Poetry and Mortality

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is essentially about how fleeting life is and how we must live largely and quickly while we can. More specifically, this is directed at a "lady" for whom the speaker has enough love to last eternity, yet they "cannot make [their] sun stand still" so he insists that they act upon their love. While some might see this poem as a sleazy attempt to lower the inhibitions of a woman the speaker is attracted to, I see it as a skilled expression of the classic carpe diem or "seize the day" (more recently YOLO). The concept is by no means bold or innovative, but Marvell expresses it with beauty, going on at length about how he might act in another, timeless world. He addresses death as peaceful but lacking in these earthly pleasures, "The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace."

Archibald MacLeish's "You, Andrew Marvell" responds in a way to the themes of this poem, but I find it more interesting and profound than it's addressee. It begins with a reference to the sun on which Marvell's poem ended; here it serves again as an indication of time, but not its progress, its current position. MacLeish is not concerned with ignoring death or living to spite it as Marvell seems to be. Instead, he finds beauty in recognizing life is not a quick flash but instead a slow, periodic process of rises and falls. He recounts the ends of countless civilizations, comparing our own lives to them. The best part of this poem is the transcendent bliss suggested by the lines "And here face down beneath the sun / And here upon earth’s noonward height / To feel the always coming on / The always rising of the night." It is not an anxious fear of death, but a peaceful realization of it's imminence whilst enjoying the peak or "noon" of one's life. MacLeish seems to see past the more carnal concern's of Marvell's speaker, interested more in how death is a part of the same process of life, not its end.

Reading Mark Strand's reflection on "You, Andrew Marvell" was an experience of identification. I know the feelings that he talks about and share his consciousness of poetry power and effect. Though I don't have a poem which is my favorite and draws me as close as MacLeish's did for Strand, I do have that general feeling about poetry. I write my own and often do my best work when listening to other poets and riffing on structural, rhythmic, and conceptual aspects of their poetry. I did like both poems, favoring the latter just as Strand. I agree completely about lyric poetry.