Contemporary Poetry

: a web symposium  |  Spring 2006

Divide These by Saskia Hamilton
Graywolf Press, 2005

Sparse and powerful, the poetry of Saskia Hamilton creates a feeling of darkness that is haunting, yet peaceful. The brief and simple structure of her poetry creates a sense of growing uncertainty, that starts off with an existential tone that dilutes serious depictions of death. Divide These is the second of two books written by Saskia Hamilton. The voice of the speaker in Divide These is oftentimes distant and detached in it’s description and depiction of events. Hamilton writes in a voice that begins the book with a sterile, fluorescent feeling, with no signs of agony or defeat, just pure observation and acceptance. However, as the book progresses through its four sections, the reader is able to make a solid observation of change and growth in Hamilton’s poems. They become more emotional and feeling-driven; as if the speaker has found herself amongst the death-filled surrounding world and becomes angry, sad and more sensitive to loss. One could discover an almost seductive secrecy in Hamilton’s poetry, created when she leaves out specific details that would be too straight forward and revealing. Hamilton tends to write in pure observations, beamed straight to the page, as if the speaker’s eyes were still watching and soaking in the surrounding scene. The connection of body to nature is a prevalent theme in Hamilton’s poetry. The poems are always aware of her body, it’s physical mechanics and thought processes, in relation to it’s place within the surroundings. Hamilton takes a philosophical tone in her poems as well. Some of her poems acquire the appeal of a Chinese fortune, predicting enlightened wisdom in beautifully structured metaphor. The brevity of these insightful poems is strategic because fortune’s are supposed to be short and concise in structure, yet deep and penetrable in their meaning. Hamilton’s inherent wisdom, along with her observational, detailed style of poetry are built upon themes of death; in which Hamilton explores and becomes more deeply affected by, as the poems unfold and we are enthralled to discover new dimensions of this, at first, existential and numb character.

The poem “One Wiser Says to the Other Unwiser” embellishes upon the style of Chinese philosophical wisdom, in it’s simply constructed form. The poem is very brief, being only five lines and built of four sentences. The wisdom and advice delivered in the message of the poem takes on the persona of a philosophical brain, almost Buddha-like in it’s metaphorical and self-reflecting tone. The poem starts out with the line, “jot this down:” introducing the reader to it’s wise message within one second of reading it. Most every poem within Divide These possesses an assurgency of philosophical wisdom, existential tone and acceptance of life and death within the same realm of fearlessness. It also seems that Hamilton’s poems are laced with longing, or memory, of a past love. Certain poems strike that chord of lost or destroyed romance. The way that poems merge into one another, as with “Printed Labyrinth” and “The Labyrinth Suggests a Center,” also seems to be a reoccurring theme in Divide These. This process allows the reader to feel as if the speaker remains the same character through the book, and grows with each poem; creating and eventually embellishing upon feelings of anger, loss and wonder at the process of death, and how our bodies are interlaced with the surrounding physical and spiritual world.

Not until the thirteenth poem in Divide These does Hamilton use the word “I”. The poem “Then” which introduces the speaker in a more personal way, finally allows the reader to penetrate further into the being and soul of the speaker. Until this moment, the reader has been kept at a far distance, and unable to connect with the speaker on a personal level. The speaker seems to be a stable character throughout the entire book, because the thought patterns and tones of all the poems are so similar. The existential, observational, cold and impenetrable speaker can now be viewed as a more alive and emotional character, with a steady dark tone.

The last poem in the first section of Divide These is written in a slightly different style compared to the preceding poems. It is spread out upon the page, with a good portion of white space between each line. This poem shows a new type of movement for Divide These, yet is still written in an observational fashion and with an existential tone. This segue into the second section of Divide These actually pushes the reader to turn the page, as the plane in the poem is “traveling / forward like the rest of us from matter / to the account of matter” (Divide These, page 16).

The second section of Divide These is composed of one long poem. The poem “Precisions as to Place” spans across four pages and is composed of 16 four line stanzas, with the incorporation of some emotion-driven line breaks and spacing. With a newly introduced movement in the book, we begin to sense a change in the speaker; a growth and revealing of emotion that was not present in the first section. This poem is far more emotion-driven, and seems to involve the unconscious. Hamilton writes with a newfound passion and allows her thoughts to consume the page. The speaker seems to be torn with guilt, and pain of some sort, perhaps stemmed by a loss from death. The first line of the poem establishes it as different than the others so far in the book; it doesn’t have the brief, philosophical form, and lessens the intensity of the existential voice. It’s as if the speaker is shaken by death and now has reason to be more emotional. The words in this poem appear to be poured onto the page, without hesitation, straight from the brain, the eyes, heart or wherever they are being born out of it. There is still a connection between body and environment found within the poem, however. Hamilton has maintained this inherent connection of the physical body and environment throughout the book. “The fathers sat by the well in their suits. / The wind blew their ties / and hit their bodies. // Below the ribs is where you store the breath. Ten jars along the floor” (page 21). The connection between the environment in which these men are quietly standing, obviously in a sullen, dark state (as if at a funeral) occurs when Hamilton beautifully writes “below the ribs is where you store the breath.” This line leads into an image of ten jars of oxygen sitting on the floor beneath the men, however, the jars are later revealed to be monuments for the dead who are being buried. The way Hamilton allows the two sentences to flow into one another, represents the interconnection of body and world for this poet.

The third section of Divide These once again takes on the brief, observationally-driven, previous style and form. The poems are once again short and coherent, with repetition of themes, such as death, body/environment connection, and the growth of a speaker who is becoming more in touch with their emotions. “Then” in section two was a prelude to the darkness that will now flow throughout the poems in the third section. It also seems that the poems take on a stronger voice, with a more affected, emotional charge. The first poem in section three, “Canal.” is short and to the point. There is fresh death around the speaker and although it is becoming more consuming, the speaker can still maintain a slightly existential and accepting tone. There is a connection between body and world, as is evident in the line, “The figure on the bed in the front room: / the mouth ajar: the window ajar: the drawbridge raised for the barge” (page 25). There is an obvious and direct connection of the dead body’s ajar mouth, to the window of the house in which the body lays. The body reflects it‘s environment. The next line is also a description of environment, but read metaphorically as a symbol for death; the deceased passing into the next stage of it’s existence, or non-existence. Hamilton uses movement (again) to an unknown place, repeating the physical movement in “Not Known” at the end of section one. “Not Known” portrays a feeling of physical movement within life, to an unknown destination. “Canal” depicts a spiritual movement out of the real world, however the destination still remains unknown. At this point in Divide These, Hamilton has begun exploring theories of death and it’s unnerving uncertainty.

The speaker in Divide These has progressed, even further, in portraying her emotion. There is now physical movement, propelling the reader forward, as well as spiritual movement, pushing the speaker to expand her ideas of death and the world/body connection to a new level of revealing emotion. The poem “Elegy” invites the reader to understand Hamilton’s more aggressive, emotional, and humanly side. “Elegy” shatters the mold of this existential, uncaring speaker. It is apparent that the speaker is surrounded and consumed by death, in the event that they are attending a funeral (or many) and have become frustrated with the processes of which. The speaker begins to realize that death is more than just a loss of physical life, and expresses anger at the act of accepting death. The way Hamilton describes the funeral is still in her observational tone, but the voice takes on emotion and releases it in the use of words representing frustration and anger. There are interruptions, which represents the interruption death causes in life, and faceless, nameless figures putting on the funeral who don’t mean anything to the speaker; are an annoyance because of their disconnection to the place and the speaker. Hamilton expresses her emotion in “Elegy” by using a long-sentence technique; like she is ranting, and releasing all these bottled-up feelings, like tears pouring down cheeks, words spilling onto the page with no punctuations to intrude.

The remaining poems in section three of Divide These follow the same patterns that have been prevalent throughout the book. They are a mix of varying sized poems, some short, like “Storm,” and others longer and more spread out upon the page. The poems begin to relate to and express more of the nature surrounding the speaker. There are many references to animals and insects, that occupy the scene of the poem as well as symbolize fear and haunting uncertainty in the speaker’s voice. The changing and growing voice of the speaker has become more timid and questioning. There is an uncertainty about life as well as death, and almost a paranoia filtering through the philosophically-driven metaphors. For example, in the poem “Entrance” Hamilton writes, “If the hornets she had crushes in the glass / were instead to gather in her hair. // If the textures of the wall in the sleeper’s / vision were to stop changing and settle him back.” There is reference to nature and the environment, as well as the haunting theme of death always prevalent.

In the last section of the book, Hamilton changes her style to create stronger undertones of emotion and feeling, that is evident by the structure of the poem on the actual page. The way a poet spaces lines, breaks them, and forces the reader’s eyes to accept the words upon the page can have great influence on the way the poem is interpreted. The significance of Hamilton’s new line-breakage and strategic spacing allows the reader to feel uncertainty of the poem The words are like human thought processes; naturally occurring at different intensities and oftentimes repeating themselves. For example, in the poem “Divide These” Hamilton writes,

Only night First light
Only night First light
I will not quite
Fit in this hole
Nor you with
Your long fingers

This use of spacing exaggerates the speaker’s thoughts and gives them more feeling and importance. The theme of death is ever-present within the last section of the book, especially in this poem, the last four lines being about a grave. It seems as though the speaker has taken a new stance on death, however. She seems to be more afraid of death than in the beginning of the book, when she portrayed an existential, accepting tone.

The poem “One by Two” carries itself across twelve pages of Hamilton’s book. It’s importance is immaculate because it expresses the newfound, deep-thinking, almost paranoid and afraid voice of the speaker. The speaker is observant of nature in a way that connects her physical and spiritual being to it, and in this association there is paranoia that death is so certain, yet so uncertain at the same time. The very last poem is a perfect ending to the book, because in itself it shows the exact change the speaker has encountered and the voice they have become throughout the book. “Contingent Ends” is a depictions of all the last encounters the speaker has had before their death, and Hamilton leaves it completely open-ended. There are flashes of images, and the use of colons to portray their rapid speed and give them a still-frame affect. The poem ends with a colon, so as to leave the reader hanging, and wondering.

Hamilton strategically, and beautifully, constructed a book that encompasses the changes a person experiences as they grow and formulate opinions on existence and death. Human mind’s change more than the seasons, and Hamilton has portrayed this process perfectly. The speaker went from an existential, cold voice who was not in touch with their feelings, to one with fear and natural emotions that can be consuming if one allows them to be. At the end of Divide These, the speaker has maintained contact between her body and the physical world, and seems to be allowing her mind to explore the thoughts of death to a point where they have become paranoid and consuming. By creating a book that shows the changes in view of death a person holds throughout a period of time (from as little as a day, to as long as a lifetime), Hamilton has encompassed and portrayed her own fears of death. The last poem, where the speaker dies, is romantic in a way that the speaker is able to finally know what happens- and the reader is left wondering, and perhaps affected by the changes in the speaker’s voice throughout the book.

Further Reading

By Saskia Hamilton

Hamilton, Saskia. As For Dream. St. Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2001.

Hamilton, Saskia. Divide These. St. Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2005.

Lowell, Robert. The Letters of Robert Lowell. Ed. Saskia Hamilton. New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Inc., 2005.

About Saskia Hamilton

Marcom, Micheline Aharonian. “Detailed Biographical Information on Saskia
Hamilton.” Lannan. Apr. 2005. 4 May 2006

http://www.lannan.org/lf/bios/detail/saskia-Hamilton/

“Poetry Daily, Feature Poet.” Poetry Daily. 2006. 4 May 2006
http://www.poetrydaily.org/dividham.htm

Yamaguchi, Ryo. “As For Dream.” Three Candles Journal. 2005. 4 May 2006
http://www.threecandles.org/reviews/shamilton_review.html