The Art of Quotation (Part VII)

I’ve always admired the “fishnet” image that Robert Lowell used to describe his poetic endeavour. In his poem “Fishnet” (included in his 1973 collection The Dolphin), he wrote,

I’ve gladdened a lifetime

knotting, undoing a fishnet of tarred rope;

the net will hang on the wall when the fish are eaten,

nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future.

Helen Vendler cherished these lines, too. She quoted them in two essays – “A Difficult Grandeur” (included in her 1980 collection Part of Nature, Part of Us) and “Images of Subtraction: Robert Lowell’s Day by Day” (in her 2010 collection Last Looks, Last Books). In the first piece, she quoted the above lines and offered this interpretation: 

The subjects of these poems will eventually become extinct, like all other natural species devoured by time, but the indelible mark of their impression on a single sensibility will remain, in Lowell’s votive sculpture, bronzed to imperishability.

I like how she reused Lowell’s “bronze,” converting it to “bronzed” – “bronzed to imperishability,” a wonderful phrase.

In the second essay, Vendler provided this interpretation of Lowell’s beautiful lines:

The poet’s net of forms in The Dolphin will remain, in his hammered phrase, “nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future.”

Note the way she builds on Lowell’s “fishnet” and “bronze” metaphors – “the poet’s net of forms,” “his hammered phrase” – deepening their meaning. 

Credit: The above portrait of Helen Vendler is by Stephanie Mitchell.