Elegy for Jane

(My student, thrown by a horse)

Short analysis

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;

In Elegy for Jane, Theodore Roethke compiles images that are most unelegiac in nature. The definition of an elegy is a poem in memory of a deceased acquaintance. Its tone should be somber and it is devoid of humor.

Ask anyone who has read this poem long ago or even recently and they’ll more than likely say, “Oh, yeah! ‘The sidelong pickerel smile’.” An elegy is supposed to be mournful, but who can remain unamused when a girl’s smile is related not just to a fish but to a singularly unhandsome one. Line one’s description of neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils is less arresting but certainly does not focus on aspects of beauty.

And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

The remainder of the opening quatrain describes the student’s habitual taciturnity that, when startled into talk, produced not sentences of weighty profundity but leaping syllables that induced delight in her as well as her auditors.

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,

The first bird image is carefully selected and denotes a commonplace fowl that is “happy” – not joyous, blissful or exuberant – and who is blast beruffled with tail into the wind. Hardly a thing of beauty.

And when she happened to be sad, she was beyond the comforting words of a father, much less an instructor acting in loco parentis.

My sparrow, you are not here,

A sparrow, like a wren, is the most ordinary of birdlife. Had the poet been wanting to suggest beauty and grandeur, he had a host of winged creatures at his disposal, from robins to cardinals to chickadees and kingfishers. Instead she is for him a skittery pigeon.

Clearly the poet has feelings for the girl who died so early and so tragically, The feelings will be familiar to anyone who has taught at the secondary or college level. There are students we “love” without a trace of lust or animal desire. Roethke is not describing an affair with a mature female of beauty as he did in I Knew a Woman. The images are nothing like lovely in her bones . . . the way a body sways. . .she moved in circles and those circles moved. There has been no prodigious mowing here – no sickle, no rake.

Instead there is deep affection and a sense of loss. The girl was a wren, a sparrow, and a pigeon. The poet possibly feels somewhat out of place at her graveside, since he is neither father nor lover. Yet he is innocently bereft.

Summary

An elegy is a poem written in memory of one who has died. "Elegy for Jane" gracefully captures the real girl Jane; in 22 compact lines, we almost see this flesh-and-blood girl and the love she brought forth. In animating Jane, the poem allows us to recognize Jane's beloved characteristics in those around us. She is, like all of us, and individual with universal traits.

Roethke reminisces about her  personally, leaving the universal recognition up to the natural images and the readers. The first line, "I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;" demonstrates a very personal and even intimate view of this girl. He regards the nape of her neck, connoting vulnerability, and talks of her curls as soft, delicate tendrils. The connection with plants here rehearses the consistent twining of man and nature. In the next line, Jane smiles like a pickerel, a fish with a wide, oblong grin. The assonance in "quick look" heightens the energy in the poem, which again appears consistently throughout the poem. This energy reflects Jane's energy, and makes the thought of her loss even sadder. As if a light has winked out in the sky.

The next several lines, "how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her, / And she balanced in the delight of her thought, / A wren, happy, tail into the wind, / Her song trembling the twigs and small branches" again display natural imagery and energy. Because it shifts almost fully into a natural metaphor, the poem's universality comes through especially clearly. Perhaps I should pause and explain why natural imagery is universalizing. Excepting a few cases, a wild animal is not named. That is, one salmon, to the human eye, looks no different than any other salmon. "Salmon" or "wren" or "tendril" is universal, encompassing all salmon, all wren, and all tendrils. The natural metaphors in "Elegy" are tailored for an individual, Jane, so they are at once broadly relevant and personally applicable. The choice of a wren gestures that Jane was light, energetic, and graceful. Even the word "wren" sounds small and nimble.

Jane doesn't just inhabit natural images, though; she works in harmony with them, evident in the lines "the leaves, their whispers turned to kissing; / And the mold sang in the bleached valleys under the rose." Here, the environment also expresses the love felt for Jane. It was everywhere, in the leaves, the brooks, the flowers and even the mold. For those good and bad, her presence delighted.

But she was not always effervescent. Roethke writes, "when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth, / Even a father could not find her." Her emotions were strong and clear; I believe that this characterization also makes her more real. She is a creature of pure emotion, sadness or happiness, which makes her easy to imagine and even empathize with. We all, I expect, experience straight emotions from time to time.

The speaker's affection begins to seep into the poem in the next lines, "My sparrow, you are not here, / Waiting like a fern, making a spiny shadow." Affection and nostalgia, really. Again, too, we note the tender, universal/personal images and Jane's bubbly grace. When Roethke writes, "If only I could nudge you from this sleep, / My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon," and I want to nudge her, too. I want to nudge everyone who has ever fallen. This poem, for me, is so beautifully and powerfully loving. And I suppose that an elegy should be a form of love poem, though I haven't read enough elegies to recommend examples or counterexamples. I like the idea of an elegy as a love poem.

The poem ends with a line that could be construed as problematic: with the implication that a father (male) or lover (stereotypically male) should have rights over remembering her. It sidesteps controversy, though, because the narrator is (arguably) male and her teacher. I think that he is only referring, in the end, to his possible position to her. He would usually love a girl because he is (a) her father or (b) her lover. How do we reconcile being neither of these things? Perhaps we don't have to, the poem suggests. Love exists outside our typical models. And indeed, it can be surprising to find that you love someone when you have no "right" to. My stepmother told me that she sometimes looks at a stranger working away at his life and imagines that he is her son. I found that so beautiful, and have tried it often. It's amazing how easy it is to love people, if you only see them as lovable. I try to look at girls as if they were one of my sisters or best friends. They become so clear and pure. I think that looking at Jane in this poem provides that same experience. She is a stranger, but looking at her through loving eyes, we love her as well. By seeing another that loves her, we may love her too, in a way. The narrator's affections, cloaked in natural imagery, guide us to affection and tenderness. Surprising, no?

Commentary 

            In this poem the persona speaks “the words” of love for Jane, his student who was “thrown by a horse”. This love that he feels for the girl, though, is described as neither that of a lover nor that of a father but is clearly very strong because of the way in which he reacts to her death. With the use of continuous references to nature, the author creates a harmonious depiction of his student and delineates how this event has affected him emotionally.

            “I remember” are key words to analyzing this poem for they emphasize how the images of Jane are part of the persona’s past. An elegy is generally written to mourn the death of someone and therefore most probably Jane died as a result of the fall. The first image that the author develops is the hair which, with the use of a simile, he compares to tendrils. He then proceeds to the eyes and finally to her mouth from which he says to hear her voice. The persona cannot stop thinking of her and one image leads to another almost to give us a more global view of what she was like. It is evident that the persona is very attached to this girl for her smile and voice are able of changing everything into beauty.

            In the poem we see two aspects of Jane: when she is happy and when she is sad. The first stanza deals with the young woman’s happiness, underlined by the frequent use of words with positive connotations such as “happy” and “delight”. The joy she creates and experiences is immense for even the shade sings with her. Her voice is so beautiful that it affects everything surrounding her: like the small circular waves formed when something is thrown in water, her joy is dispersed everywhere. The use of the sounds “l” and “t” render this first stanza very melodical and contribute to the idea of love and happiness the images suggest. 

Theodore Roethke's "Elegy for Jane" describes the speaker's mournfulness at the death of his student, Jane. In the first two stanzas, the speaker, a man who is Jane's teacher, is speaking to a general audience about his memories of Jane as a youthful, emotional girl. This reminiscence juxtaposes with the last three stanzas, in which the speaker, while standing over Jane's grave, expresses to her the sorrow he experiences due to her death. Additionally, the contrasting imagery between the speaker's memories of Jane and the imagery when he visits her grave on a rainy day further show the death's impact on the teacher. In this elegy, through contrasting visual and auditory imagery, figurative language, and juxtaposition, the speaker reveals the pain he experiences from the death of a student he admired and cared for.

The first two stanzas of the poem detail Jane's youthful and highly emotional nature. The speaker describes her as capable of being at the extremes of sadness and joy. For example, in the first stanza, the speaker reminisces on the power of her joyfulness. Many vivid verbs are used to describe her actions, such as how the "syllables leaped for her," and how she "balanced in the delight of her thought," highlighting her vitality and life. The speaker even uses a simile to compare Jane's hair to tendrils, a living plant. Another simile comparing Jane to a wren shows her propensity to sing. Furthermore, her voice modified the environment around her, causing the branches to tremble and the leaves to kiss her, underlining the power of her voice; however, the shade and the "mold...under the rose" also sang with her, foreshadowing her unforeseen death. However, the speaker states that Jane was not only a exuberant person, but also was a person who dived into melancholy. At the beginning of the second stanza, the speaker states that when she was troubled, she threw herself so deep into depression that "Even a father could not find her." In her depression, Jane would lie in straw and cry strongly, evoking images of extreme emotion. These first two stanzas serve to detail the speaker's memories of Jane during her short life in which she was filled with emotion, oscillating between extreme joy and depression.

In the last three stanzas, however, her teacher contrasts the energy of her life to her death. Additionally, he laments the loss of the energetic Jane and proclaims his love for her, underlining the pain he feels at losing someone he admired and cared for. For example, the metaphor comparing Jane to a sparrow evokes images of Jane's vitality. However, in the next line, the speaker compares her to a fern making a spiny shadow, indicating that the speaker only has memories to remember Jane by. He visits her grave on a rainy day, as he says that the wet stones and moss near her grave cannot console him. The visual imagery of Jane's grave juxtaposed with the imagery of a life-filled environment in the first two stanzas highlights the impact of Jane's loss. Furthermore, the contrast between "maimed darling" and "skittery pigeon" underline the difference between Jane in life and Jane in death.

The speaker in "Elegy for Jane" presents a portrait of his thoughts as he stands at the deceased Jane's grave on a rainy day. First, he nostalgically recalls images of Jane in her youthful life, followed by laments about her death. Additionally, although he is not her father or lover, he was her teacher who cared for her and admired her. Throughout the poem, the speaker laments the loss of a person who was filled with energy and life by detailing her emotional extremes and telling of his pain due to her death.