Joan Murray's Rhythmic Elegance

I was browsing recent NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) recipients, and came across Joan Murray, who received the award in 2011. I have had the distinct pleasure of hearing her read her work twice at my institution, Herkimer County Community College. In both cases I remember Joan reading her work with flair, tenderness, and grace. It was obvious the words on the page were not simply words for her, though I would assume that to be the case for any serious writer, but what really struck me about her work are its rythmic qualities. Murray's work occupies an interesting middle ground between formal verse and free verse, between lyric and narrative, a place where varieties of rhythmic drive build intensity.

Take for instance "Her Head," the opening poem in Looking for the Parade:

Near Ekuvukeni
in Natal, South Africa,
a woman carries water on her head.
After a year of drought,
when one child in three is at risk of death,
she returns from a distant well,
carrying water on her head.

The pumpkins are gone,
the tomatoes withered,
yet the woman carries water on her head.
The cattle kraals are empty,
the goats gaunt—
no milk now for children,
but she is carrying water on her head.

The engineers have reversed the river:
those with power can keep their power,
but one woman is carrying water on her head.
In the homelands, where the dusty crowds
watch the empty roads for water trucks,
one woman trusts herself with treasure,
and carries the water on her head.

The sun does not dissuade her,
not the dried earth that blows against her,
as she carries the water on her head.
In a huge and dirty pail,
with an idle handle,
resting on a narrow can,
this woman is carrying water on her head.

This woman, who girds her neck
with safety pins, this one
who carries water on her head,
trusts her own head to bring to her people
what they need now
between life and death:
She is carrying them water on her head.

Variety is the key to this poem. Well aware of the content and drama of the poem, Murray fits an appropriate rhythm to each moment, stanza, and line to create a very human utterance. There are stacatto lines that catch our ears (like the first two), only to be smoothed out with the refrain-like "a woman carries water on her head." While others are adamant, admiring, awestruck, and coy among other things.This strategy is a way to render surprise palpably, and enacts what good poems do: bring us on a journey of discovery.

The first three lines of the second stanza, while similarly constructed to the first three lines of the first, offer us a different tone, one that is more wistful at first, but adamant later: "The pumpkins are gone, / the tomatoes withered, / yet the woman carries water on her head." In the first two lines, the stressed syllables (in bold) are outnumbered by the unstressed as Murray alternates between iambs and anapests to create that wistful, rocking lull, while the third line reutrns us to the confident refrain, and sense of regularity. Other lines stack stresses together to bring the voice to an emotional apex and give a sense of heightened drama: "The sun does not dissaude her." While other lines invert rhythmic patters to serve as bridges for a longer more regular line: "what they need now / between life and death: / She is carrying them water on her head."

Select use of alliteration also contributes to the flow, regularity, and humaness of the poem. Consider the shock value of "The cattle kraals are empty. / the goats gaunt" both of which marry sound and image, or the sneer of "The engineers have reversed the river." Such moments of sonic regularity provide stabilty for a peom that plays with unstable metrics. Punctuating irregular free verse lines with regular sounds like these allows the tension to between order and chaos to be exploited for dramatic effect. Sounds here are not just part of the elegance of the poem, but are also representative of the content of the poem. Seasonal crops, the cyclic nature of the land, the conflict between society and technology, and even the woman are all expressions of the tension created by sound. Murray is wise to find such moments of tension and use them to her advantage, and by doing so this makes the woman not merely a woman anymore, but art.  

In a lesser poem, the varieties of rhythm here would sound jangly, cacaphonous, or unordered, but Murray masterfully balanaces stress, syllable, sound, and line to create the modulating rhythm and tone of the poem. With such attention to craft, Murray reminds us that content is crucial, but the motion the poem is what allows that content to transcend the page, as if to say, "The joy of reading a poem is always in the journey."

Sounds good to me.