The Radiance

I recently had the pleasure of discovering an amazing poem by A.R. Ammons entitled "The City Limits." I love it when in the last sentence of a piece of literature I am stopped cold as if shot through the heart by a sharp idea from an author. This poem does just that. 

I happened upon the poem while reading for my 20th Century Poetry class and we discussed it yesterday. Actually they discussed it because upon first reading it I had an immediate reaction to the underlying tones of religion and admiration of God and his ever-reaching Grace. However, the one who speaks of that reaction to the class is automatically a God-nut and his/her legitimacy and merit are immediately thrown out of the window.

That is the problem with poetry classes. The moment one begins to elaborate on what the poem has done for them, those who disagree feel they are sticking up for the author, doing their best to keep your words from that pen.  Go ahead and read the poem, the class discussion follows.

"The City Limits"

by A.R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold

itself but pours its abundance without selection into every

nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but

lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider

the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,

not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider

the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped

guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no

way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,

each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then

the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark

work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes

and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

So I listened to the class search for the meaning of the poem. And no one could make sense of it. The discussion of the poem is fairly summarized in the teacher's last sentence in class:

"The terms fear and praise are juxtaposed, they can never mean the same thing."

Without the existence of God, her confusion would be justified. I smiled at this and all the other times in which I have heard people run from the notion of God in literature, thereby losing all of the meaning in a whatever they are reading. I am certainly not one to push my beliefs down a person's throat but when a poem speaks of a "roomier heart" upon the consideration of grace, it seems the implication is clear. 

That is how the poem affected me. I am not saying Ammons is a believer, but I do believe that my God has the power to move the pen of his foes. However my teacher decided to go with this:

"It is through this juxtaposition that Ammons brings praise to the coil of s***."

I don't know that I have ever heard something so foolish in all of my life. God's grace extends to the wicked and ugly, but they are not made so much better as to receive praise for their rebirth. The radiance gives them the ability to approach their creator. 

It is in this approach that fear and praise become one. No God, no approach. No approach, no meaning.

Cheers.