Mary Jo Bang’s “The Tempest” captures the feeling of the
song precisely. Stormy Weather is one of those Jazz Age songs that has the
aesthetic of being very jovial and playful, but a very contrasting lyrical
content. This juxtaposition of emotions is even stated explicitly with the
line, “Now a melding of comic motifs
with tragic”.
Bang starts the poem off highlighting a transitory phase:
“the blue square becomes a window” and “the box a building”. By creating the
feeling of change, she calls upon the social movement that took place during
the Harlem Renaissance. She references
the Mississippi with the line “she sat down and wept”—the South was a place of
strife where African Americans were struggling for their civil rights. In the
second stanza, she describes a much more bourgeois shade of life: the bus, the
mohair sofa, the red dress….all of which depict life for black people transitioning
in the urban sprawl of Harlem in the 1920’s. The ekphrastic approach that Bang
uses also fits that of the Harlem Renaissance—when black people were able to
thrive via the vibrancy and expression of art.
The one aspect to the poem that truly stumps me is the
changing of the pronouns. I’m not exactly sure why Bang morphs the “she” to “you”
to then “I”. If anyone has any idea, holla at me, I’d love to hear your ideas.
This is one persuasive reading of the poem--one among many--a great thing about poems is that their interpretation is never exhausted (if they're good). A question for you--what exactly do you mean by "lyrical" here? What do you make of the origin of the term in "the lyric"--i.e., songs? http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/glossary-term/lyric
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant by "lyrical" was the actual words sung in the song. Interesting how lyrics, separated from the music are poems themselves (or can be).
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