Contemporary Poetry
: a web symposium | Spring 2006
Return | New Traditions and the Traditional
Alice James Books, 2003
Mary Szybist’s book Granted is a short collection of poems that are filled with biblical imagery, spiritual struggles, and decidedly objective perceptions of the world. Szybist’s work offers valuable insight into the precarious nature of faith in the unseen. She displays remarkable ability to find beauty in this struggle, to see the definition of her own humanity clouded with the weight of sin, and in the next moment immensely clarified by remembrance of the redemption she is promised. The voice that emerges in the pages of Granted is the same voice that all believers have heard emanating from within themselves as their faith is tested and at times seemingly lost in the midst of worldly angst.
The voice in Szybist’s poetry plays an important role in the overall structure and length of the poems in Granted. One gets the sense that no moment, thought, or experience is entirely free from the interjections of the conscience. Transversely, raw emotion quite often rears its head in the midst of piety. The length and structure of each poem is varied but deliberate and seems to be determined by what is necessary to convey the message or idea the poem espouses. Szybist employs traditional stanzas in many of the poems, but does not hesitate to depart from the more rigid forms. Many stanza transitions are enacted with line breaks, lines in parentheses, and in the poem “Two Figures Lying on a Bed with Attendants” each of the three sections of the poem is put on its own page. The poems in Granted are of varying lengths, though none are exceptionally long. There is very little flowery or graphic imagery, and as a result each line holds authority. The poems are not sparse by any measure, but resound with depth and efficiency.
The efficient use of language is apparent in the very first poem of the book. The poem is titled “Mutatis Mutandis” and in only 12 lines it serves as the platform and thematic model for many of the poems that follow. The literal translation of the Latin title reads “that having been changed which had to be changed.” The first stanza of poem describes the transience of nature, as it is composed of elements that will eventually disappear. “Pebbles, leaves, rain— / they disappear into the river.” (Lines 1-2) The next stanza starts with the line “But we don’t disappear:” (Line 5), and indicates that people do not have the same transience that nature does. This stanza heralds the final three lines of the poem that read: “Granted, this is not a world that keeps us. // Granted, there are some sadnesses/ in which I do not long for God.”(Lines 10-12) With these three lines Szybist has summarized one of the greatest difficulties of the Christian life. From the Christian perspective this world does not keep us because death has no finality. Death to a Christian is an end of one reality and the beginning of the next. Christians live in this world, while believing that they were made to live out an eternity in another reality that is infinitely better than this one. Therefore the world is not the final resting place, and claims no ownership over the life of a Christian. This is expressed in many places in the Bible, perhaps most clearly in the New Testament where Jesus is quoted saying “ As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.” (John 15:19) This is not merely a statement, but it is a covenant with Christians reminding them that they have been “granted” the gift of eternal life. The final three lines of “Mutatis Mutandis” embody the struggle that every person of faith experiences. There are times when the tangible sufferings of this world will inevitably overshadow faith in what is unseen.
This division of affection and focus between two worlds is a recurring theme in many of the poems in Granted. The speaker wants to walk by faith but often falters and walks by sight. Szybist does not think it’s possible to do both, for cathecting focus in the physical realm does not edify faith in an afterlife. The contrast between worlds that Szybist struggles with is especially evident in the poem “What the World is For.” In the first two lines of the poem the tone is set as the speaker identifies the dialectic components of her struggle, saying “Before I started to love you, / I tried to love the world.” (Lines 1-2) The speaker continues for several lines to describe the contents of this world that offer a disguise of innocence. In lines 6-20 the speaker describes two young girls who have yet to experience the awakening that awaits them. Even as the speaker admires their beauty and naiveté, she laments that they will one day “…be bent // down to the kind of love / from which they could not right themselves.” (Lines 18-20) The speaker then reflects in lines 21-23 how her own youthful perceptions have changed. She knows now that “The slivered moon is no scythe…” (Line 22) The speaker realizes that the truth about the world does not change, but is revealed to us as we grow. The same can be said of the truth about ourselves. We do not change, but what we are is revealed: “We cannot see ourselves there. / it is only from here that it changes…” (Lines 23-24)The world is a platform where we first see things glorified through the lens of innocence. As we grow and continue to unravel its mysteries, the world continually reveals how little we know. As the speaker expresses in the final line of the poem, the world is not here to be loved as an end in itself. The world is here to point us toward something else. For the speaker, trying to love the world brought about her love for God.
The desire to know and love God is embodied in the observation of a flower in the poem “Raiment”. In this piece, the speaker describes a red belladonna that is the epitome of beauty and purity. As such the flower is a reminder of her own faults: “Each cup a / flushed petal / mocking the skin / on my neck.” (Lines 4-7) The “raiment” that adorns flowers is not one of corruption, distortion or disguise. Flowers stand with the childlike innocence and purity “of girls being led / in only their bonnets / to a mirror.” (Lines 9-11) In the second stanza the speaker responds to the purity of a flower with a desire to be “…stripped and / scrubbed down the way / one would scrub / a dog.” (Lines 13-16) that she may attain such purity herself. It is not merely a burden that weighs upon the speaker, but a sense that she is unclean. She envies the flower’s simplicity and austerity that makes it so “Faithful and plain…” (Lines 26-27)
The appreciation of nature, as well as its creator is portrayed in the poem “Swamp.” The scene at the outset of the poem is one of darkness where only sounds can be heard. In this poem the speaker has a tone of great admiration for a seemingly omniscient man as “He names the purring / starting with alligator—then, bullfrog…” (Lines 3-4) The speaker makes weak attempts to emulate the mans voice as she is “filled with lust for the influential phrase.” (Line 7) In the final stanza of the poem, the man observes three kinds birds in the swamp and calls them each by name, but the eager speaker can only call out “bird! bird! bird!” (Line 12) This short poem contains a metaphor of epic proportions. The “man” in the poem represents God of creation. At the beginning of the poem he names each sound in the darkness, the setting symbolizes the act of creation. The speaker watches and envies the creator’s wisdom, seeking to emulate his voice. The speaker cannot hope to identify any part of creation with the accuracy of its creator, but her enthusiasm is not abated. The speaker’s quiet reverence for the initial creation gives way to passionate attempts at imitation. The poem serves as a brief but unmistakable allusion to the disparity of wisdom and power between God and humanity.
It is this disparity between creator and created that serves as the catalyst for the simultaneous angst and elation that Szybist professes throughout the poems in Granted. She is not writing a system of apologetics, nor does she seek to cast a shadow of doubt. She is merely exploring what it means to be a human living in one reality and desiring another. To live by faith is to accept imperfect means to achieve a perfect end. To learn the lessons of the world whilst living in its midst is nearly impossible without clinging to objective truth. However these intangible objective lessons gleaned from just one lifetime are constantly endangered by the overbearing weight of tangible trials. Szybist humbly acknowledges how easily we remove our gaze from a perfect goal to focus on the irrelevant imperfections of the path itself. In the end, however, it is this struggle that defines us. In the act of struggling we learn to take nothing for granted.
Further Reading
About the Author:
http://www.epoetry.org/issues/issue7/text/prose/kryah1.htm