There are poems that are famous to the poetry-reading world, and then there are poems that are famous to us as individuals. For personal reasons, they resonate. They may not be poetic wonders with all the bells and whistles that attract plaudits to the greatest poems in literature, but they are our friends.
For me, one such unsung hero is Mark Strand’s poem, “My Name.” It’s one of those deals where the “my,” clearly referring to the poem’s speaker and probably referring to the poet himself, is the equivalent of a possessive pronoun meaning me, the reader. In line 9, the speaker hears his name (Mark Strand), but this reader hears his own name (and maybe you will, too, if you like it as much as I do).
The fact is, once a poem speaks to you, you move in like a happy guest and feel as if you own it, at least for the brief stay of your reread. At 12 lines, Strand’s poem is most notable for the fact that it’s all one sentence, but it took time for me to even notice, so charmed was I by the sentiments within. Before I go on, here’s Strand’s poem:
My Name
Once when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass,
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become and where I would find myself,
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.
It’s not a form poem and it has no rhyme scheme, but it does offer some figurative delights, such as the “golden green” lawn and the “marbled moonlit trees…like fresh memorials / in scented air.” Not only do you get the imagery of color and light, your ears are treated to the soft alliteration of m-sounds in “marbled,” “moonlit,” and “memorials.” What’s more, the word “memorials” sets you to thinking about death, the catnip of every great poet.
Moving deeper into the poem, we get a familiar auditory call, “the chirr and murmur of insects” as you lay in the grass beside the speaker (or perhaps in place of him, now that you’ve been captured by the work). The speaker seems young, wondering as he does “what I would become and where I would find myself,” but his thoughts wander toward greater heights when he adds “though I barely existed” as if understanding how minor we are as motes in the universe. This sets up the hearing of his name, taking us to the grand finale:
…I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.
Yes, it’s childlike solipsism or typical human self-centeredness to consider nature a show performing exclusively for our entertainment alone, but notice how that “faint and far off” sound draws this speaker to the wisdom of the ages. That comes with knowing where all this mysterious beauty is heading – “to the silence / from which it had come and to which it would go.”
Here Strand brings his breathless, one-sentence homage to the wistful brevity of life in the form of the two great silences, the one before we are born and the one after we die. Again, in the scheme of things, our lives – even if they stretch to a century in length – are but a minor blip in time. And yet, our names, forgotten as they will be after those we leave behind die as well, remain precious to us, as if they are something much greater. Why? Because, as the touchstones of our identities, they are, at least to someone who thinks the stars are his and the sound of his name is important enough to be breathed by a sky partial to us and us alone.
It all brings to mind Yeats’ lines from “Never Give All the Heart”: “For everything that’s lovely is / but a brief, dreamy, kind delight.” You know, like rereading Strand’s poem and appreciating the beguiling notion of our own centrality in this world of quiet joys.
