Thursday, December 29, 2022

Henry Teel's Punt In A Nutshell

At rest on a sand dune safely 
Above the tide, its prow pointing 
Towards some lanky gesturing 
Grasses slowly moving in 
To encircle it, this weathered 
 
Light blue-grey punt going 
To pieces was once pulled 
Here by a man who soon went 
To the mainland and died there,
But still remains--an apostrophe. 
 
 
 

 

3 comments:

  1. I think this is probably about the Henry Teel who Andrew Wyeth painted. This man was a lobsterman who had 150 lobster traps and lived on Teel Island with his sister (I don't think they lived in the same home, after they were adults). (If you look on YouTube you can find a little video about the painting.) But maybe not, since the poem is about a man who went to the mainland. Does it matter which Henry Teel the poem is about? Don't ask me. Or go ahead, ask me, and I'll say I don't know.

    I do know it's a poem worth rereading more than once. It is deceptively straightforward and simple, but the more I read it the more I see and experience. And wordwise, soundwise, it is subtle and satisfying. For example, in the first stanza, the safely/lanky/slowly. And how the final word (with its roots in Greek) sounds when one arrives at its syllables (when reading aloud) -- for me, the way "apostrophe" lands, so to speak, aloud, works in mysterious ways and is somehow perfect. It would've been impossible for me, even if given a hundred guesses, to guess that Zambaras would've ended the poem with "apostrophe" (I imagine if I'd read the poem with a blank instead of the word and I'd been asked to guess what word Zambaras ended this poem with).

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  2. Thanks again, John; I don't usually write poems about paintings but when I came across Wyeth's study of Teel's boat, I thought I'd give it a try. Glad you liked it enough to respond and as always, I enjoy what you have to say.

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  3. Link to the painting:

    https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/american-art-2/andrew-wyeth-above-the-tide

    ReplyDelete

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