Compare summer farm and continuum as deeper poetic explorations of the self

Summer farm and continuum both delve deep into poetic explorations of the self, through the use of powerful and surreal language, sound and meaning. These poems both set the stage for deep perceptual philosophy by creating a poetic and mystical atmosphere in their lines.

Continuum begins by providing a description of the motion of the moon according to the poet’s perception as, “The moon rolls over the roof and falls behind/ my house, and the moon does neither of these things,/ I am talking about myself.”. Curnow begins the poem with this powerful and pertinent line about perception and the divide between an empiricist’s mind and a poetic mind, this divide is taking place inside the writer’s own head and reflects the philosophical divide in our perception of reality. We can either view the moon as a great ball rolling over the roof as our eyes and instinct seem to tell us, or we can cloud our true perception by taking into consideration scientific knowledge of the moon and thus dismiss our earlier observation as merely a trivially mental game, as it “does neither of these things”. Curnow hints at a deeper exploration of the self by adding the line, “I am talking about myself” to stand-alone and be emphasized. Instantly my mind highlights this line and I am intrigued by what he is trying to communicate, maybe perception is entirely dependant on the perceiver and so all Curnow really has to do is talk about “himself” in order to describe his perception in entirety.

This room for thought and the space for deeper meaning, is created by the beautiful and almost mystical language Curnow uses throughout the poem. An example of this can be seen in the line, “palms into the washed-out creation”. Here a surreal and almost mystical image is created by the use of the words, “washed out” and “creation” the description of reality as a dreary watered down painting is highly effective and evocative due to the eerie images it produces. This line comes from the poetic side of the author and it is the philosopher who is speaking now. The use of such lyrical language suggests that everyday scenes can be viewed as beautiful acts of god through the eyes of a poet. Maybe such perception is as important as a factual and knowledge based view of the universe, as it provides the soul, or the entire man, with a deep and primal view of reality.

This line follows into the empiricist’s point of view as the factual mind of the author kicks in, “a dark place with two particular/ bright clouds dusted (query) by the moon”. The empiricist mind stuck within the poet {or the poet stuck within the empiricist – who’s to judge) is reflected in the use of very specific scientific language such as “particular”, “bright”, “query”. All these words indicate keen scientific observation without the presence of imagination. Even when the poet attempts to introduce a bit of a lyrical aspect, with the word dusted, the empiricist quickly knocks him down by questioning his use of the word by providing a “query” because that mind cannot understand perception on a deeper level. This hints at basic conflict between the two selves of the author and how the empiricist restricts the freedom of thought in the poet, with his factual knowledge and scientific understanding.

The poet refers to the need for the deeper exploration of the self in the lines “it’s not possible to get off to sleep”. Obviously the nagging anxiety and will for the poet within the man to be allowed to roam free and question reality, perception and the self is discomforting the whole man because the empiricist quails at the idea. This serves to further emphasize the conflict and turmoil that is taking place between the two selves of the author.

The most powerful lines in the poem sums up this conflict in the writer’s mind between the poet-philosopher and the empiricist, “Turn on a bare/ heel, close the door behind/ on the author, cringing demiurge, who picks up his litter and his tools and paces me back to bed, stealthily in step”. Here is a deeply metaphorical line that reveals the multiple states of mind that lie, conflicting within the author’s existence, both sides allow him to perceive reality in different ways but these two sides do not seem to be compatible, the entire man observes this conflict. He attempts to turn the poet away because the overbearing empiricist wants to turn his back on the poet and shut him off, because he fears what he cannot understand and what threatens to destabilize his way of thinking. There is the idea though that the entire man cannot truly get rid of the poet because he is an integral part of the whole self, of the soul and thus cannot be fully abandoned and instead, “paces me back to bed, stealthily in step”. The soft sneaking “s” sound in “stealthily” and “step” emphasized the idea of the poet slipping quietly back into a crevice of the mind of the self, unwanted but always needed.

Summer farm is another poem in which the author delves deep into the exploration of the self as Norman MacCaig tries to analyze what exactly the self as an entity is. As in continuum the poet does delve into the perception of reality. In this case though instead of being in two different minds about the perception of his reality, MacCaig encourages himself to break free of the usual mundane understanding of the world around him, there is very little inhibition from the empiricist within him since MacCaig is attempting to deeply question the true understanding of what the self is.

He begins to do this by firstly freeing his mind of its walls and inhibitions, “This grasshopper with plated face/ Unfolds his legs and finds himself in space.”, The use of the words, “plated face” refers to the mask we all wear , which restricts our view of the true nature of the universe and thus defines our perception. MacCaig goes on to tear apart this idea with the metaphor of the grasshopper unfurling itself and launching into “space”. This could be the space within one’s own mind in which there is room for your perception to grow and break free of its plated bounds. The poet is gaining confidence and is ready to jump deep into the depths of exploring himself.

The most powerful lines of this poem sums up the poets search for himself, even though his discovery is inconclusive it hints at a vastly fascinating attitude of questioning our common interpretation of the self, “Self under self, a pile of selves I stand/ Threaded on time, and with metaphysics hand” MacCaig realizes that the self cannot be quantified as an independently existing entity that we take for granted, but is instead a function of time and metaphysics, the me of today, might not be the me of tomorrow , it might not even be the me of yesterday, then he asks what is this “me” is it something really or just a brush stroke on the painting of the universe stroked by “metaphysics hand”. This line is so effective at evoking deep and meaningful thought just like continuum because of the use of language that provokes and intrigues the reader, such as, “metaphysics hand”, “pile of selves” and “threaded on time” in which the sound of the “t’s” blend together along with the surreal meaning of threading time like beads on a string.

The poet resolves these deeply disturbing question about the subject of the self by thoroughly confusing the issue, in the line, ‘Lift the farm like a lid and see/ Farm within farm, and in the center, me”. These lines make the mind quiver and quake, as our brains try and wrap all the logic and rational thought we have learnt in our lifetime in order to decipher them. We slowly realize that in order to truly understand these lines we have to let go of all reason and logic, which has served us so well in the past because these lines questions the very fundamentals of our reality and more importantly our perception of it. MacCaig has implied that our entire universe can be lifted away in order to reveal but another universe and this too can be removed just like a set of Russian dolls. Like the self that is compiled of an infinite number of selves MacCaig claims that our reality too is just a collection of infinite realities and what we take for granted so easily is actually infinitely complicated. The last poignant line of this poem are the most earth shattering, this is where all our thought and deep philosophy has led us, the final answer, the bottom of the seemingly bottomless well in the exploration to uncover the essence of the self; Only when we can understand and peel back the infinite complexities of our realities and selves and our perceptions then right “in the center” lies “me” – the self…