Paul Levines Poetry - Literature review Example

 “The Mercy” by Paul Levine Throughout much of Paul Levine’s poetry, one can trace the ideas of a common people, a shared experience and a single understanding regarding the ‘real’ way of the world for those who do not have the benefit of superior education, great connections or an abundance of ready funds at their disposal. Instead, Levine’s poetry attempts to portray this world of the everyday experience for those who may not have walked its pathways or for those who may have done so, but lack the finesse of language to communicate what they saw. In making this attempt, Levine was hoping to establish in all his readers a sense of community and of shared humanity. Rather than pick out one person in a crowd, he preferred to paint images of an emotion, or a feeling, that could be felt in the breast of all men and all women, regardless of who they were, where they came from or what their experience in life has been. Even when one person was selected to be the star in a given poem, such as in “The Mercy”, Levine managed to convey the thoughts included in such a way as to include all people in the sentiment. Although “The Mercy” is primarily a poem regarding the ship in which his mother traveled to America when she was a small child, Levine manages to find a way of establishing the name of the ship as the human characteristic it embodies, throwing the irony of the ‘welcoming’ shore into the phrases and providing a tactile sense of something that can never be enough. The point of view of the poem has an interesting twist to it in that it is both first person present and third person past. Levine appears in the poem as the first-person narrator, which imbues the lines with a sense of immediacy and urgency despite the fact that they are relating a story more than 83 years old. This is established in the very first line when he tells us “The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island” (1) was named ‘The Mercy.’ Through this perspective, he is able to adopt a more conversational tone of voice which serves as an invitation to the reader to ride with him a ways on the rhythm and beat of the words. In addition, the use of phrases such as ‘my mother’, ‘I read’ and ‘I located’ help to bring the listener even further into the story, while the age of the story is emphasized through “the yellowing pages of a book” (21) and the fact that the ship “eighty-three years ago was named ‘The Mercy’” (2). In this action, it is possible for the reader to see not Levine doing these things, but perhaps picturing him- or herself participating in the action of the story in place of Levine, or perhaps imagining how their own ancestors came to America. At the same time, many of the things that are discussed are reported as having been his mother’s recollections, reported in the third person: “she remembers”, “she prayed” and “she could not fathom.” This reminds us as readers that this was a real-life experience for someone, not just the figment of our imagination, and that this experience was repeated over and over as many times as there are numbers of ships and names of people on board, “the list goes on for pages” (28). The irony of the ship’s name is not lost on us as Levine proceeds to tell us about the trials that were suffered by those traveled on this particular ship. His nine-year-old mother was presumably traveling alone as “She prayed in Russian and Yiddish / to find her family in New York” (14), but she was to find no mercy here as her prayers went “unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored / by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness” (15-16). She is surrounded by people who do not even speak her language and is left to languish on the ship for 31 days in quarantine while smallpox rages through the passengers “until the dead were buried at sea” (19). There was to be no mercy for those onboard who might fall victim to the disease, as long as it was not permitted to enter the city itself. Switching focus for a moment, Levine tells his readers that “Italian miners from Piemonte dig / under towns in western Pennsylvania / only to rediscover the same nightmare / they left at home” (30-33), indicating that even though all these people came to this country seeking new fortunes, most met with the same fate or worse that they had envisioned leaving behind in the old world. Like the orange that was offered to her as a special treat by a sailor, his mother, and many more just like her, has learned that mercy, while sweet and lovely when it comes, is infrequently provided to such as her. The concept that this was both a one-time voyage and a constant event that is established in this unique blending of points of view is continued in the figurative language that connects these thoughts together and establishes the singular case of thousands of young people who traveled to America seeking a better life. The first hint of this use of language appears in Levine’s image of a young girl and a seaman, carefully repeating the word ‘orange’ over and over again during the long voyage. Here we see not only the careful attention provided this girl by the sailor, but also the singular experience of this attention that it would stand out so clearly against the rest of the lonely voyage. The loneliness of this young girl is emphasized with the description of her unfamiliarity with such fruits as bananas and oranges, needing someone to explain to her not only what they are, but also how to go about eating them. Everything is new to her and she has few survival skills with which to cope in this new world. Including the idea that this was an autumn voyage, Levine paints the picture for his readers: “the days darkening / with the black waters calming as night came on, / then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space / without limit rushing off to the corners / of creation” (9-13). More than the lonely experience of not knowing how to eat the food provided, this child experiences life in the depths of a kind of darkness few of Levine’s readers could possibly imagine, especially in an age of electric light and constant company. But while modern day readers can flip on a light-switch to chase away the cold feelings, this child has nothing to turn to but her prayers, which no one else understands. The prayers she does hear on board ship are equally not comforting as they are “strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom” (20) said over the bodies of her shipmates as they are dumped overboard. This sense of profound loneliness and hopeless abandonment by a family that will never arrive tugs fiercely at our emotions through such figurative language even as it establishes the simple orange as a symbol of the mercy that is so lacking in the world. The girl sees her first orange while on board ship, “in the hands of a young Scot” (5) and receives her first helping hand as “a seaman / who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her / with a red bandana and taught her the word, / ‘orange,’ saying it patiently over and over” (5-8). However bright this one spot of delicious, friendly sustenance might have been, it is contrasted sharply against the long, dark autumn voyage with its bleak prolonged ending and its foreboding vision of bodies being buried at sea. The girl is surrounded by languages foreign to her, Levine reads from a book with yellowing pages in a windowless room, “November gives way / to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore” (28-29), the Italian immigrants find a familiar nightmare and the girl is last seen riding a train in the darkness, accompanied only by a single suitcase and an orange. This single bright spot after so much darkness indicates his mother retained hope for a better future despite her bleak introduction, yet it is also in these final lines that the orange takes on its greater significance: “She learns that mercy is something you can eat / again and again while the juice spills over / your chin, you can wipe it away with the back / of your hands and you can never get enough” (35-38). In this end, Levine leaves us with little more than an empty orange peel as we contemplate the physical feeling and tactile substance of the fruit of kindness. While it is clear that Levine is writing about a personal, single experience gained by his mother and related to him perhaps in bedtime stories, it is also clear that he intends for this story to apply universally to any individual embarking on a new adventure, whether that adventure be moving to a new land or even starting a new career. The land is foreign, the waves are large and dark, the way is unclear and the journey is sometimes longer than expected. Often, the outcome is not what was hoped for and can easily become something worse than what was left behind. While it can be obtainable and common as an orange, he also suggests that mercy is not so easily come by, demonstrating that it is something the girl has never known in her lifetime until embarking upon her journey as well as the concept that it can be easily missed or “wipe[d] away with the back of your hands” (38), but it is something that will never provide all that is wanting or needed. Through the tactile image of the orange, it is easy to envision the immense applicability of these statements and the elusive, sparing nature of Mercy. Works Cited Levine, Paul. “The Mercy.” The Mercy. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Read More