“In the Garden of the Hurricane’s Eye” is the longest poem in John Ciardi’s In the Stoneworks (1961), his eighth published book of poetry. It consists of three parts; the book itself is also broken into three parts. This poem is found in the first section, the poems of which explore an immense array of structures, lengths and tones. Because of Ciardi’s experience with etymology, there is a tremendous depth to his word choice despite its outward simplicity. Based on the title, one might assume that Ciardi refers to the Garden of Eden; in fact, the poem examines the flawed relationships that Adam and Eve (who go unnamed until the third section) have with God, with the Garden, and with one another.
Each of the three sections of "In the Garden of the Hurricane’s Eye" is made up of five stanzas and concludes with a single, final line. There is no definite or direct rhyme scheme, but Ciardi sets up a type of structure by allowing only 10 to 12 syllables per line; for this reason the poem is riddled with enjambments to give the appearance of symmetry. He also makes remarkable use of the hyphen, utilizing it to create words that aren’t really words, then repeating them to validate their authority within the poem (a few examples include blood-music, sky-top, sword-smile and fern-edge).
Section one introduces the reader to the setting; a lush garden full of bird song and fruit trees. Two people, referred to as “she” and “he” at first are sleeping on the ground. Suddenly she wakes up, laughs, and he also awakes: “His lids blew back like mist.” The first intimate interaction in human history takes place between two people; Ciardi describes this intensely, though simply, by incorporating a similar relationship between the man and woman and earth. At every chance possible, a motion of the human body is depicted as if nature itself was committing the act: “His flung arm grew around her. Silently she swelled upon it as upon the wood of which she was the leaf, the fruit, and pod.” The section ends, however, on a rather sour note; the 10-syllable line that finishes it describes a blood-webbed snake coming out of the roots that the man had torn (“blood-webbed” having also been a term used to describe the man’s “bronze gourd burled up in his thighs). It should come as no surprise that a serpent’s presence in a garden can’t mean anything good.
The second section takes the reader back to the Garden in its post-hurricane state. Angels wandering ask questions but the man refuses them and tries to gather what he can; the woman follows. It is at this point in the poem that one sees a definite internal disruption that has stemmed from the actual destruction. The man stays very silent and leaves in the middle of the night to the shore where the Angels had docked; when he accidentally cuts his arm, the blood stains a jib of the boat, “And all the weathers of Heaven could not bleach it.” This line is an example of a way in which Ciardi layered meanings on top of one another; a jib is a technical term for a certain boat sail, but it is also means, “to move resistively or backward instead of forward.” This wordplay allows the reader to predict what the man’s behavior will be and how the poem will unfold. After returning to the woman’s side, he calls her by name, “Eve,” and “his red arm locked round her till she moaned for her crushed breath.” Moreover, as he sleeps she returns also to his side and makes a note of how dark he is – and that she becomes shadowy as she moves closer: “But when she lay beside him, she, too, darkened and went out.” These two stanzas of the poem, using the color red as a symbol for the temptation of sin and darkness of night for literal spiritual darkness indicate that Adam’s behavior directly affects and changes Eve because of how near they are to each other in every sense.
The third and final section of this poem follows Adam in his final interaction with the angels, who are departing on their ship the next morning. Two sails are hoisted; one red, stained by the blood of Adam, and one white, symbolizing holiness and purity. A parallelism is then made between the Garden and the center of a man’s mind; that both have storms raging around them but that God is at the absolute center: “Was that it? to be locked in calm, but powerless to calm what raged?” Adam is full of questions, and a conversation is struck between himself and a sort of shape-shifting angel. The themes of red and white are again revealed in bi-colored doves. Adam asks, “Now, what garden is there but what I make myself?” and a feather falls from the angel’s hawk-head, a bird which represents keen eyesight and guardianship. The bird tells Adam that he may either choose to go with them or stay where he is. Adam refuses the offer and says, “My words are not, ‘I stay,’ but ‘You go.’” The Hawk hands him a burning branch; the final sentence of the poem is, “And the brand burned.” This is another Ciardi moment of brilliance in which he employs more than one meaning of a word; although “brand” does literally mean “a partly burnt piece of wood,” it also stands for the passing of a torch as well as the branding of a people. This poem, despite its lack of rhyme scheme and outwardly apparent structure truly explores, with a great deal of creative simplicity, the story behind God not only branding His people as His own, but giving them the free will to choose a life of their own, whether it includes Him or not.
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