HISTORY - John Burnside

This is potentially the hardest poem in the collection.   As an introduction, and some help in understanding it, try this: Wet sand and gasoline .  I have also posted some links on Ms Harte's annotation page as well.  There has been some adverse critical reaction to this poem, which you can read in the linked articles.

Burnside has been described as being interested in the liminal - which literally means threshold or doorway, so in-between and transitional states of being.  This could be understood as what lies between reality and imagination, or our concepts of time (which is not fixed, but changes constantly), between the names we give things and the thing itself.

The poem is written in combinations of loose iambic pentametres and tetrametres.   The original did not have the same punctuation nor line lengths - these seem to have been edited by Burnside for publication in the Forward anthology.  Most noticeable is the removal of punctuation - particularly commas, which make this version flow more seamlessly but also makes its meaning more obscure. It reads as a series of linked thoughts which range between 9/11, the child on the beach and the kite flyers whilst reflecting on the nature of reality and time through an evocation of the landscape.

If I had to compare this poem to another, I would suggest Fox in the Museum in exploring Time, The Lammas Hireling or Guiseppe as exploring an alternative reality, or Out of the Bag on the power of imagination, or poems on Identity, such as A Minor Role or even An Easy Passage, as the latter is about the transition between child and woman.

St Andrews: West Sands; September 2001[LC1] 

Today

             as we[LC2]  flew the kites

- the sand spinning off in ribbons[LC3]  along the beach

and that gasoline smell from Leuchars[LC4]  gusting across

the golf links[LC5] ;

                         the tide far out

and quail-grey[LC6]  in the distance;

                                                 people

jogging, or stopping to watch

as the war planes[LC7]  cambered and turned

in the morning light –

today

             - with the news[LC8]  in my mind, and the muffled dread

of what may come –

                                    I knelt down in the sand

with Lucas[LC9] 

                gathering shells

and pebbles

               finding evidence of life in all this

driftwork[LC10] :

            snail shells; shreds of razorfish;

smudges of weed and flesh on tideworn stone.

At times I think what makes us who we are[LC11] 

is neither kinship[LC12]  nor our given states

but something lost between the world we own

and what we dream about[LC13]  behind the names[LC14] 

on days like this

                        our lines raised in the wind

our bodies fixed and anchored to the shore[LC15] 

and though we are confined by property[LC16] 

what tethers us to gravity and light

has most to do with distance and the shapes[LC17] 

we find in water

                        reading from the book[LC18] 

of silt and tides[LC19] :

                         the rose or petrol blue[LC20] 

of jellyfish and sea anemone

combining with a child's

first nakedness[LC21] .

Sometimes I am dizzy with the fear

of losing everything - the sea, the sky,

all living creatures, forests, estuaries[LC22] :

we trade so much to know the virtual[LC23] 

we scarcely register the drift and tug

of other bodies

                        scarcely apprehend

the moment as it happens: shifts of light

and weather

                        and the quiet, local forms

of history[LC24] : the fish lodged in the tide[LC25] 

beyond the sands;

                        the long insomnia

of ornamental carp in public parks

captive and bright

                        and hung in their own

slow-burning

                        transitive gold[LC26] ;

                                                jamjars of spawn[LC27] 

and sticklebacks[LC28] 

                                    or goldfish carried home

from fairgrounds[LC29] 

                        to the hum of radio[LC30] ;

but this is the problem: how to be alive

in all this gazed-upon and cherished world

and do no harm[LC31] 

                        a toddler on a beach

sifting wood and dried weed from the sand

and puzzled by the pattern on a shell

his parents on the dune slacks with a kite

plugged into the sky[LC32] 

                                     all nerve and line[LC33] :

patient; afraid[LC34] ; but still, through everything

attentive to the irredeemable[LC35] .

---

 [LC1]The poem was written within a few weeks of 9/11 and this was its original title.  The “History” came later.  It is not clear that Burnside means “History” as we would understand it.  He has an approach to time and the “now” which is peculiar to him.

 [LC2]The “parents” referred to later, presumably him as well.

 [LC3]Refers to the patterns made by waves in the sand as the tide goes out – like ripples. *amendment -  on reflection this is referring to the dry surface sand being blown by the wind

 [LC4]RAF Leuchars – an airbase nearby from which the smell of aviation fuel is coming

 [LC5]Royal St Andrews – a Championship golf-course. Burnside is quite anti-golf courses. Not that it is relevant.

 [LC6]A quail is a small game bird

 [LC7]RAF on manoeuvres.  There was increased activity in the weeks after 9/11 in case of more attacks worldwide.  The use of “war” reminds of the war on terror which started with 9/11

 [LC8]9/11.  “Muffled dread” reflects the feeling that many people had that this was the start of something bigger and potentially worse.  Which of course it was.

 [LC9]His son

 [LC10]Echoing the job of the emergency services who sifted through the wreckage of the Twin Towers to find remains of victims

 [LC11]Gives us our identity

 [LC12]Our families and nationality/genes – what we inherit.  Possibly also a deliberate pun on states as in United States

 [LC13]Burnside is interested in the spaces between reality and imagination, between what we perceive actively and what lies just beyond our grasp.  There are many images in the poem of spaces between

 [LC14]Giving names to things is how we make them real.  He suggests that there is something else beyond naming

 [LC15]“lines” are the kite strings – the space between us on the ground and the kite in the sky – hence the space between

 [LC16]Property as in what we own materially, but also as in the properties of matter – what makes us solid

 [LC17]Tethered means tied down, as the kite is tethered by the string to the person holding it.  Gravity and light are opposites – one of the earth, the other of the sky – and he is suggesting that we inhabit the space in between - distance and shapes

 [LC18]The natural world teaches us

 [LC19]Tides are movements – they are not real in the sense that an object is real.  They are a concept based on our ideas about time

 [LC20]Startling colours and images of beauty

 [LC21]All suggestive of fragility and innocence

 [LC22]Features of the landscape he is in. Tangible realities which is what we hold onto.

 [LC23] [LC23]The nearly real – we think things that we have named and are made of matter or have properties (see the words used in the previous stanza) are real – but they are not.  There are other bodies – things which are intangible – like tides, which drift and tug, and the shifting patterns of light and weather - that we should be aware of as they impact us even if we do not recognise it.

 [LC24]We think of history as time passed – but it is in fact being created in the present – in the space between the past and the future.

 [LC25]Lodged suggests held timelessly

 [LC26]The carp appear to be caught between sleeping and waking and also held in the water. Transitive means “in transit” – being carried between one place and another – presumably here between life and death.  Ornamental carp are big goldfish.

 [LC27]Another transitive state – between egg and frog. Also symbolic of potential – something which is not yet

 [LC28]Small fish which children catch to bring home to keep

 [LC29]Goldfish used to be given away as prizes at fairgrounds

 [LC30]Radios were/are permanently on in homes that listen to the radio.  This may be a memory of his own childhood.

 [LC31]He seems to be asking how we can interact with this world we live in without altering it – he is a keen Eco politician.

 [LC32]Plugged suggests that they are firmly attached (to what they understand/know)

 [LC33]Nerve and line suggest not just the kite but also a fisherman

 [LC34]The parents are patient as they continue to fly the kite for their children, but they are also afraid for them as their fragility has been made evident by the events of 9/11.

 [LC35]The parents are aware of and watching the children?  Irredeemable means something which cannot be saved, in the biblical sense, or paid back in the monetary sense.  So there is a suggestion that the parents are aware that they cannot save their children (from horror/death/time?) and that time itself cannot be recovered or bought. 

Coincidentally, I have just listened to an extract from TS Eliot's "The Four Quartets" - Burnt Norton, (a notoriously difficult poem) which also talks about time being "unredeemable".  Which supports the interpretation of the last line.  It is unlikely that Burnside is not referencing Eliot.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.