Reading Saint John of the Cross by Susan Kelly-Dewitt – Analysis and Commentary

READING SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS BY SUSAN KELLY-DEWITT –

ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY

There are many ways to interpret a poem. Analysis of several poems of Susan Kelly-Dewitt indicates that the following approaches would be most helpful in interpreting her work:

Historical-biographical: The poem describes the personal experience of the author.

Psychological: The poem expresses her deep psychological sentiments.

Archetypal: The poem employs metaphors and images fraught with cultural meanings.

Formalist: The poem uses an underlying narrative structure.

See:

https://www.skylarb.com/post/2018/09/26/a-toolbox-for-understanding-literature-seven-critical-approaches

—Skylar Hamilton Burris, “A Toolbox for Understanding Literature: Seven Critical Approaches,” September 26, 2018, Skylar Hamilton Burris: Author, Editor, Publisher

Because “Reading Saint John of the Cross” centers on a well-known Roman Catholic religious motif, namely, the holy man himself, clues to a meaningful interpretation of the poem may be found found in the author’s similarly religious poetry.

Before moving on to “Reading Saint John of the Cross,” let’s look at the following poems:

I-80 Catechism

Cold Sweat

Francis in Ecstasy

I-80 CATECHISM by Susan Kelly-Dewitt

The hills with their bright gold

scapulars. The sun's dry chalice

over Vacaville. Cattle plush

as Bathsheba’s rugs.

Teach me that.

Flesh, stone

and star.

Fur, bone

and grass.

Let me memorize

that: Vetch, Brome

Poppy, Hawk.

The speaker in the poem, plausibly, the author herself, describes what she sees—hills, sun, cattle—as she travels down I-80. The poem ends by listing several roadside plant species—Vetch, Brome, Poppy, Hawk.

Midway through the poem, she cites a series of images—flesh, stone, star, fur, bone, grass—what are we to make of this? They appear to be items that are associated with sights along the way or they are actual visual features of the landscape.

We could read any number of meanings into the series, but I won’t attempt it because they’re obscure.

Notably, the poet uses religious metaphors—gold scapulars, chalice, Bathsheba’s rugs. Her journey along I-80 is a “catechism,” that is, she derives religious meaning from the experience.

Invoking a slice of her personal experience, she sees religious significance in the imagery.

COLD SWEAT by Susan Kelly-Dewitt

Last night

I woke up

cold, in bed

next to you.

The hair

at the nape

of my neck

was wet.

Perhaps

my spirit

was weeping

into my pillow.

Perhaps

my father,

dead now

twenty

years,

came sailing

down the river

one last time

and I ran

to greet him

through the wet

grasses.

Key images in this poem are the wet hair at the nape of the speaker and the wet grasses, which occur at the beginning and the end of the poem, connecting together the entire narrative.

Water joins the moment of waking to the visionary encounter with a dead father—a dream, ostensibly—which is a joyful experience (“I ran to greet him”) that elicits tears (“my spirit was weeping into my pillow”).

The image of water occurs four times in the poem, five times if we count “cold sweat,” the title.

The moment of waking is the occasion for the speaker to imagine or recall an encounter with her father, “dead now twenty years.” It is a poignant, deeply meaningful, dreamlike experience.

All told, the poem is a psychological narrative particularly marked by the symbolism of water.

FRANCIS IN ECSTASY by Susan Kelly-Dewitt

Francis lifts his arms and the swallows

return to Capistrano, their brown heads

nodding haloes of feathery song.

He is standing outside himself

in an Italian version of ekstasis,

the bloody eyes of the stigmata

winking from his feet and callused palms.

Seeing him there, like a canticle of the sun,

who can tell the Inquisition is preparing

its medieval fresco, smoothing its wet lime

plaster walls; grinding up its artists’

bones into the pigments from which Bosch’s

Garden of Earthly Delights will be born.

The poem contrasts two images principally. The first image is that of Saint Francis of Assisi as ecstatic stigmatic, a Roman Catholic image of holiness. The second image is that of the Inquisition personified as a fresco painter, and it is an image of violence: the painter grinds artists’ bones into pigments and uses them to render Bosch’s lurid oeuvre.

The principal meaning of the poem plausibly lies in the contrast of images—Roman Catholicism, the religion which produced Saint Francis of Assisi, also gave rise to the Inquisition, which resorted to some of the most violent methods of political and religious repression known in history.

I suggest that the poems preceding furnish us with a template for interpreting “Reading Saint John of the Cross.” Apparently, a typical pattern of composition for the poet is to take up some aspect of her personal experience and then by drawing on the expressive power of metaphor and symbol principally, expound her compelling sentiments about or deep interpretation of the experience.

READING SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS by Susan Kelly-DeWitt

How many miles to the border

where all the sky there is

exists for the soul alone?

Where the only breathers

breathing are constructed

from some new electricity

and the flowers are made

indestructible, and messages

from the dead arrive like calm

white birds with a gift?

One more night of spiritual

ice and we might all become

birds, green birds frozen

on a black winter branch.

There is a drumming in the shadows

under leaves: a million eight-eyed

spiders on the march.

The buckeyes beat themselves

half to death against

some lit-from-within screen.

“Reading Saint John of the Cross” is presumably exactly about what it says, the personal encounter of the poet with the printed texts of the saint.

The poet puts together a series of very unusual and rather original metaphors, most of which do not correspond to any of the symbols familiar to us.

That is why the most productive approach to interpretation in my opinion would be to investigate the emotional attributes of the images and then to connect this understanding to corresponding features in the works of Saint John of the Cross.

The poem begins by exclaiming about the ordeal of a long journey (“How many miles to the border”) culminating in some vastly expansive and forbiddingly solitary destination (“all the sky there is exists for the soul alone”). Compactly wrought, the metaphors point to the daunting challenge of the journey of the soul to union with God—the sky being a symbol for God—about which the spiritual theology of Saint John of the Cross is basically occupied.

Next stanza, the poet collates a series of surreal images, exquisitely and touchingly beautiful—“breathers…constructed from some new electricity,” “flowers are made indestructible,” “messages from the dead arrive like calm white birds with a gift.” They connote the otherworldly, the supernatural world of Saint John.

The necessity of undergoing arduous trials in order to attain the rarefied holiness exhorted by Saint John is evoked by the desolate images in the stanza following—“green birds frozen on a black winter branch,” nights of “spiritual ice.”

The close caps the poem with a compelling apparition that may have originated in the poet’s own personal experience. Millions of spiders, “buckeyes,” beat themselves “half to death” against some impenetrable luminous screen. It’s a picture of insistence and desperation—a metaphor, possibly, for the soul who is drawn to God, the light beyond the screen standing for the attraction emanating from the Godhead.

It’s a startlingly vivid, highly evocative poem.

Curious that after more than 500 years a postmodern could be found publishing a poem about the writings of Saint John of the Cross…

How many miles to the border...