Image VI (1.13.22)

For some reason this afternoon, an old image flashed back into my conscious brain.  It was of a young man riding a bucking horse at a rodeo.  This image is not from personal, but vicarious experience, through a poem that was read at a poetry gathering in the late 1970s.  How long ago was that?  Jimmy Carter was President!

To be more precise, the image that sticks with me is not of the bronco ride, but of its finish, when the rider finally loosens his grip and lets go and the horse throws him off.  

A little background.

I was in graduate school at Saint Louis University.  Cupples House, an architectural and cultural institution on campus, hosted poetry readings periodically, intimate affairs attended by a few faculty, some students interested in poetry, and two or three poets.  I read there once, but mostly, as a student, I attended to listen to more experienced writers share their work.  

I can't remember the poet's name.  But I do recall that poem.  Strike that.  I recall the drama of the poem and how expertly it built toward its surprising and satisfying and encouraging (to a young poet like me) ending.  

Here's how the drama unfolded . . .

• The set up: the speaker (our poet) who, as a young man, once toured the rodeo circuit, competing as a bronco buster.  
• The opening: explosion from the pen, man and horse together, out into the center of the arena. People screaming, cheering in the stands.
• The ride: a union of horse and man in common struggle - one to throw off, one to stay on.
• The detail: a gloved hand strapped to the nape of the surging horse's head; a free hand flailing back and forth like a rag above the rider's head; the humped back of the horse and the arched back of the rider; the kicking hooves and the digging boots; the receding of the crowd noise in the rider's mind as he and the horse become a single, bucking, thrashing thing.
• The denouement: a bell ringing, the loosening of the rider's grip.
• The climax: the jettison into the air above the horse's back, rider and horse becoming two again.
• And the conclusion: what the poet wants me to take away from this drama.

Okay, I've made up all but the penultimate item on this list, because this final, exciting image is what comes back to me every so often, even today, some 45 years on.  I'd say it's one of the grabbiest images I've ever encountered in a poem.  And I can't even remember the poet's name!

That image grabs, has stuck to me for all these years because the poem is not really about rodeos or lost youth and virility, but total and complete oneness . . . and how rare such oneness is, how momentary and self-effacing, how fulfilling to a human being who's paying attention.  And when that human being is a practicing poet, well, how lucky for the rest of us, for me!  

When I say that this poem came to me "for some reason" this afternoon, I'm not telling the truth.  It resurfaced for a very specific reason.  At today's Wednesdays@One session, we talked again about how hard it can be to end a poem, to find the appropriate last line or lines that don't undercut the rest of the poem, that don't just end the flow of words but genuinely bring the poem to rest.  My advice to the group was that, if you're stuck trying to close out a poem, look back up the lines for some thought or image or figure or rhythmical effect or theme or emotion (often found in an image).  You'll find there, almost invariably, one or two keys to your poem's ending.  It might be another go at some lyrical pattern, or a different take on a metaphor used earlier, or an extension of an idea or a logical outcome, or a "surprise" ending (for which there might be subtle clues above).  In other words, read your own poem.  What's it trying to tell you about how it should end?

This doesn't always work.  But often enough, when I'm stuck trying to write an ending line or image, I find clues to it earlier in the poem.  And this difficulty made me think of this old poem and its fantastic and fantastical ending that I was so unprepared for, but which is so proper to the poem, and so satisfying.  Grabby, as I say.  I wonder whether the poet began with that image in mind, or if he, in writing out a memory of that event, looked for and found the ending, and thus the poem.  It hardly matters.  What he found that "the poem" wanted to say is something of the fleeting quality of our best experiences . . . and how permanent they really are.