Bucolics by
Maurice Manning.
By Carrie Jerrell
“O for the whole big picture,” states the speaker in Bucolics, Maurice Manning’s third poetry collection, a sequence of seventy-eight untitled, unpunctuated poems that explore and extol the relationships between man, nature, and the Divine. Addressing his creator as “Boss,” the rustic narrator attempts to gain a view of the “big picture” by focusing on the modest, everyday events of the physical world he inhabits, and reminds readers in poem after beautiful poem that the sweetest songs can come from the simplest vessels.
One of the most pleasurable aspects of this collection is the pure, contagious joy of the speaker, a field hand content with his lot “to tend the green to catch / the water when it rains” (I, 4-5). He is genuinely charming, the kind of character one imagines as the perfect porch-swing companion of a summer’s evening, and that charm permeates the poems: “every breath I draw I make / a little picture Boss a little bird / with a whistle in its bones” (XXXVIII, 9-11). He is also an acute observer of the natural world, bringing to Boss and the reader’s attention the work of bees, the whimpers of a sleeping old dog, raindrops on black branches, the daily activities of foxes, horses, hawks, and rivers—all in language that is equally joyful:
I know you set
the whistle in the wind you weave
the waves into the grass you bind
the honey to the suckle Boss
you sow the sticky stuff that sticks
the honey to the yellow belly
of the bee but then O green-thumbed Boss
you save a seed for me
(XXVI, 11-18)
Manning’s formal choices to forego punctuation and add extra space between each line are particularly effective in this collection, since they force the audience to move more slowly and carefully through the poems, resulting in meditative reading. Though the poems aren’t strictly formal, the lines tend to be iambic, and the diction is mostly monosyllabic. Combined, these qualities drive the sequence forward with a heavy, insistent momentum akin to the punctuated rhythm of an ax chopping wood or a sickle reaping hay, and the overall effect tempers a language that might otherwise seem overbearingly provincial.
At times, the playfulness of the speaker skates on the edge of irreverence—he calls Boss a “cutie pie,” a “sneaky devil,” a “rounder,” and a “fancy-pants,” among other names—but the abundant affection exhibited by the speaker for Boss makes it clear that these monikers are motivated by a winking mischief, not malice. Nor should one mistake the speaker’s countrified turns-of-phrase for simple-mindedness or naivety. Like David in the scriptural Psalms, the speaker of Bucolics is in love with his creator, but he’s also keenly aware of his own humanity and of the ultimate distance between himself and Boss: “you get so hushed up Boss…. / sometimes I wonder what / you’re up to Boss up there” (LII, 3, 6-7). He is also full of questions—some of them playful (“tell me if you ever whistle / if you ever get the willies Boss” XV, 15-16), while others are tinged with longing, fear, or frustration. The latter half of the sequence contains more of these introspective, darker questions:
will I smell smoke before you shake
the light from me before you pinch
my little flame into a hiss
(XLV, 22-24)
are you against me Boss
the way a yellow leaf
holds down the patch of dirt
beneath it as if the dirt
could raise itself from dirt
(LVI, 1-5)
O tell me why I can’t hold back
this bitter thought are you the bee
or just a stinging story Boss
(LXXVIII, 28-30)
In
their blurbs for Bucolics, Mark
Jarman calls the poems “psalms . . . reminiscent of King David’s,” and Andrew
Hudgins notes the influences of “Virgil, Hesiod, the Bible, folk songs [and]
labor songs.” Manning takes the epigraph
of the collection, “Shepherds are honest people, let them sing,” from “Jordan
(I)” by George Herbert, one of the Metaphysical poets, who, along with John
Donne, has also left his mark on Manning’s sequence. In one poem, the speaker leans on the frost-covered
shoulder of a horse, and the warmth of his face and breath leave a dark patch,
about which the speaker muses,
the spot was
looking out
an empty eye
unblinking
unblinking Boss
which one
of us was that
supposed
to be O was it you
so steady Boss or
was
that patch of
empty me
(XLVII,
9-15)
The Metaphysical poets were known in part
for couching analytical thoughts in common, conversational speech, and one sees
this characteristic at work here: the dark patch is transformed into an
unblinking eye, which is then transformed into a representation of the Almighty
or himself—the speaker isn’t sure. He
is, however, unnerved by the image and the fact that it is “unblinking /
unblinking.” Again, the speaker
highlights the difference between Boss and himself—if the dark patch is
supposed to be Boss, then it is a comforting image of steadiness and
consistency. If, on the other hand, the
darkness represents himself, then it is nothing but a patch of emptiness. This rich complication of thought appears throughout
the sequence, but one does not find an elevation in the language; it remains
colloquial, and the speaker remains trustworthy because of it.
One
finds other, more contemporary influences in the poems of Bucolics. A native and
resident of
Yet Manning’s poetry rises above all of these influences to become, as Hudgins writes, “something new and wonderful,” in part because of their intriguing formal qualities and the fresh, enthusiastic voice of their narrator. But perhaps even more than that, these poems are so attractive because of the timelessness of their investigations. Poets will never stop questioning the Divine, even if those questions go forever unanswered. Likewise, readers will never stop looking for new voices to speak on their behalf—voices like the field hand of Bucolics, with whom they can ponder the workings of Boss, give thanks for the creation around them, and long to get a view of the whole big picture.
Carrie Jerrell received her MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and is currently pursuing a PhD in English as a Chancellor's Fellow at Texas Tech University, where she also serves as guest poetry editor of Iron Horse Literary Review. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Fringe, Passages North, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Sewanee Theological Review, among other publications.