Note: The following is an essay originally written for Professor Niyi Osundare's Poetry as a Genre class during the Fall 2010 semester at the University of New Orleans. Date of creation: November 22, 2010. If referring to this essay academically, please remember to make the appropriate citations so as to avoid running afoul of your institution's plagiarism policy.
"Does it not hurt the caterpillar to become the butterfly?
Change always hurts, that is how you know it is working."
Robinson Jeffers's "Shine, Perishing Republic," appears on the page as an unassuming poem, ten rather long lines arranged in five stanzas, each one a rhymeless couplet. It utilizes all of the trademarks that the seasoned reader is accustomed to seeing in modern poetry: metaphor, playful use of the language through such standard devices as assonance and alliteration, and social commentary. A closer reading reveals, however, that it is more than merely a free verse jeremiad, containing multiple levels of metaphor and interpretation, much of which only exists in nuance and subtext. It is a poem which succeeds in being more than just analogous, instead being an exemplary member of that canon of poems which contain that more broadly descriptive quality of applicability. The difference between these two tropes is small and best defined by an anecdote about J.R.R. Tolkien, who, when asked by a student if his seminal fantasy work The Lord of the Rings was an analogy for World War II, replied that it most certainly was not, but it was applicable to that conflict (unsurprisingly, this was a question that plagued him for his entire career, and he eventually drew an outline of how his series would have been different if that was his intent). While nearly a century old, the language and content of "Republic" give it a wider applicability to the world as a whole, beyond being simply the writings of a man whose recent memory retained the horrors of The Great War, a poem whose poetic meaning would not simply fade when its creator's generation had passed.
Poetry in its original, oral form was meant to be transmitted like a memetic virus: encoded within each poem were tricks of assonance, rhythm, alliteration and rhyme that allowed the poem to take root in the mind of the listener so that he could then retransmit it to another. Poetry was not merely a pastime, but an important and vital part of tradition and history, especially in the era predating the written word; take note of the genealogies in the Torah that provide not only an origin story but a historical lineage for the Hebrew people, or how often Beowulf and "contemporary" epic poems break from a storyline that details the founding of a people to provide something as mundane as a recipe for soup.
"Republic" has residual elements of this, the rhythmic tropes and literary devices designed to aid in memorization and retention are still present, as befits a literary tradition descended from orality, but gives it a postmodern flavor that reflects on the genre as a whole, and interpretations that would have been impossible in lyricism that was strictly oral.
While this piece has elements that harken back to oral poetic traditions, there are elements that exist, and can only exist, on the page. Of particular not is the use of alliteration in in the fourth stanza, verbal and otherwise. The repetition of consonant sounds as a kind of proto-mnemonic device is nothing new, and is evident in "corruption" and "compulsory," but words beginning with "c" litter this section: "children," "cities," and "center." Just as the slant rhyme codified by Emily Dickinson utilized words that, in their written form, appeared to rhyme, so does Jeffers utilize a kind of "slant alliteration," taking the auditory and creating a trope that acts only upon the eye, repeating letters in a kind of affectation of true aural alliteration. This is a feat, as it is only achievable with certain letters; "m," for instance, as seen with the seventh and eighth lines with "mortal," "meteor," and "mountains," only produces one sound (the bilabial nasal), while "c" can make up to three, all of which are evinced in this stanza: the voiceless velar stop ("compulsory"), the voiceless alveolar sibilant ("cities"), and, in conjunction with the letter "h," the voiceless palatal affricate ("children"). This represents a merging of the old and the new: the obvious alliteration that presents itself to the auditory faculties, and the new alliteration that only exists in written form.
The question that arises from the text and subtext of the poem is likewise open to differing interpretations and readings. What is the Perishing Republic? Is it the meteor, or is it the mountain? The choice of terminology here is telling: "meteor" was chosen not merely because of its alliterative appeal when used with "mountain" and "mortal," but for the connotations that it represents. If Jeffers was simply going to mention an astronomical body, he could have chosen "asteroid" or "comet," but both of these objects have a spacial reoccurance, appearing at regular intervals, and the word "meteor" itself only refers to the titular rock as it is burning out in the atmosphere; outside of earth's gravity well, these rocks are referred to as "meteoroids," and those rocks which reach the earth's surface are "meteorites," the "meteor" only exists for a few moments at it lights the sky, a single, virtually momentary flash against the darkness before expiring. Juxtaposed against the image of the mountain, ostensibly permanent and immovable, the meteor has a life as temporary and immaterial as a mayfly, but it is "not needed less," showing that not only is there room enough in the universe for the immaterial and the immortal, but that neither is more or less vital than the other, and that while it is the mountain that grounds the world, it is the brief candle against the night that gives it beauty.
The metamorphosis from meteoroid to meteor to meteorite serves as an extratextual metaphor for the cycle of life described earlier in the poem: the bloom becomes the bounty, and the bounty "rots to make earth," from which a new blossom will emerge. The blossom is the meteoroid: it has the potential to be more than it is. Just as the flower exists primarily as an ornament to attract pollinators and ultimately gives its life for the fruit, so is the meteoroid an incarnation of the potential meteor, which will either burn away or fall to the earth. It is only here that the analogy breaks down: as the fruit becomes compost in the final stage of its transformation, the rock that is left behind after streaking across the sky provides no such nourishment for the next generation. The nation that flares out in a blaze of glory is not the nation which falls so that a new one may rise, like a phoenix, nor is it an ethereal, eternal nation that can be likened to a mountain. It would appear that its purpose, too, was only of an ornamental nature, but upon closer reading, it is so much more than that: the meteorite is little more than a rock, one without the permanence of the mountain, truly, but it serves a higher purpose than even the fruit or the flower, because it connects the earth to the heavens. It is of no less importance.
If Jeffers's America was the Perishing Republic, of these two metaphors, both images of transiency with very different purposes and endings, which is Jeffers saying is the ultimate fate of his nation? Perhaps neither: despite their tremendous size and apparent eternality, even mountains do not burst forth from the firmament fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. Mountains form from the accumulation of semi-liquid rock, outpourings of "molten mass," superheated by proximity to the earth's core, "and the mass hardens" in the open air. It is not America that Jeffers says is perishing, it is its nature as a republic which is coming to an end, as its magma is "thickening to empire." It is on this action alone that he takes a strong stance, saying that the next generation should be kept at a distance from this rising imperialism, this infant rock conforming to "the mold of ... vulgarity," that there is no force which compels the next harvest to assume the mantle and form of the last fruits. It is not America that is perishing, it is "this America" (emphasis added), the republic, and even this event is not wholly demonized, the metamorphosis is an occasion for sadness and smiling, as seen in line three, bittersweet, neither emotion "not needed less."
The "empire" Jeffers notes is forming likely refers to the upheavals in geopolitik that occurred in the wake of World War I, the reconstruction of the world still in flux when Jeffers first published this poem. By presuming that it had the right to determine the fate of a foreign, sovereign nation, those in power were indirectly attacking the very notion of a republic, and Jeffers is expressing his fears that subsequent generations would ultimately fail to flourish under the regime of such an authoritarian mode of thought. Once again, it becomes apparent that he feels that it is the republic, "this America," which is dying, and the various metaphors sprinkled throughout the piece highlight the myriad ways in which the nation may continue. Unlike his spiritual descendant, Langston Hughes, who would ask "What happens to a raisin in the sun?", and force the metaphorical community to choose between two hypothetically incongruous fates, Jeffers makes no such clear cut distinctions.
Is America the mountain? Is it the flower? Is it the meteor? Will it be doomed to repeat the cycle of eternal recurrence: birth, life, death, rebirth; or will it "shine" against the darkness for merely a moment before being consumed by it? Jeffers sees the nation as all of these things at once. The poem is not an itemized listing of potential alternate futures; "ripeness" and "decadence" are not mutually exclusive concepts. America, as the Perishing Republic, serves as both a reminder of the ties of the eroding and changing earth to the endless and unchanging heavens and as the fruit that gives its life to go "home to the mother" and provide for the germination of progeny, which must be kept separated from the fires of "protest" which conform the mountain to new modes of imperialism. Ultimately, his mention that he is "sadly smiling" strikes a note of hope, that it is the rebirth that will ultimately prevail.
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