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Friday poem
“oh antic God” by Lucille Clifton
oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed.
I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.
I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name.
(from Mercy, 2004)
Topic: Just for Fun, WorldMagBlog
Keywords: literature
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back to top14 Comments to “Friday poem”
I am not supposed to comment on the poetry thread but could one of you more literate, poetically-gifted types explain to me the ‘antic’ God thing?
Why ‘antic’ God? Is that ‘antic’ as in ‘playful’ or (archaic usage) ‘ancient’?
And what is the tie of this ‘antic’ God to the main theme of the poem which is (or seems to be) for all intents and purposes centered about the mother and associated memories?
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Think it through, float some ideas, let us discuss.
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A few thoughts:
1. “Antic” may refer to the omniscient God, versus the very un-omniscient human. The speaker is asking God to do things that he will not do. He doesn’t necessarily “play” us, or fool us, but our wisdom is foolishness to him. Just an idea.
2. “Antic” may, as you suggest, also suggest his age and his agelessness, as in “antique,” compared to the antiquity of the mother, now dead. I think the connotations both work.
3. I like the poem because it’s a petition for God to do the impossible, yet it’s a request any of us could make, or would make.
4. I also like the poem for the way the speaker forgets, sadly, how her mother sounds and smells. My wife lost her mother several years ago, and often talks about how she sometimes forgets her voice, or her face. I like that the poem reminds me of that. Especially since poems are about making the abstract into the concrete, which is what memory is, right?
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HSK,
You say ‘I like the poem because it’s a petition for God to do the impossible,’
Why is it impossinble for God to make good on this simple request of him again?
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Harrison: I can see how the word ‘antic’ fits if it means ‘ancient’ or (I think better) ‘long ago’. It is an odd usage of the word; definitely archaic. I had to go look it up to see if I remembered it correctly.
I agree, the work has a sound vitality in its imagery and language. However, I remain confused as to the interplay between the memories of the mother and the desire for the return of a long-ago God (?). It seems bifurcated in that sense to me, i.e. I am not sure of the exact tie between these two thematic elements. Is the poet asking for a long-absent God to return and bring the memories with Him?
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LLAMA,
You’re right, it’s not impossible, but given the laws of space and time, it’s improbable. I think she’s asking God to bring back the memory of her mother, too, which is very possible. But it does come off more as a plea for the nearly impossible – to me, at least.
DRILL,
I agree that it’s kind of a stretch here. When I read the poem, I’m pulled between her addressing God in such odd ways and her talking about her mother.
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She appears to be talking about the return of her mother (or her mother’s memory), but she ends and begins lines in odd places.
It confused me at first, because she seemed to jump from “return to me, God,” to “I remember my mother.”
I think a little context would help this poem tremendously … as in knowing more about the rest of the book and how the author writes and her own religious views.
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I’m going to jump in here, because I think there is a serious mis-reading going on. The author is not asking God to return, she is asking God to return her mother
Punctuation would help make this more clear:
o antic God, return to me my mother
or rearrangement:
o antic God return my mother to me
The usage reminds me of what my mother calls “Pennsylvania Dutch”. But putting the arrangement makes sense, because she is asking not just that her mother be returned, but that a very particular age and version of her mother be returned. I think it works better than if it were rearranged:
oh antic God
return my mother
in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed
to me
or even
oh antic God
return my mother to me
in her thirties
leaned across the front porch
the huge pillow of her breasts
pressing against the rail
summoning me in for bed
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Thomas: I believe you are right. That DOES make sense. I still wonder about the usage of ‘antic’ but your explanation certainly works in making the poem understandable. I went back and reread it based on that and it clicked. Thanks.
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The mother-theme shows up especially in the last line of the poem (I didn’t get it on the first readthrough). Thomas, thank you for showing us why the arrangement (which I intially thought poor), was well done.
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I suspect an “antic” God is God of the antique, of things lost and gone that only He can recover.
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THOMAS,
I’m not sure any of us were saying that the speaker was wanting God to return. At least I wasn’t. It was pretty clear that all references to God in the syntax were restrictive clauses, parentheticals directed to God, but about the mother.
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I found the poem touched a reality in my life. My mother, now dead five years, is increasingly vague except for in dreams (I love that part of the poem).
The other touching part is that even at a distance of fifty-plus years, the poet still yearns.
As to antic, I took it in the sense of God as something of a trickster, a player of pranks — if He could do so much, surely He could return to the poet the memory of her long-lost parent. I think we continually make the prayer in the long-lasting wake of loss.
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I think ‘antic God’ was a very human (and very Jewish) way of looking at God throughout history. He was always up to some ‘antics’, asking his people to do peculiar things that made no sense to them at the time. And God never explained why either … until he finally came in the flesh.
He flooded the earth, asked a man to sacrifice his promised son, instituted circumcision, strange rituals, miracles and terrifying judgments. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Job, David, all the prophets had difficulty understanding God’s ‘antics’.
However, hindsight is 20×20. Having the gospel now and looking back, we realize that these weren’t ‘antics’ at all. Eventually this austere parent came and explained himself. These peculiar actions of God were all carefully planned and have to do with an eternal story of love. He wrote the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).
This woman in the poem wants her mother back. She asks the God who took her to give her back. How very human! But as David said about his dead son. “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”
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