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The Monday Poem (old)
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June 9, 2014 I Have Been Through the Gates - by Charlotte Mew
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Timothy, thank you so much for introducing me to Charlotte Mew, I've already really enjoyed the poems you posted in the poetry chat and this one is equally powerful. I love the way (which feels quite modern for her time by the way) in which she moves from image to image. The images themselves seem to follow a rather associative logic, but rationally I am not sure what it is that she's talking about. Weirdly I don't really care as the atmosphere she creates is so powerful, that it carries the poem despite the fact that the context is unclear. I think she's very modern in that way too, trusting that her imagery will reach the reader and the beauty of the language and the feeling evoked will be enough to carry the poem without having to feed our ratio with a narrative or a solution to the image puzzle. It seems the me she's mourning a love?. A 'heart' that once was a place of worship almost His heart, to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers. I thought about the way that finding love makes life seem so much fuller, and more meaningful and bright, and that sometimes, years later, we find ourselves standing in the ruins of what we once loved or believed in, not entirely sure how we got there. And maybe, re-reading what I just wrote, one could replace 'love' by 'faith' as well?
Heart = City.Heart full of warmth and love = City where peace reigns.
A Heart devoid of love and any human emotion = A ruined City.
Jesus cried over a city that had ruin at its heart/He cried over the humanity that had no heart.
An interesting observation may be (as Jenny pointed out) the inexplicable way in which the heart that seemed so loving later turns out to be a heart of stone. How do we explain? May be it is a fact on which no reasoning will work out and we have no choice than cry over. Even Christ couldn't change. He too only cried over it.
I read this to be about someone the author had known in her/their youth, brother?father?friend?lover? And how they had been so optimistic about life and its possibilities. When she met them again after a long time, they had been disappointed by life.
I'm not sure about the meaning but I like the poem. When I think of the title, I immediately think of the gates of heaven but I'm not sure how that fits with the rest of the poem
I love Charlotte Mew's work and thank you, Timothy, for introducing me to her in Poetry Chat. This is a powerfully emotive poem for me; like Gill, I think it is mourning someone she has lost. From my reading up on Mews (done a few weeks ago, so this is all from memory), I think it is about her brother; she comes from a family whose members struggled with mental illness. I think her brother committed suicide, as Mews would herself finally, and she did write many poems about him. Mew died after ingesting Lysol (caustic soda).
I'm glad to see some people who are new to Charlotte Mew coming to like her. It's kind a pet project of mine to make her better known.My own appreciation has been close to Jenny's:
The images themselves seem to follow a rather associative logic, but rationally I am not sure what it is that she's talking about. Weirdly I don't really care as the atmosphere she creates is so powerful, that it carries the poem despite the fact that the context is unclear. I think she's very modern in that way too, trusting that her imagery will reach the reader and the beauty of the language and the feeling evoked will be enough to carry the poem without having to feed our ratio with a narrative or a solution to the image puzzle.
Still, I'm grateful to those who have given it a more specific interpretation. I hadn't thought of a brother.
Bette, I think you know more about Mew than I do now.
There is a website which contains much of her work in both prose and poetry for anyone interested. http://studymore.org.uk/xmew.htm. I'm pretty sure all her work is in the public domain now.
Mod
I missed this one too! I agree, in a way, it doesn't matter that you don't fully understand it because you can put your own interpretation to it, or just let the words flow.over your and do their magic, and every time you read it, something else speaks to you and you grasp a new meaning. I think my own meaning is closest to Gill's, above. Great choice, Timothy.
Mod
His heart, to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers;
I saw it then as we see things in dreams, -I do not remember how long I slept;
I remember the trees, and the high, white walls, and how the sun was always on the
towers;
The walls are standing today, and the gates; I have been through the gates, I have
groped, I have crept
Back, back. There is dust in the streets, and blood; they are empty; darkness is over
them;
His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great winds and the heavenly
rain, unclean and unswept,
Like the heart of the holy city, old blind, beautiful Jerusalem,
Over which Christ wept.
I really don’t know what this poem “means” but have been enchanted by it for a long time. T. S. Eliot said that “a poem can communicate before it is understood.” I think it can even if it is never “understood.” Of course it would be great if someone who did understand it would tell me.
Charlotte Mew