A Favorite Tanka

Pat Shelley's book, Turning My Chair (Press Here, 1997) is full of deeply felt tanka, from which it is hard to pick one to discuss. They are cumulative and, reading the book through, one gains some sense of Shelley's loves, devotions, interests, and loyalties. One fine poem carries a brooding sadness:

Fog rolls in
over the city of my birth
over the graves
at Mt. Olivet
where loved ones are buried.

It is simple and straightforward. Its deeply felt import is muted but clearly present. It consists of a single sentence, beginning with a short main clause. This is followed by a series of four prepositional phrases, a little Walt Whitmanesque in feel, and concluded with a dependent clause. The short first line sets a mood, which the rest of the poem deepens. Pat Shelley was born in San Francisco, fog city, and all the moodiness of fog rolls through the poem with the fog. The one object about the city in the poem is graves--at Mt. Olivet. The poem seems universal because Shelley didn't write "my loved ones" but simply loves ones.

In a way, the poem seems an older person's sense of things. The one significance of the city to the speaker is the fact that loved ones are buried there in that foggy place. The poem says, "I was born there, and beloved people die there and are buried." And fog rolls over their graves.

The sound patterns of the poem support its meaning. In five lines, there are eight o's. Of these, three are long close o's, two are ah sounds, three are uh sounds. Five of these are followed either immediately or in one case closely by a v sound. The long o sound has been traditionally one of mourning in poetry since the time of the ancient Greeks. It has been thought to imitate in shape the open mouth grieving. The poem's last word also carries an additional uh-sounding vowel. It also carries the final meeting or statement of the poem, which is not clear until that final word. The loved ones are not only under a blanket of earth but one of fog as well--and of memory.

What does the poem add up to? I think to memory, a sense of the course of life, and of the depth of human love. That's a lot to get into such a short poem.

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