BEACH GLASS

Beach Glass

Beach Glass

Introduction

Amy Clampitt was born on June 15, 1920 of Quaker parents, and brought up in New Providence, Iowa. In the American Academy of Arts and Letters and at nearby Grinnell College she began a study of English literature that eventually led her to poetry. She graduated from Grinnell College, and from that time on lived mainly in New York City. To support herself, she worked as a secretary at the Oxford University Press, a reference librarian at the Audubon Society, and a freelance editor. Not until the mid-1960s, when she was in her forties, did she return to writing poetry.

Clampitt's organization follows a pattern through which the fleeting habitats of a vagabond existence produce a kaleidoscope of sounds and images. Three long poems draw the reader toward the cyclical nature of reality; death is followed by redemption, and withdrawal edges toward commitment. The shorter poems, clustered around people and events situated in public and private domains, are rich in anecdote and local color; they shine with an effervescence distilled through precise observation. “Beach Glass” epitomizes these traits. The ocean is compared to the human mind that produces human artifacts, what Clampitt refers to in “A Cadenza” as “an apotheosis of merchandise.”

Thesis Statement: The most striking characteristic of this is the vigorous use of extension, by means of which metaphors and concepts are given full carrying power and amplitude.

Discussion

Like most of Clampitt's work, “The Beach Glass” is crowded with nature imagery, especially references to birds. The poet mentions nightingales and peacocks twice, once in the initial stanza and again when she is summing up the failure of the affair. She also writes about tropical birds in the zoo, including the bellbird, describes a thrush in detail(Grimes, 1994).

Moreover, the symphonic selection about which the lovers disagree is Igor Stravinsky's composition entitled The Firebird. In an obvious play on words, the performance is compared to a bird of prey, a “kite.” However, since the persona almost immediately refers to her partner's “hauling down” the musical work by his ridicule, it is evident that the poet has switched to another kind of kite, that which is made by human hands and flown for as long as the wind is favorable. Both meanings are applicable to the poem. The bird is linked to the subject of the musical composition and, more subtly, as a bird of prey suggests the developing destructiveness in the relationship; the frailty of the paper creation, its dependence on external forces, including the skill and the will of the person flying it, reminds the reader of the conditional nature of human love.

It has been pointed out that although there are fine examples of visual imagery in her poems, Clampitt draws upon the other senses with equal skill(Howard, 1983). In “The Beach Glass,” she comments on the pheasants' display of feathers and describes both the thrush and the Beach Glass in detail. However, there are also many references to sound in the poem, and ...