This poem is in Of(f)course, A Literary Journal (link follows; due to copyright – and because I like to feature the literary journal in which a poem is published, the poem is not copied here).
http://www.albany.edu/offcourse/issue46/joyce_brown.html
Some research is required to fully appreciate this poem, although it can be enjoyed without doing any. I’ll share a bit of mine, but I suggest you do your own, too.
First, some particulars. Rock Creek Cemetery, in Washington, D.C., is located across from Soldier’s Home and its associated cemetery, burial site of Civil War soldiers, as well as other armed forces dead. President Lincoln and his family used a cottage on the grounds, built in Gothic Revival style, to escape the heat of summer and of politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Creek_Cemetery
The poem‘s phrase St. Gaudens’ Peace refers to Augustus Saint-Gaudens‘ (American sculptor) allegorical statue called, variously, The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding, or Peace, although the public referred to it as Grief. It was commissioned by the writer Henry Adams as a memorial to his wife, Marian “Clover” Adams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Adams-memorial-SaintGaudens.jpg
Clover Adams, while by accounts enjoying a happy marriage and fulfilling life, committed suicide. Meanwhile, Mary Todd Lincoln lived a life of tragedy – the war and its affect on her husband, his assassination, her lifelong depression, her divided loyalties due to her Southern connections, her being an “unsophisticated Westerner“.
Above are the facts used by Brown to set the tone for her poem. Let’s look at the setting, a cemetery, where the dead rest in peace, while friends and family are left grieving and “grazing among stone angels and recumbent marble lambs” along with the Union dead.
And who finds grief in Rock Creek Cemetery? Henry Adams, Mary Todd Lincoln, and the survivors of those buried there. Visitors, too, find grief – in the Saint-Gaudens statue, in thinking about wars and their victims, in considering our own mortality.
But cemeteries also stir feelings of peacefulness in their park-like grounds, the absence of society’s noise, the wind soughing past trees and tombstones. And here in Rock Creek Cemetery we even find Saint-Gaudens’ Peace in its final resting place just like the dead are in their final resting places.
Yet, the poem raises contradictions. The statue is both Peace and Grief; the dead are at peace while family and friends grieve; cemeteries are “places of rest” even for souls in turmoil (Clover Adams and Mary Lincoln); a monument to a loved one, but no marker with her name – unnamed grief, the unnamable peace that comes from God. Asian poets, such as Li Po or Basho, saw parting (death) as both joy and sorrow; the opposites, like light-dark, that are required to make sense of the world. Through these ultimate contradictions, or necessary polarities, come meaning.
An aside re: Lincoln’s cottage by the Soldier’s Home in the architectural style called Gothic Revival. The word Gothic conjures up images of gloom, darkness and morbidity, which adds to the poem’s imagery.
I find the imagery well structured and consistent throughout the poem. Key words and phrases – by herself, peace, grief, sits heavily, surrounded, to name a few – drive that image forcefully right to the end of this complete, self-contained poem.
Read it, think about it, and add your critique if you’d like.
