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On "The Weather-Cock Points South"


Cary Nelson

Amy Lowell's series of poems from 1919—including "Decade," "Opal," "Madonna of the Evening Flowers," and "Venus Transiens"--are among the most elegantly passionate love poems in modern American poetry. A reevaluation of her career might begin with a love poem like "The Weather-Cock Points South" (1919), whose reordering of the natural world in layers around a pursuit of intimacy we can now see as heralding the deep image poetry of the 1960s.

As we can tell from its first stanza, "The Weather-Cock Points South" is remarkable for the way it fuses an eroticized spirituality with explicit physical references.

I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying slightly in the evening wind.

The leaves are put aside at once by a disrobing and by a probing embrace. The poem involves a pursuit of psychic intimacy--a drive to know and celebrate another's inwardness--and an explicit vaginal caress. The flower with its petals and bud is thus both body and spirit, but there is no severing the two. And the woman she describes seems both the object of her gaze and the flower of her own unfolding affection. The flower is both the center of the lover's body and the center of the self, for it becomes the site from which the subject seems to speak. It is also the center of the gardens coalescing in the poem and, implicitly, of nature as a whole. Her unwavering concentration on it gives it the transience of wax and the permanence of stone--"of jade, of unstreaked agate; / Flower with surfaces of ice."

"The stars crowd through the lilac leaves / To look at you," Lowell writes, so it is clear she would have no patience with a criminalized notion of the gaze. There seems little reason, indeed, to impose a contemporary prudishness either on her or on other modern poets. An objectifying took or verbal representation does not preclude a variety of other perspectives; indeed it is both a form of celebratory play and a form of concentration that can be empathic.

From "The Fate of Gender in Modern American Poetry." In Marketing Modernisms: Self-Promotion, Canonization, Rereading. Ed. Kevin J. H. Dettmar and Stephen Watt. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Copyright 1996 by the University of Michigan.


Melissa Bradshaw

As recent feminist and lesbian rereadings of Lowell’s work bring her love lyrics to the forefront, this poem is often cited as an example of her "overtly and frankly erotic lyrics" (Heymann 250). Discussion of the lyric’s eroticism seldom delves any deeper than this, however. Is the erotic symbolism so obvious that we can take it for granted, never actually articulating or explaining just what we think we are seeing in this poem? Mary E. Galvin comes closest when she notes that here we have "a flower-bud . . . so erotically drawn that it can easily be seen to replicate the female genitals" (29). But as Bennett’s essay makes clear, Lowell’s imagery is neither radical, nor shocking: in the nineteenth century, flower imagery, or the "Language of Flowers" constituted a "highly nuanced discourse of female erotic desire," and was a common, even ubiquitous, signifying system "through which woman’s body and . . . women’s genitals have been represented and inscribed" (242). What I believe makes Lowell’s poem unique, and what Galvin’s reading ignores, is the poem’s sexual aggressiveness, as the speaker tells the beloved, in an active, dominating narrative voice "I put your leaves aside," "I parted you." As in "Aubade," the poem may very well encode female genitals through flower imagery, but it as well discursively replicates the sexual act of opening up a woman’s genitals—an act that involves several openings and unfoldings: legs, outer-labia ("the stiff, broad outer leaves") and inner-labia, ("the smaller ones, . . . veined with purple"); an act that, presented as a discrete, sexual performance, not necessarily foreplay, might be described as lesbian. This is not to say that the sexual gesture is solely and specifically lesbian, but neither is it explicitly heterosexual: the beloved is "not a space to be entered but . . . a presence to be uncovered and adored" (Bennett 244).

Granted, this relentlessly sexualized reading of the poem risks defining and reifying the beloved. Certainly it goes against the more subtle aesthetic outlined in a letter Lowell wrote to an aspiring poet where she explained that "in true Imagistic poetry the method more often than not points like a weather-cock to the emotion it both conceals and reveals," a poetics of gesturing subtly towards a subtext ( letter to Donald B. Clark 8/23/18). I understand why it may not be a good idea to read the poem so literally, but what are the costs of not extending Lowell’s sexual metaphor this far? Of pausing for a moment, blushing, thinking about this reading, and then resisting it? Judith Halberstam describes this as symptomatic of queer theory’s double bind—to make visible without universalizing, to focus on specifics without erasing difference. In the effort not to essentialize or exclude "we have become accustomed to talking sex and indeed thinking sex in increasingly abstract and increasingly symbolic ways" (4). According to Halberstam,

sex, as in sexual acts and practices, and particularly lesbian sex, seems eclipsed once more by discursive practice. Specifying sexual acts and their histories allows us to break with identity discourses which have a tendency to render some minority sexual practices completely unintelligible and to conflate still others with criminality. (4)

The ways in which "The Weather-Cock Points South" has been read (or rather, has not been read) bring this difficulty into focus. But Lowell’s dazzle camouflage might, at the same time, offer a possible strategy for circumventing the pathologization and/or silencing of which Halberstam warns. When I read the poem, as a woman who identifies as a lesbian, the imagery seems obvious. But even so, in hearing a narrative voice which, to my mind, clearly employs flower imagery as a way of representing opening up and gazing at a woman’s genitals—an act of sexual aggressiveness I do not expect to find in Lowell, whose few critics approach her with formulaic biases and therefore who I’ve been taught to read as an old maid, a frustrated spinster—my initial response is disbelief: that can’t possibly be what she’s doing. And this incredulity, which makes me hesitate over the poem, is critical: Lowell’s imagery is not, cannot be, obvious, the poem’s power is in its refusal of a stable, codifiable representation of sexuality. This plasticity authorizes multiple responses, from C. David Heyman’s contention that her erotic poetry is "too graphic to be taken at face value" (251), to Glenn Ruihley and Richard Benvenuto’s reassurances that the lyrics chronicle a purely platonic love, to Clement Wood’s homophobic declaration that Pictures of the Floating World’s lyrics demonstrate "the reverse of an ignorance of love-practices" (159), to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s confident assumption that they reflect Lowell’s lesbianism. Whether it delights or repulses, titillates or confuses, "The Weather-Cock" resists what Scott Long terms "the straight interpretation" which "too often accepts . . . only representations it can take on the level of simple desire . . . . a curious critical response in that it dreams of an ideal work to which it can submit in uncritical and complete self-cancellation" (88).

Late nineteenth and early twentieth century medical and psychological probings into the causes and origins of female desire focused on the clitoris as both the "source" of female sexual pleasure, and, inevitably, the site of failures of normative female sexuality. A desire for sexual activity not leading to coition, or as Freud put it, "the normal sexual aim" (21)—such as masturbation and/or inversion—were read as symptoms of a pathological hypersexuality and linked to an over-active clitoris. Even as it celebrates a non-phallic, non-coital, and, it would appear at first glance, clitoral sexuality, "The Weather-Cock Points South" adroitly skirts the issue. For the reader who would follow the narrator’s gaze as she uncovers the beloved, peer at her nudity, discover the "truth" hidden beneath her layers, this poem frustrates: at the heart of these many partings is not a finite, knowable, quantifiable thing, but a slick, shining surface—"glazed inner leaves," a "flower with surfaces of ice." As in "Madonna of the Evening Flowers," a reflective surface (created by the wetness of sexual arousal?) deflects the onlooker’s gaze, turning it back on itself, resisting legibility and classification. Further, the poem’s languorous peeling back of layers foregrounds the fact that flowers exist in multiplicity. That is, a flower consists of petals, sepals, filaments, anthers, and so on. There is no ultimate originary point to the flower. In what might be construed as a nod towards Freud, Lowell (un)writes female pleasure through negation:

The bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no colour, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.

This stanza complicates the flower as cliched symbol of feminine beauty and revitalizes a tired metaphor. "A littleness that is paradoxically great," the bud is more than the calyx, the immediately visible outer whorl of petals, what we see and recognize as the flower. (Bennett 247). Lowell’s phrasing deflects attention away from, even as it valorizes, the overscrutinized clitoris. Declaring that "there is nothing to equal a white bud," the speaker posits the allegedly not present as infinitely, even excessively, present in its "absence," or rather its refusal to confirm expectations, to satisfy curiosity. "Burnished by moonlight," (an evocative, sexy verb in this context) the shining surface of the "white flower" becomes even shinier as it is acted on, whether by the narrator/lover, who rubs against it sexually, or by the observer who would rub it in order to wipe away opacity and gain a clearer view. It becomes a mirror of the looker’s desire rather than a decipherable text.

Galvin notes the paradoxical imagery of the last line, where the flower is "thrust upon" by a "softly-swinging wind": "lest the reader think this is the familiar heterosexual ‘thrust,’ . . . Lowell immediately contrasts the potential violence of this verb with the sonorant phrase "by a softly-swinging wind" (31). She explains that this phrase "carries lesbian implications" because Lowell, "by dint of authorship, associates herself with the speaker, who in turn is associated within the poem with the wind, as agent of erotic caresses" (31). The metaphor is even more suggestive than Gavin allows, however: if this is a perfect flower, such as a rose or a lily, with both a pistil and a stamen at its center, then the wind serves as agent not only of "erotic caresses," but of pollination as well. The poem, then, imagines a stigmatized (because non-reproductive) sexuality, as in fact, reproductive and creative, although not as understood within a heterosexual context.

Originally published in Vanity Fair in June of 1919 as "The Weather-Vane Points South," the poem appeared later that year in Pictures of the Floating World under its new title, "The Weather-Cock Points South." This change subtly alters the poem’s intensity. Weather-cocks traditionally top steeples on Christian churches, as reminders of Christ’s prophecy that the apostle Peter would betray him three times before the cock crows. In renaming the poem, Lowell resignifies the space and the action of the poem: if weather-cocks preside over holy, sanctified spaces, then the space of this love-making, Lowell seems to imply, is holy, this act of love-making sanctified.

From Modernizing Excess: Amy Lowell and the Aesthetics of Camp. Diss. State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2000. Copyright © 2000 by Melissa Bradshaw.


Mary E. Galvin

It is clear that the aesthetics and techniques of imagism provided a powerful vehicle for Amy Lowell's erotic vision. Like Pound, H.D., and others, Lowell was strongly influenced by oriental poetry. She, too, did translations (from the Japanese), and her lyrical style is modeled, in part, on the cool but detailed "objectism" of the haiku and similar forms. This is obvious in the first two sections of Pictures of the Floating World, which are subtitled "Lacquer Prints" and "Chinoiseries." While many of these poems are somewhat pretty and delicate in their construction, for the most part they are fairly shallow, dealing merely with the surface image, as in "Circumstance":

Upon the maple leaves
The dew shines red,
But on the lotus blossom
It has the pale transparence of tears.

All this changes, however, in the subsequent sections, particularly in the section of lyrical love poems addressed to or about Ada Dwyer Russell, subtitled "Planes of Personality: Two Speak Together." Here, the detached observation of surface detail signals an undercurrent of passionate emotion and eroticism, disguised yet explicitly drawn in the natural images Lowell creates. A good example is "The Weather-Cock Points South" in which the "word-painting" of a flower-bud is so erotically drawn that it can easily be seen to represent the female genitals, so that this descriptive exploration of the flower is transformed into a celebration of lesbian sexuality:

I put your leaves aside,
One by one:
The stiff, broad outer leaves;
The smaller ones,
Pleasant to touch, veined with purple;
The glazed inner leaves.
One by one
I parted you from your leaves,
Until you stood up like a white flower
Swaying softly in the evening wind.

Here is evidence of how the discipline of imagism taught Lowell to focus only on relevant detail and to use a nondiscursive language, one that relies on the sensory qualities of the experience. Through the precision of her word choice, Lowell achieves a vividness of expression that appeals to several senses: sight (broad, smaller, purple, etc.), touch (stiff, pleasant, glazed), and also an implication of sound (evening wind) and scent (white flower). Lowell is relying not only on the detail of image to convey a sensual experience, but also on the textured patterning of sound to suggest a deliberateness, but with delicacy, a tender caution. The alliteration and assonance, featuring soft consonants and short vowels (such as s, z, p, w, n and flat a of part, small, pleasant) add to this gentle tone. The repeated line "One by one" slows the pace considerably, as do the short but end-stopped lines. The repetition of "leaves" at or near the end of almost every other line indicates that while there is movement and action taking place here, it is slow and explorative, almost worshipful in tone.

The second stanza takes on a more overtly reverential tone:

White flower,
Flower of wax, of jade, of unstreaked agate;
Flower with surfaces of ice,
With shadows faintly crimson.
Where in all the garden is there such a flower?
The stars crowd through the lilac leaves
To look at you.
The low moon brightens you with silver.

Here, the litany of attributes serves as a kind of invocation, a reverential, ritualistic form of address, leading to the awe-stricken question, "Where in all the garden is there such a flower?" This question is an assertion of the "flower's" unchallenged beauty. In the last three lines, the "flower" gains a majesty and splendor that cause the stars and moon to gaze and even bow ("low moon") with wonder.

In the last stanza, Lowell gives the most definitive clue that this white flower may represent something else altogether by the assertion in the first line:

This bud is more than the calyx.
There is nothing to equal a white bud,
Of no color, and of all,
Burnished by moonlight,
Thrust upon by a softly-swinging wind.

The color white used to describe the flower also becomes associated with the moon here, carried over from the word "silver" at the end of the previous stanza. This association is developed further as the "white bud/ Of no color, and of all," is "Burnished by moonlight."

Many feminist critics today, learning to "read" women's poetry as encoded celebrations and explorations of female sexuality in non-patriarchal terms, have pointed out that some images predominate for this purpose: in addition to flowers, the moon and its cycles are used to signify female sexuality. While these images are rich with erotic possibilities, I don't quite believe that Lowell was interested in encoding the sexual message too deeply. If anything, it seems Lowell wants to be sure that the reader gets the sexual connotations of the poem by using the already heavily connotated words "Thrust upon" at the beginning of the last line. Lest the reader think this is the familiar heterosexual "thrust," however, Lowell immediately contrasts the potential violence of this verb with the sonorant phrase "by a softly-swinging wind." This final phrase carries lesbian implications not only in its reversal of expectations, but also in that it echoes back to the first stanza, where the wind is the only agent of motion besides the speaker, "I." Thus, Amy Lowell, who often read her poetry in person, by dint of authorship, associates herself with the speaker, who in turn is associated within the poem with the wind, as agent of erotic caresses.

Like Dickinson's, much of Lowell's work draws on nature, and even more specifically, on garden imagery. On the surface, this approach can seem to fit safely within the confines of the cultural expectations of "female versifiers," and much of Lowell's poetry, like Dickinson's, can be misconstrued as pretty little nature poems. Paradoxically, nature images are the perfect vehicle of expression for both of these poets' visions. It is familiar and readily accessible for both poets, yet they see in it an expression of their "deviant" beliefs and loves.

Lowell's poetics of imagism, with its preponderance of garden imagery, combined with her love for Ada Russell, allowed her to write extremely erotic lesbian poetry. However, because of Lowell's physical size and demeanor and the cultural invisibility of her erotic sensibility, the power of her lesbianism as a creative force within her work in particular, and within modernism in general, has been largely disregarded. Being aware of this expectation of triviality, and the overlay of heterosexist assumptions placed on Lowell's erotic life, allows us to see how the vision of the "straight mind" can erase the significance of this lesbian work from its place in literary history.

There is further significance to the use of nature imagery in Lowell's overtly sexual lesbian poetics. Not unlike Dickinson's use of the hymn meter to offset her own cultural heresies, the juxtaposition of "natural" images with "unnatural" sexualities creates an ironic tension between these socially constructed polarities, which forces the distinctions to give way. By bringing these "oppositional" concepts together, not in conflict but in relation, the boundaries of this dichotomy begin to disintegrate. Thus, by thinking with a lesbian sensibility, she throws the logic of the heterosexist culture against itself, and creates a paradoxical legitimation for lesbian existence: if nature evidences these "unnatural" images of sexual expression, then the "unnatural" is perhaps more "natural" than we have been led to believe.

From Queer Poetics: Five Modernist Women Writers. Westport, CN: Praeger, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by Mary E. Galvin.


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