The Fist by Derek Walcott
The confusing, unreasonable nature of love.
There aren’t many rules to poetry, you can do what you want. Split the infinitive? Go for it. Start a new line mid sentence? You do you. There’s not many rules about poets either: tall people, small people, round people, loud people, quiet people, funny people and any other adjective you can imagine, are the makings of a good poet. Now, I say not many because I think I do have one rule about poets:
At some point, they’ll give into the fever dream and write a love poem.
Saying this, I don’t think Walcott had even the remotest objection to writing a love poem - he just didn’t do it all that much. Born in 1917 on the idyllic island of Saint Lucia, a former British colony in the West Indies, a lot of his work featured Caribbean culture and history; not the fires of love. Even with his narrow focus, Walcott had a way with words that hasn’t been replicated since, likely coming from his sheer love of the English language and the expression it allowed him with words,
“ Forty years gone, in my island childhood, I felt that
the gift of poetry had made me one of the chosen,
that all experience was kindling to the fire of the Muse”Midsummer
Perhaps his rare voyage into love is what makes “The Fist” so impactful; the simple yet unconventional view of the heart is free from the repetitiveness many other regulars of the genre suffer from. It has the rare feeling of every word being perfect, not a syllable out of place, and not a caesura ( A stop or pause in a metrical line, often marked by punctuation) misused. The use of such simple words, never bolder than 3 syllables, combined with the chaotic phrasing in the first two stanzas build a hot picture of the stress and madness the author is feeling; the final line leaves you hanging on the edge, unsure yet, somehow, resolute in your position.
It’s hard to say if this poem really is a love poem, if anything it could be called an anti-love poem with it focussing on the unreasonable love that it is so easy to fall into. But it never really explores where this dangerous breed comes from; is it inevitable? Is it common? It’s hard to know what the author thought, but, if anything, that is where we are free to build on it ourselves, finding our own ideas and thoughts in the void that’s left behind.
Each line has an innate duality with its next, beginning with wonderfully clear coral reef under the water, only for the next line to kick up the sand and muck it all up; each glimmer of hope in the lines is parried by the darker image following it - just look at the fist stanza:
The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness;
Straight away we’re shown a conflicted image of the pains of love; The fist enclosing the heart is undoubtedly painful, but maybe it’s a necessary evil to get the ‘brightness’. Nevertheless, the following line puts us back in our place,
but it tightens again.
Wham. Back on the floor we go. And again, immediately following this we are put in the same situation,
When have I ever not loved
the pain of love?
An almost self confessional realisation, bringing to our eyes the duality of love. But like a cheeky child reaching for a cookie, our greedy fingers are smacked down,
This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.
BANG. That one actually hurt; the vivid imagery wonderfully smacking us back to reality. The cognitive dissonance of love is hitting its peak, all in preparation for us to be left with the final fleeting words of advice:
Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.
This line has been bouncing around my head for a long time now, and I can’t say I’ve broken it down all that effectively. Every time I read another interpretation I’m more or less convinced they were right and I was silly. But still, I do feel something. And every rolling of the words on my tongue feels a little bit different, a little bit more well formed - it reminds me of that famous T.S. Elliot quote:
“It is a test that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood”
T.S. Eliot
Despite my waxing of the poetical ideal, I’ll endeavour to convince you of what I see; and if you see something different I implore you to tell me - there is nothing but addition in the feelings of poetry.
It’s worth considering every other word of the poem before this line; every line, every caesura feels wrong , but in the right way which emphasises the conflict and confusion in the authors heart. The two stanzas feel chaotic and confused, as if the reader is struggling to convince themselves that this unreasonable love is exactly that - unreasonable. And this, really, is what gives that final line so much power. It’s the exact opposite of chaotic - it follows a structured and sensical metre, iambic pentameter.
I promised this publication would be free from anything too complicated, but some basic metrical knowledge can go a long way so where it comes up I’ll try my best to explain it.
When we talk about poetry we often find the notion of rhythm useful. All this is is the eb and flow of the words (just like in music!), and one important concept is the metre - how each line is composed of stressed and unstressed syllables. Not all poems use it structurally, but if you’ve ever read any Shakespeare then you’re familiar with iambic pentameter: five ‘iambs’ in a line, each iamb consisting of a singular unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one (think of how music is said mu-sic). If this sounds a bit hard to get, don’t panic! You have a better grasp of it than you realise; just like how you can hear when music sounds good without saying what key its in, you can hear the metre without realising what type it is. When analysing poetry we use symbols on the page to show when something is stressed or not. I’m following the convention that ‘-‘ above a word is unstressed, and ‘/‘ means stressed. A pair of these like so, ‘ - /‘ makes an Iamb, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one.
So the final line of this poem reads:
- / - / - / - / - /
“Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.”
Easy.
This common form, often hailed as the backbone to English poetry, provides a resounding sense of clarity to the final line. The author has made up their mind, they shall not fall into the abyss of unreasonable love; they will not succumb to the madman.
But what does that really mean? Are they deciding to stay away from it entirely? Or, are they dancing with the devil and attempting to balance precariously on the edge, hoping they’re strong enough not to fall in? I’ve never been convinced either way, and truthfully, I don’t think the author was either. Despite its firm stance, it seems like a self deceiving ruse.
As a final note, this poem always reminded me of Walcott’s other famous poem “Love After Love”, a manifesto on appreciating yourself. So much of it is different and contrasting in tone, but yet, the self-referential nature; the care for the heart of oneself, are roads between them. Maybe what we can learn from these poems is that we should love ourselves, even when we feel the need for the most unreasonable of love from other people.
So after all this, we’re left just as confused as the author. I’m ever so slightly closer to understanding how I felt the first time I read this: dazed and confused, with a sore heart. Not understanding anything, I still had something communicated to me. That’s enough.
A poem for you:
Love After Love by Derek Walcott
As mentioned above, a wonderfully simple piece pushing for self love. Every time I look into a mirror I think of this poem, and every time I’m thankful for it.
Every Tuesday I write a personal review of a poem that has captured my attention, as well as providing another poem for your own enjoyment. If you like what I write please share it with a friend!
As the saying goes: Sorry about the length of this email, I’d have written a shorter one if I had more time.
See you next week,
Jake Rose