Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Copper Beech" by Louise Gluck opens with the elemental question, "Why is the earth angry at heaven?" This immediately establishes a mythical framework in which the earth and heaven exist as symbols, perhaps representing body and spirit, reality and dream, or mother and father. By asking, "If there's a question, is there an answer?" the poem asserts that a query's existence doesn't automatically warrant a resolution. This introductory thought captures the core ambivalence the poem will explore regarding human relationships and internal emotions, embodied in the natural imagery of a copper beech tree.

The copper beech is presented as "Immense, like the tree of my childhood," evoking the sense that this tree is a repository for memories and experiences. Yet, it bears "a violence I wasn't ready to see then," suggesting that with the wisdom of hindsight, the speaker can now discern tensions and energies in her past that were previously imperceptible. This is a tree, and by extension a past, filled not just with nostalgic yearning but also with latent violence and emotional turmoil.

Describing herself as "a child like a pointed finger, then an explosion of darkness," the speaker invokes a vivid metaphor to portray her own youthful intensity and capacity for disruption. She points out the helplessness of her mother ("my mother could do nothing with me"), and takes note of "the language she used," alluding to the idea that language itself can be a vehicle for frustration or inadequacy. Language's power or lack thereof to express the tangled emotions between parent and child is laid bare, as is the struggle for control and understanding within the family dynamic.

The tree is anthropomorphized as "rearing like an animal," resonating with the emotional charge of "Frustration, rage, the terrible wounded pride of rebuffed love." This allows the tree to serve as an embodiment of the speaker's own complex feelings, drawing a parallel between the natural world and human emotions. Just as the earth might be "angry at heaven," the speaker recollects the tension and turbulence in her relationship with her parents, and by implication, with herself.

The poem concludes with a poignant, almost cinematic, image of "rising from the earth to heaven." The speaker acknowledges she had "two parents, / one harsh, one invisible," completing the allegory initiated in the opening lines. Her "clouded father," who worked "only in gold and silver," stands as a juxtaposition to the earthy, palpable presence of her mother, symbolizing the speaker's own complicated legacy of emotional and spiritual inheritance.

In "Copper Beech," Louise Gluck uses the image of a tree to explore the layered complexity of family relationships, emotional history, and self-understanding. She achieves a nuanced articulation of the ways in which our past both nurtures and constrains us, hinting at the ongoing struggle to reconcile with it. The copper beech becomes a site of memory, a natural monument to unresolved questions and unquenchable desires, a living testament to the fraught but essential relationship between the earthly and the ethereal in human existence.

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