A Thought or Two on Sailing Beyond The Sunset

Sailing Beyond The Sunset is, for me, a complete poetic experience. It contains my memories, as illuminated by the poets who have guided me and helped me to see: Blake, Tennyson, BH Fairchild and always, above all, Eliot. And then my little attempt to bring it all together in a way that is fitting for me, but hopefully, also, accessible to others. I have no idea if the latter part of that is successful. But I am very satisfied with the first part.

Eliot’s Waste Land of course gave me license to quote extensively from real poets who did real poetry. It is no exaggeration to say that the italicized phrases (quotes from great poems) have been driven down deep inside me and there they remain, until they come to the surface from time to time to help give structure to a thought, a memory, an observation, an experience.

Thank you William Blake. Thank you Lord Alfred Tennyson.

Blake’s Jerusalem, Tennyson’s In Memorium and yes, absolutely, even his Charge of the Light Brigade are part of me: I am part of all that I have met. These are great poems. Life-enhancing poems, life-illuminating poems, life-accompanying poems. I am just a reader, and a life-observer and partaker. But these poems make everything more vivid, more real and more, well, everything.

Then, there’s BH Fairchild.

How do I show enough gratitude to and for this man, a deeply literate prophet of the High Plains, the Southwest, really of America itself? This man is a national treasure.

Vastly learned, like Eliot (he wrote a brilliant doctoral dissertation on Blake, of course….), but who loved life in all of its pied beauty (more on Hopkins later…but see how this happens?), Fairchild speaks directly to me. He understood the people I grew up with, the ethos of my parents and grandparents and their generations. He shared with me their joys, triumphs, pains and trials. He helped me to understand them as an adult in a way that I couldn’t as a child. And he not only gave me permission to see the beauty and the humanness of all of that, he actually compelled me to do so. I think he really changed my orientation to my memory. I don’t know for sure. I just know that now, when I look back, I see that world, my world and their world, the way that he sees it which is really the human way. And I am profoundly grateful.

My wife gave me his poem Body and Soul years ago. She discovered him first. And we will never forget him.

Which brings us to Eliot.

Thomas Stearns Eliot.

There’s nothing I can say in either a few words, or a lot of words that would suffice. Fortunately, in Four Quartets he sort of gives me license to fail in that task as he ponders the difficult poetic task to get into the perfect words things that are sort of beyond our ability to do so. But even that poetic observation – the difficulty and near impossibility of the poetic task – in fact poetically illuminates this thing called life. Which is why Eliot is so great. See what he did there?

For me, Eliot does this better than anyone or anything, excepting only The Bible.

My little effort in Sailing Beyond The Sunset is simply an exercise in applying the way that Eliot taught me to see. All of our experiences are interrelated, all of them point to an end, which is also a beginning (and vice versa). And somehow, by God’s grace, in the end, grace and love and mercy abound and mysteriously subsume all else. I say that theologically, and that is an important mode of communication. But Eliot shows us that, demonstrates that, impresses that upon us poetically. The cumulative effect is overwhelming.

Growing up in the arid and remote Texas Panhandle, things seemed far away. And they were, especially in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. But from time to time, something would break through and capture my attention. Usually this had something to do with “England”. Far enough away yet close enough and familiar enough to incite longing…or is it memory? (Thank you CS Lewis). And strangely, some of the English stuff that we experienced was exaggeration, if not outright balderdash. But even there, I see now a kernel of something deeply human and I feel only gratitude and compassion now, for all of these experiences and the people who brought them to me.

As I age and gain perspective on that time growing up in the Panhandle, and consider the colossal change that has transpired, in sports, in media, in technology, in life itself, I am struck that though much is taken, much abides. Thank you Tennyson, and thank you Eliot for saying, correctly, that Ulysses is “almost a perfect poem”. (You were always careful with your words). Part of the poetic life task, it seems, is to continually recall that which abides and should abide, even though change is constant.

I think Eliot would approve of that.