“My mind's not right”: Poetry as Voice of the Other Through Social Commentary, Personal Tension, and Vampires
Often, poets and readers of poetry may feel a brief concern about spending their time on pursuits often regarded as unessential or foolish by much of society. In this case, poets and those who read poetry may recognize a feeling of “otherness” more acutely than non-poets or those who do not read poetry. As Dr. Nick Halpern states, “People who take poetry classes are different” (personal communication, 2 August 2011). A. R. Ammons notes, after self-mocking statements about being a poet and poetry teacher, “who has done anything or am I likely to do anything the world won't twirl without” (13). That fear of inauthenticity or lack of true purpose constantly twitches in artistic minds. However, John Adams indicated the importance of poetry:
The science of government is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take place of, indeed to exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. 163
Many reasons exist for intense study of poetry. One of these is the understanding of how people view themselves, particularly in relation to others. The “other” may be a disparity in a poet's work, an unpopular viewpoint, or an under-recognized group that must use poetry to gain a voice for their position.
Section One: Poetry as Social Commentary
Much of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry encapsulates life’s crystallized moments, beautifying familiar situations, natural elements, and concerns about identity and connections through lush imagery. Her poems’ straightforward language and accessible style, as well as their canonization within secondary school academic anthologies, have maintained her popularity among modern readers. The poems’ fluid styles and recognizable subjects provide many access points for young people, allowing the depth of her themes to “sneak up” on readers who may otherwise be wary of poetry. Unlike Lowell’s intimately confessional first-person works, Bishop’s poetry leaves room for the reader within the lines; her poems seem to invite the reader while distancing the poet as the speaker, allowing for universality of experience throughout the differing forms with which she experimented or explored. Because of the understandability of Bishop’s most popular works, her poems that appear to diverge from her style’s recognizable elements invite speculation from readers with contrary natures, like myself. In this case, the divergent poem itself is other within the Bishop canon.
Felicia Hemens wrote a poem titled “Casabianca,” the purportedly true story of a boy who remained on the deck of his father’s ship during The Battle of the Nile and perished because he stayed loyal to his father’s last command. Revered as an example of country and filial loyalty, the work was often used as a memorization and recitation piece for American school children, making it ripe for parody as well as allusion (Lometa, Everything2; Robson, PMLA). Hemen’s work opens with the famous lines:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Elizabeth Bishop’s work, “Casabianca,” references Hemens’ poem of the same name, but Bishop’s poem develops themes beyond love for family and country. Instead, in a departure from her intricately developed layers of crystallized moments, authoritative speakers, or dream-like explorations, “Casabianca” seems to borrow a page from Wallace Stevens, saying many things at once while embracing and fighting the constraints of language:
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. (5)
The first stanza of Bishop’s work is burned into the Davis Square T stop and can only be seen when wet, which encourages questions about the modern relevance of a potentially opaque poem, particularly as Hemens’ original work is no longer canonical for elementary memorization and recitation, lessening the potential for immediate familiarity among the populace. As well as an unusual allegory of love, Bishop’s poem also comments on the effects of instruction on the depths or meanings of poetry.
Before attempting a thematic analysis, however, readers may be drawn to the juxtaposition of the words themselves. The elimination of the expected “who” before the word stood makes the work read more rapidly while also potentially distressing the reader for whom the poem may feel disjointed or awkward. Ending the poem with a sentence that starts with a coordinating conjunction, creating a fragment that violates rules of punctuation, also adds an element of haste and importance to the final line: “And love’s the burning boy.” The repetitions of vowel sounds, particularly “i” and “o,” within Bishop’s poem would make any high school poetry teacher feel compelled to demonstrate “assonance” in class, but the rhymes and near-rhymes seem to mock the original’s ten stanzas of distinct abab rhyme that made Hemans’ poem the perfect choice for classroom memorization and recitation.
Bishop’s poem “Casabianca” provides opportunity to comment on poetic instruction and education by referencing the canonically-enforced popularity of Hemens’ poem. The “boy” in Bishop’s poem is on the deck reciting Hemens’ poem. Not only is he bound by filial duty or love, he is engaged in an activity that is causing him great difficulty, not the least because he probably should be doing something more useful while on a burning deck. The first few lines beg the question of not only the usefulness of poetry itself but also the usefulness of memorization and recitation in academic study. One argument states that students who memorize and recite/perform poetry in courses claim “ownership” of the work they have learned, develop greater understanding of dramatic readings and how tone can alter meaning, lessen stage fright, and increase their memorization abilities through practice. However, as may have been the case with Hemens’ poem, memorization and recitation with no attention to meaning or performance value encourages rote recitations and no learning whatsoever because of the absence of the elements of reflection and analysis. In addition, works memorized and performed in such a way can become not only fodder for parody and irritation, they can also waste class time in useless pursuits, much the way reciting a poem while the deck is burning would be considered a more than useless, even ridiculous, pursuit.
In addition, the “schoolroom platform” for which the sailors wish represents something safe and unrealistic. While death and sacrifice are realities of war, situations that require critical thinking are realities of day to day life. Although following someone’s command to the letter, even when the situation seems to demand another response, may be the easiest choice, as it requires the least thought, blindly following such a command may not be realistic in every situation. Many of life’s situations require critical thinking skills beyond unquestioning obedience because situations change, and one’s response must alter to fit the changing situations through application of prior knowledge and understanding. Just as rote memorization is not always the best instructional tool, blind obedience may not always the best response in situations beyond the “schoolroom platform.”
Readers unaware of Bishop’s reference to Hemens’ poem, as many young readers may be, may regard “Casabianca” as an unusual comment on the nature of love. Although not Bishop's usual lengthy and lush development of a regular situation in order to heighten the reader’s appreciation of the environment or experience, “Casabianca” instead uses a concise style to present different depictions of what “love is.” In Bishop’s poem, a boy stands on the deck of the burning ship while reciting a poem, Hemens’ poem, poorly. Obviously, if one were trying to recite a memorized poem while fearing for one’s life, the recitation might not be fluid and unbroken. However, Bishop emphasizes that he is “trying to recite” and has “stammering elocution.” If “Love’s” is taken to mean “love is,” then the poem both begins and ends with love equaling the boy on the deck. In the first stanza, love is the boy who is faltering in his poetic recitation, possibly indicating that the emotion of love, the gain of someone as a “love,” or the continued retention of someone as a love or as a recipient of someone’s love requires effort. In addition, the halting recitation in the dangerous situation could also demonstrate that life’s dangers make feeling, experiencing, gaining, and maintaining love as difficult an activity as reciting poetry on a burning deck.
The second/final stanza says that love is the boy, the ship, and the sailors. If the reader continues to believe that “love’s” means “love is,” the potential for various interpretations exists. The boy is actively engaged in an act of expression. While one can argue whether or not reciting poetry on a burning ship is futile or foolish, the boy acts within the poem; he attempts to have some sort of agency despite his “obstinate” refusal to leave the deck. The ship represents not only the environment or the immediate situation; the ship is also the danger. If the boy would jump into the water, he might escape the danger of the fiery deck. However, the poem indicates that the ship, danger and all, is also love. One could interpret the lines to mean that love is not only universal or inescapable, but also that love is fraught with danger. As the poem does not explicitly state the boy’s dedication to filial command or patriotic loyalty, his dedication to remain on deck only connects to the words “love” and “obstinate.” Some people’s determination to find love in desperate situations, with people who do not return their affections, or with dangerous people, could be termed obstinate. Finally, love’s connection to the sailors proposes that some people would prefer to have a “schoolroom” definition of love, something safe, something expected and traditional, and either their circumstances, their desires, or society denies the experience. However, love as the sailors could also indicate that the sailors envy the boy’s dedication to his chosen action; they envy his “excuse to stay on deck.” If the fiery deck of the ship represents the dangerous and dark side of love, the sailors may wish they had refuted societal or other expectations and had the courage to place themselves in the danger that love represents. The dangers inherent in love could be the fear of being consumed by passion, the physical dangers of intimacy, or the emotional vulnerability one has when opening oneself emotionally to another human being. Garth Brooks’ song “Standing Outside the Fire” demonstrates the dichotomy of the boy and the sailors, if one views the boy as acting, possibly futilely and probably fatally, toward or about love, and the sailors as wanting “an excuse to stay on deck” with the fire:
We call them cool
Those hearts that have no scars to show
The ones that never do let go
And risk it the tables being turned
We call them fools
Who have to dance within the flame
Who chance the sorrow and the shame
That always come with getting burned
But you got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire.
Within the song, risking being burned by the fire is preferable to not taking a chance on love; it continues: “life is not tried, it is merely survived, if you’re standing outside the fire.” Although Bishop’s poem indicates the dangers of standing on the deck and the boy’s immolation at the end, if love is the ship which contains the fire and the sailors are envious of the boy’s excuse to stay on the ship, one interpretation of the poem agrees with the song.
Although not new emotions or expressions, lamentations on the dangerous or darker aspects of love continue to inspire writers and readers. The fire in Bishop’s poem that ultimately sets the boy ablaze could represent the many emotional, mental, and physical dangers of love. In Neil Gaiman’s “The Kindly Ones” installment of the graphic novel series The Sandman, Rose Walker expresses her feelings about love’s influence:
Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should just be friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body- hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
The bitterness about one’s vulnerability while seeking love or in love connects with the boy’s faltering recitation of the poem while on the burning deck. He seems to be doing an entirely unnecessary or futile act (as in Hemen’s poem, when he follows his father’s orders past the point of critical decision-making) by reciting poetry as the ship burns. The futility of action as represented by the boy’s recitation relates to Rose’s reasons for hating love: All of the effort that goes into creating a relationship can still lead to nothing but heartbreak.
While Rose Walker’s lament on love develops the reasons that love can be painful and difficult, Concrete Blonde’s song “The Beast” echoes Bishop’s darker possible “love is” construction:
Love is the ghost haunting your head
Love is the killer you thought
Was your friend
Love is the creature who lives
In the dark
Sneaks up, will stick you
And painfully pick you apart
Love is a poet, love sings the songs
Pointing his finger you follow along
Voice are calling,
The monster wants out of you
Paws you and claws you, you try not to fall
Love is the leech, sucking you up
Love is a vampire, drunk on your blood
Love is the beast that will
Tear out your heart
Hungrily lick it and
Painfully pick it apart
In these lyrics, the negative characterizations of love, which includes the controlling poet within the litany of various types of beasts, connect back to the dangers inherent in love as represented by the fire on the ship in Bishop’s poem. In addition, the Concrete Blonde song simultaneously indicates that the dangers of love are both internal and external. The only internal element of “Casabianca” comes from the musing that the sailors might like a schoolroom platform or an excuse to stay on deck. The lines leaves room for readers to ponder internal elements of love within the poem, particularly the boy's internal motivations.
In the Bishop poem, the ship is referred to as “the poor ship,” indicating sympathy toward what has previously been interpreted as a dangerous environment, the fiery ship. However, the ship has no agency and is not an internal danger but an external one because of the flames upon and within it. Unlike the boy, the ship is not acting, even futilely; it is merely sinking or being acted upon by the flames and the boy, if one interprets the boy’s action of reciting the poem as acting upon the ship. For readers unaware of Hemens’ poem, the boy struggles to recite a poem on the deck of a burning ship. Words have power: what if the poem being recited unleashed the flames from within the boy, and he falters in his recitation because he has no way to stop the flames, so he doggedly continues with his recitation? With this interpretation, the boy's unknown internal landscape catalyzes pyrokinetic results. Much like the Magician’s Apprentice, the boy insists upon maintaining an activity that is not only futile, it is damaging. If the love is the boy and the ship, but not the flames, the boy has acted in a destructive manner that has hurt an innocent or innocents, in the form of the ship and the sailors, and, ultimately, himself. By re-connecting this interpretation of love’s internal agency back to the idea that the Bishop poem is a comment on how Hemens’ poem was fodder for rote memorization and potentially spiritless recitation, probably filled with “stammering elocution,” Bishop’s “Casabianca” becomes a potent reminder of the power of words in poetry: like fire, like love, they can be destructive and passionate. This interpretation connects back to the Garth Brooks’ song, as instruction that encourages memorization and recitation while ignoring the fire of poetry is as unfulfilling as standing “outside the fire” regarding love.
What if “Love’s” is not “love is” at all, but instead represents possessiveness? If so, love owns the boy/son, the ship, and the sailors. If love owns these aspects of the poem rather than “is” each of these, the poem is less about metaphors of darkness and the danger of love itself and more about how love encourages various behaviors. Love causes the boy to recite the poem futilely on the burning ship, which connects back to the original poem and the boy following his father’s doomed command; love causes the ship to burn and sink; love causes the sailors to swim for safety despite potentially conflicting desires. With the interpretation of ownership rather than being, readers may wonder whether love is more or less powerful than in the previous interpretation. With the “love is” interpretation, all of the characters (including the ship) suggest various aspects of love as actor, passive recipient, environment, danger, and dissatisfaction with the status quo. With a “love owns” interpretation, the work suggests less internal agency per the Concrete Blonde song and more being acted upon or having no control over the final result, as suggested by Neil Gaiman’s Rose Walker character. Through that interpretation, readers could also consider that if “love owns” the ship, and the ship is the environment, love also owns the poem, as the poem is the structured environment in which the boy, the ship, the sailors, the flames, and the poem the boy recites find themselves. Therefore, for the most effective recitation of the poem, or any poem, love is necessary. The reader has to have the internal element of love because the poem, as the ship, is acted upon by the reader.
Often, poets and readers of poetry may feel a brief concern about spending their time on pursuits often regarded as unessential or foolish by much of society. In this case, poets and those who read poetry may recognize a feeling of “otherness” more acutely than non-poets or those who do not read poetry. As Dr. Nick Halpern states, “People who take poetry classes are different” (personal communication, 2 August 2011). A. R. Ammons notes, after self-mocking statements about being a poet and poetry teacher, “who has done anything or am I likely to do anything the world won't twirl without” (13). That fear of inauthenticity or lack of true purpose constantly twitches in artistic minds. However, John Adams indicated the importance of poetry:
The science of government is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take place of, indeed to exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. 163
Many reasons exist for intense study of poetry. One of these is the understanding of how people view themselves, particularly in relation to others. The “other” may be a disparity in a poet's work, an unpopular viewpoint, or an under-recognized group that must use poetry to gain a voice for their position.
Section One: Poetry as Social Commentary
Much of Elizabeth Bishop’s poetry encapsulates life’s crystallized moments, beautifying familiar situations, natural elements, and concerns about identity and connections through lush imagery. Her poems’ straightforward language and accessible style, as well as their canonization within secondary school academic anthologies, have maintained her popularity among modern readers. The poems’ fluid styles and recognizable subjects provide many access points for young people, allowing the depth of her themes to “sneak up” on readers who may otherwise be wary of poetry. Unlike Lowell’s intimately confessional first-person works, Bishop’s poetry leaves room for the reader within the lines; her poems seem to invite the reader while distancing the poet as the speaker, allowing for universality of experience throughout the differing forms with which she experimented or explored. Because of the understandability of Bishop’s most popular works, her poems that appear to diverge from her style’s recognizable elements invite speculation from readers with contrary natures, like myself. In this case, the divergent poem itself is other within the Bishop canon.
Felicia Hemens wrote a poem titled “Casabianca,” the purportedly true story of a boy who remained on the deck of his father’s ship during The Battle of the Nile and perished because he stayed loyal to his father’s last command. Revered as an example of country and filial loyalty, the work was often used as a memorization and recitation piece for American school children, making it ripe for parody as well as allusion (Lometa, Everything2; Robson, PMLA). Hemen’s work opens with the famous lines:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
Elizabeth Bishop’s work, “Casabianca,” references Hemens’ poem of the same name, but Bishop’s poem develops themes beyond love for family and country. Instead, in a departure from her intricately developed layers of crystallized moments, authoritative speakers, or dream-like explorations, “Casabianca” seems to borrow a page from Wallace Stevens, saying many things at once while embracing and fighting the constraints of language:
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite `The boy stood on
the burning deck.' Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.
Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy. (5)
The first stanza of Bishop’s work is burned into the Davis Square T stop and can only be seen when wet, which encourages questions about the modern relevance of a potentially opaque poem, particularly as Hemens’ original work is no longer canonical for elementary memorization and recitation, lessening the potential for immediate familiarity among the populace. As well as an unusual allegory of love, Bishop’s poem also comments on the effects of instruction on the depths or meanings of poetry.
Before attempting a thematic analysis, however, readers may be drawn to the juxtaposition of the words themselves. The elimination of the expected “who” before the word stood makes the work read more rapidly while also potentially distressing the reader for whom the poem may feel disjointed or awkward. Ending the poem with a sentence that starts with a coordinating conjunction, creating a fragment that violates rules of punctuation, also adds an element of haste and importance to the final line: “And love’s the burning boy.” The repetitions of vowel sounds, particularly “i” and “o,” within Bishop’s poem would make any high school poetry teacher feel compelled to demonstrate “assonance” in class, but the rhymes and near-rhymes seem to mock the original’s ten stanzas of distinct abab rhyme that made Hemans’ poem the perfect choice for classroom memorization and recitation.
Bishop’s poem “Casabianca” provides opportunity to comment on poetic instruction and education by referencing the canonically-enforced popularity of Hemens’ poem. The “boy” in Bishop’s poem is on the deck reciting Hemens’ poem. Not only is he bound by filial duty or love, he is engaged in an activity that is causing him great difficulty, not the least because he probably should be doing something more useful while on a burning deck. The first few lines beg the question of not only the usefulness of poetry itself but also the usefulness of memorization and recitation in academic study. One argument states that students who memorize and recite/perform poetry in courses claim “ownership” of the work they have learned, develop greater understanding of dramatic readings and how tone can alter meaning, lessen stage fright, and increase their memorization abilities through practice. However, as may have been the case with Hemens’ poem, memorization and recitation with no attention to meaning or performance value encourages rote recitations and no learning whatsoever because of the absence of the elements of reflection and analysis. In addition, works memorized and performed in such a way can become not only fodder for parody and irritation, they can also waste class time in useless pursuits, much the way reciting a poem while the deck is burning would be considered a more than useless, even ridiculous, pursuit.
In addition, the “schoolroom platform” for which the sailors wish represents something safe and unrealistic. While death and sacrifice are realities of war, situations that require critical thinking are realities of day to day life. Although following someone’s command to the letter, even when the situation seems to demand another response, may be the easiest choice, as it requires the least thought, blindly following such a command may not be realistic in every situation. Many of life’s situations require critical thinking skills beyond unquestioning obedience because situations change, and one’s response must alter to fit the changing situations through application of prior knowledge and understanding. Just as rote memorization is not always the best instructional tool, blind obedience may not always the best response in situations beyond the “schoolroom platform.”
Readers unaware of Bishop’s reference to Hemens’ poem, as many young readers may be, may regard “Casabianca” as an unusual comment on the nature of love. Although not Bishop's usual lengthy and lush development of a regular situation in order to heighten the reader’s appreciation of the environment or experience, “Casabianca” instead uses a concise style to present different depictions of what “love is.” In Bishop’s poem, a boy stands on the deck of the burning ship while reciting a poem, Hemens’ poem, poorly. Obviously, if one were trying to recite a memorized poem while fearing for one’s life, the recitation might not be fluid and unbroken. However, Bishop emphasizes that he is “trying to recite” and has “stammering elocution.” If “Love’s” is taken to mean “love is,” then the poem both begins and ends with love equaling the boy on the deck. In the first stanza, love is the boy who is faltering in his poetic recitation, possibly indicating that the emotion of love, the gain of someone as a “love,” or the continued retention of someone as a love or as a recipient of someone’s love requires effort. In addition, the halting recitation in the dangerous situation could also demonstrate that life’s dangers make feeling, experiencing, gaining, and maintaining love as difficult an activity as reciting poetry on a burning deck.
The second/final stanza says that love is the boy, the ship, and the sailors. If the reader continues to believe that “love’s” means “love is,” the potential for various interpretations exists. The boy is actively engaged in an act of expression. While one can argue whether or not reciting poetry on a burning ship is futile or foolish, the boy acts within the poem; he attempts to have some sort of agency despite his “obstinate” refusal to leave the deck. The ship represents not only the environment or the immediate situation; the ship is also the danger. If the boy would jump into the water, he might escape the danger of the fiery deck. However, the poem indicates that the ship, danger and all, is also love. One could interpret the lines to mean that love is not only universal or inescapable, but also that love is fraught with danger. As the poem does not explicitly state the boy’s dedication to filial command or patriotic loyalty, his dedication to remain on deck only connects to the words “love” and “obstinate.” Some people’s determination to find love in desperate situations, with people who do not return their affections, or with dangerous people, could be termed obstinate. Finally, love’s connection to the sailors proposes that some people would prefer to have a “schoolroom” definition of love, something safe, something expected and traditional, and either their circumstances, their desires, or society denies the experience. However, love as the sailors could also indicate that the sailors envy the boy’s dedication to his chosen action; they envy his “excuse to stay on deck.” If the fiery deck of the ship represents the dangerous and dark side of love, the sailors may wish they had refuted societal or other expectations and had the courage to place themselves in the danger that love represents. The dangers inherent in love could be the fear of being consumed by passion, the physical dangers of intimacy, or the emotional vulnerability one has when opening oneself emotionally to another human being. Garth Brooks’ song “Standing Outside the Fire” demonstrates the dichotomy of the boy and the sailors, if one views the boy as acting, possibly futilely and probably fatally, toward or about love, and the sailors as wanting “an excuse to stay on deck” with the fire:
We call them cool
Those hearts that have no scars to show
The ones that never do let go
And risk it the tables being turned
We call them fools
Who have to dance within the flame
Who chance the sorrow and the shame
That always come with getting burned
But you got to be tough when consumed by desire
'Cause it's not enough just to stand outside the fire.
Within the song, risking being burned by the fire is preferable to not taking a chance on love; it continues: “life is not tried, it is merely survived, if you’re standing outside the fire.” Although Bishop’s poem indicates the dangers of standing on the deck and the boy’s immolation at the end, if love is the ship which contains the fire and the sailors are envious of the boy’s excuse to stay on the ship, one interpretation of the poem agrees with the song.
Although not new emotions or expressions, lamentations on the dangerous or darker aspects of love continue to inspire writers and readers. The fire in Bishop’s poem that ultimately sets the boy ablaze could represent the many emotional, mental, and physical dangers of love. In Neil Gaiman’s “The Kindly Ones” installment of the graphic novel series The Sandman, Rose Walker expresses her feelings about love’s influence:
Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should just be friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body- hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.
The bitterness about one’s vulnerability while seeking love or in love connects with the boy’s faltering recitation of the poem while on the burning deck. He seems to be doing an entirely unnecessary or futile act (as in Hemen’s poem, when he follows his father’s orders past the point of critical decision-making) by reciting poetry as the ship burns. The futility of action as represented by the boy’s recitation relates to Rose’s reasons for hating love: All of the effort that goes into creating a relationship can still lead to nothing but heartbreak.
While Rose Walker’s lament on love develops the reasons that love can be painful and difficult, Concrete Blonde’s song “The Beast” echoes Bishop’s darker possible “love is” construction:
Love is the ghost haunting your head
Love is the killer you thought
Was your friend
Love is the creature who lives
In the dark
Sneaks up, will stick you
And painfully pick you apart
Love is a poet, love sings the songs
Pointing his finger you follow along
Voice are calling,
The monster wants out of you
Paws you and claws you, you try not to fall
Love is the leech, sucking you up
Love is a vampire, drunk on your blood
Love is the beast that will
Tear out your heart
Hungrily lick it and
Painfully pick it apart
In these lyrics, the negative characterizations of love, which includes the controlling poet within the litany of various types of beasts, connect back to the dangers inherent in love as represented by the fire on the ship in Bishop’s poem. In addition, the Concrete Blonde song simultaneously indicates that the dangers of love are both internal and external. The only internal element of “Casabianca” comes from the musing that the sailors might like a schoolroom platform or an excuse to stay on deck. The lines leaves room for readers to ponder internal elements of love within the poem, particularly the boy's internal motivations.
In the Bishop poem, the ship is referred to as “the poor ship,” indicating sympathy toward what has previously been interpreted as a dangerous environment, the fiery ship. However, the ship has no agency and is not an internal danger but an external one because of the flames upon and within it. Unlike the boy, the ship is not acting, even futilely; it is merely sinking or being acted upon by the flames and the boy, if one interprets the boy’s action of reciting the poem as acting upon the ship. For readers unaware of Hemens’ poem, the boy struggles to recite a poem on the deck of a burning ship. Words have power: what if the poem being recited unleashed the flames from within the boy, and he falters in his recitation because he has no way to stop the flames, so he doggedly continues with his recitation? With this interpretation, the boy's unknown internal landscape catalyzes pyrokinetic results. Much like the Magician’s Apprentice, the boy insists upon maintaining an activity that is not only futile, it is damaging. If the love is the boy and the ship, but not the flames, the boy has acted in a destructive manner that has hurt an innocent or innocents, in the form of the ship and the sailors, and, ultimately, himself. By re-connecting this interpretation of love’s internal agency back to the idea that the Bishop poem is a comment on how Hemens’ poem was fodder for rote memorization and potentially spiritless recitation, probably filled with “stammering elocution,” Bishop’s “Casabianca” becomes a potent reminder of the power of words in poetry: like fire, like love, they can be destructive and passionate. This interpretation connects back to the Garth Brooks’ song, as instruction that encourages memorization and recitation while ignoring the fire of poetry is as unfulfilling as standing “outside the fire” regarding love.
What if “Love’s” is not “love is” at all, but instead represents possessiveness? If so, love owns the boy/son, the ship, and the sailors. If love owns these aspects of the poem rather than “is” each of these, the poem is less about metaphors of darkness and the danger of love itself and more about how love encourages various behaviors. Love causes the boy to recite the poem futilely on the burning ship, which connects back to the original poem and the boy following his father’s doomed command; love causes the ship to burn and sink; love causes the sailors to swim for safety despite potentially conflicting desires. With the interpretation of ownership rather than being, readers may wonder whether love is more or less powerful than in the previous interpretation. With the “love is” interpretation, all of the characters (including the ship) suggest various aspects of love as actor, passive recipient, environment, danger, and dissatisfaction with the status quo. With a “love owns” interpretation, the work suggests less internal agency per the Concrete Blonde song and more being acted upon or having no control over the final result, as suggested by Neil Gaiman’s Rose Walker character. Through that interpretation, readers could also consider that if “love owns” the ship, and the ship is the environment, love also owns the poem, as the poem is the structured environment in which the boy, the ship, the sailors, the flames, and the poem the boy recites find themselves. Therefore, for the most effective recitation of the poem, or any poem, love is necessary. The reader has to have the internal element of love because the poem, as the ship, is acted upon by the reader.
