Nemerov, a poet of Margery Kempe
I've been wondering whether any modern poets have tackled Margery Kempe. Plenty of poems have been written about Julian; she seems to inspire quite a few meditations in the genre, many of which are beautiful and some quite linguistically challenging too. Literature and Theology magazine are (fingers crossed) publishing an extended article of my conference paper from last year on this topic. But Margery - could her agitated witness prompt the measured lines of formal or accessible poetry?
I was pleased to track down Howard Nemerov's poem 'A Poem of Margery Kempe' today. I found a reference to it towards the end of Mitchell's book, where she notes that 'In the thirty-two short lines of the poem, the self-consciousness of Kempe is emphasised through eleven uses of the pronoun 'I', and twelve occurrences of 'me' or 'my'. And so it does - plus the repeated refrain, 'Alas! that ever I did sin,/ It is full merry in heaven'. These are words taken direct from Margery's text, and they're worthy of a refrain, I think: surprising, memorable, honest and uplifting. Nemerov's Kempe poem is from his second, 1947 collection, Guide to the Ruins
, which critic Milton Crane says "is the work of an original and sensitive mind, alive to the thousand anxieties and agonies of our age." Kempe's voice in the poem, a sort of dramatic monologue without an immediate interlocutor, is certainly strong, yet intensely troubled too, vulnerable to self-fracturing:
I creature being mad
They locked me in my room
Where, bound upon the bed
With smiling Satan there
I would have broke my side
And given my heart to God.
Men said it was pride
Brought me to that despair.
Alas! That ever I did sin,
It is full merry in heaven
The poem is simply written but formally, if discretely, contained, as was Nemerov's style, certainly in this volume. There is a sort of mimicking of the simplicity of medieval devotional verse too. The refrain is a ray of something - I was going to write unruliness, but that's not quite right - of persistent joy and simplicity despite the distress of the poem's speaking subject and perhaps also of its time of writing. 'Crying out odd and even', as the final verse ends.
Hopefully I'll track down some more Margery poems, but this one has given pause for thought. Nemerov was a substantial poet, and one about whom I know relatively little thus far. But he himself was happy to speak about the creativity afforded by relative ignorance; talking about the poetic process, "It's like a fairy tale. You're allowed to do it as long as you don't know too much about it." Nevertheless I get the feeling that the earliest published editions of Margery's book must have struck a chord, or a dischord, or a sort of melody.
I was pleased to track down Howard Nemerov's poem 'A Poem of Margery Kempe' today. I found a reference to it towards the end of Mitchell's book, where she notes that 'In the thirty-two short lines of the poem, the self-consciousness of Kempe is emphasised through eleven uses of the pronoun 'I', and twelve occurrences of 'me' or 'my'. And so it does - plus the repeated refrain, 'Alas! that ever I did sin,/ It is full merry in heaven'. These are words taken direct from Margery's text, and they're worthy of a refrain, I think: surprising, memorable, honest and uplifting. Nemerov's Kempe poem is from his second, 1947 collection, Guide to the Ruins
, which critic Milton Crane says "is the work of an original and sensitive mind, alive to the thousand anxieties and agonies of our age." Kempe's voice in the poem, a sort of dramatic monologue without an immediate interlocutor, is certainly strong, yet intensely troubled too, vulnerable to self-fracturing:I creature being mad
They locked me in my room
Where, bound upon the bed
With smiling Satan there
I would have broke my side
And given my heart to God.
Men said it was pride
Brought me to that despair.
Alas! That ever I did sin,
It is full merry in heaven
The poem is simply written but formally, if discretely, contained, as was Nemerov's style, certainly in this volume. There is a sort of mimicking of the simplicity of medieval devotional verse too. The refrain is a ray of something - I was going to write unruliness, but that's not quite right - of persistent joy and simplicity despite the distress of the poem's speaking subject and perhaps also of its time of writing. 'Crying out odd and even', as the final verse ends.
Hopefully I'll track down some more Margery poems, but this one has given pause for thought. Nemerov was a substantial poet, and one about whom I know relatively little thus far. But he himself was happy to speak about the creativity afforded by relative ignorance; talking about the poetic process, "It's like a fairy tale. You're allowed to do it as long as you don't know too much about it." Nevertheless I get the feeling that the earliest published editions of Margery's book must have struck a chord, or a dischord, or a sort of melody.
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