I do like this poem by the American poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) even if I find it a challenge to figure out exactly what it is trying to say: as with many of the more recent American poets I have an uneasy feeling that there may be a subtext here that I am missing. This might not be entirely my fault: I am all for poets making you think, but I feel there is a debate to be had as to how hard you should have to think just to figure out what it is they want you to think about. But anyway, here’s my take…

‘The Insusceptibles’ … what is it that they are not susceptible to? The pressures of conformity, I think: it seems to be a poem in praise of those who ‘take a different road’, who are prepared to stay out in the dark when their more cautious feelows  have sought the security of indoors, and as a result are granted spectacles the others miss. As for the last two lines, what is the significance of leaving the light on for them ‘when they should come’? It could just be out of concern for them, but it could also embody a hope on the part of the collective that these deviants will eventually find their way back to conformity, with an implicit play on the idea of ‘seeing the light’.

Whatever the exact meaning, I relish the phrasing. ‘The lustres of the summer dark’, and that ‘vagrant splinter blazing out of space’ – presumably a shooting star. In its diction the poem reminds me a little of Wallace Stevens, another American poet whose opulent language I admire even if he often leaves me frustrated as to its meaning. But at the same time I feel there is also a hint of Robert Frost here. The theme itself reminds me of Frost’s poem ‘Come In’ (see week 189): ‘But no, I was out for stars:/I would not come in./I meant not even if asked/And I hadn’t been’, and the cadences of the closing couplet seem very Frost-like to me.

The Insusceptibles

Then the long sunlight lying on the sea
Fell, folded gold on gold; and slowly we
Took up our decks of cards, our parasols,
The picnic hamper and the sandblown shawls
And climbed the dunes in silence. There were two
Who lagged behind as lovers sometimes do,
And took a different road. For us the night
Was final, and by artificial light
We came indoors to sleep. No envy there
Of those who might be watching anywhere
The lustres of the summer dark, to trace
Some vagrant splinter blazing out of space.
No thought of them, save in a lower room
To leave a light for them when they should come.

Adrienne Rich