationship of image and reflection, thought and reflection, experience and reflection.