Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Fanny Howe’s "Three Persons" is a poem steeped in philosophical and spiritual contemplation, moving fluidly between metaphysical abstraction and intensely personal imagery. The title itself suggests a Trinitarian framework—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—yet the poem unfolds as an exploration of existence, identity, and the interplay between individual and collective being. Divided into sections, the poem?s structure reflects its shifting focus, oscillating between observational detachment and deeply subjective experience.

The opening lines set a barren and celestial tone: "The fields are infertile / as far as I can tell. / Their winter systems / sparkle like the diamonds / that pelt Neptune." The landscape is stripped of life, its "winter systems" suggesting a sterility that is both natural and existential. The reference to Neptune, the distant and cold planet, amplifies this feeling of remoteness. The world here is luminous yet lifeless, beautiful yet inhospitable—a setting that mirrors the poem’s underlying tension between material existence and spiritual transcendence.

This otherworldliness shifts as the speaker turns toward the human-made realms of "museums and theaters / back in town." These spaces, devoted to art and narrative, offer a semblance of structure and meaning, allowing people to "elevate our eyes / to a well-shaped ethics." However, the phrase "Colors are supplied / by our nervous minds" hints at the instability of perception. Ethics and aesthetics are not inherent but rather projected, colored by individual consciousness.

The second section introduces a guiding voice: "Be like grass, she told me, / lie flat, spring up." This command suggests humility and resilience, an embrace of cycles of submission and renewal. The idea of a "just / and invisible image / behind each substance" aligns with mystical traditions that perceive a hidden order beyond the visible world. The phrase "best / when lost from wanting" suggests that true spiritual alignment comes from surrender, from detaching oneself from desire.

As the poem progresses, it grapples with presence and absence, shadow and light. "We drop the shadows where they are then / return to them / when the light has grown heavy." Shadows, often symbolic of memory or the unconscious, are abandoned and revisited as time passes. The line "We’ve never been too sure that we exist as the earth does" introduces doubt about physical reality, positioning human existence as something fluid, almost aquatic: "We’re most at home in water / that soaks up the letters in our brains." Here, water becomes a medium of dissolution, a contrast to the dry sterility of the opening scene. The line "It could be we have been dry too long" hints at a spiritual drought, a lack of renewal.

The poem then plunges into a more visceral, almost apocalyptic vision: "How in the dark hole can I hide / if I can’t get outside?" This moment marks a shift toward personal reckoning, with the imagery of a river, sand, and a "silhouette of a child I love." The "arch and bridge" as "a shape of repentance" suggests that architecture, like ritual, can provide a symbolic passage toward redemption. The speaker’s self-condemnation crescendos: "If I’m hanging, / then judgment has been passed. / And I am hanging / upside down / head swinging towards the moon." This recalls the Hanged Man of tarot, a figure of suspension and inversion, symbolizing surrender and enlightenment. The "face in a mirror displaced / by its position outside silver" evokes an unsettling loss of self, a dislocation that disrupts identity.

In the final sections, the poem broadens into reflections on mortality and spiritual yearning. "You’re learning how to be a unit / with an infinite in its attic. / It’s not difficult. / Light is the last message." The phrase "unit with an infinite in its attic" suggests that within each individual resides something boundless, a divine presence or the vastness of memory and consciousness. The assertion "Light is the last message" aligns with religious and mystical traditions where light symbolizes revelation and transcendence.

The closing lines introduce a moment of realization: "We would rather be (die) with total strangers than with partial ones / we realized in the elevator going down." This enigmatic statement suggests that anonymity offers a form of purity, that in the face of death or ultimate truth, partial connections are insufficient. This realization leads to an understanding of "the genius / of institutional religion." The structure of confession, the act of articulating one?s transgressions in darkness, is presented as a way to unburden oneself, to be given "a task" as a form of redemption.

The final lines—"Get the children to the other side! / What children? You were the one running. / There was never any other."—circle back to the poem’s meditation on selfhood and illusion. The imperative "Get the children to the other side!" suggests urgency, responsibility, the instinct to protect innocence. Yet the revelation that "there was never any other" unravels this notion, hinting at the solitary nature of existence. The children may symbolize aspects of the self, past selves, or lost innocence, reinforcing the poem’s recurring theme of inversion and self-duplication.

"Three Persons" is a dense, multi-layered meditation on existence, perception, and spirituality. It weaves together personal reflection, philosophical questioning, and religious symbolism, ultimately landing on an ambiguous but powerful acknowledgment of transience and interconnectedness. The poem does not resolve its tensions but instead holds them in balance—between light and shadow, presence and absence, self and other, material and immaterial.

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