The poem
A story, a story! (Let it go. Let it come.) I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender into this world. First came the crib with its glacial bars. Then dolls and the devotion to their plactic mouths. Then there was school, the little straight rows of chairs, blotting my name over and over, but undersea all the time, a stranger whose elbows wouldn't work. Then there was life with its cruel houses and people who seldom touched- though touch is all- but I grew, like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew, and then there were many strange apparitions, the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison and all of that, saws working through my heart, but I grew, I grew, and God was there like an island I had not rowed to, still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked, and I grew, I grew, I wore rubies and bought tomatoes and now, in my middle age, about nineteen in the head I'd say, I am rowing, I am rowing though the oarlocks stick and are rusty and the sea blinks and rolls like a worried eyebal, but I am rowing, I am rowing, though the wind pushes me back and I know that that island will not be perfect, it will have the flaws of life, the absurdities of the dinner table, but there will be a door and I will open it and I will get rid of the rat insdie me, the gnawing pestilential rat. God will take it with his two hands and embrace it.
As the African says: This is my tale which I have told, if it be sweet, if it be not sweet, take somewhere else and let some return to me. This story ends with me still rowing.
I would scan this.
I would close read this.
I would put this poem under the fine microscope of my mid twenties and inconsistent mind,
but it just seems right to love this from a far.
This poem to me describes how man is born and grown and what he/she faces as growing materializes. Many poets from other cultures have depicted the same verses in their own language though with a bit of variation. My self being Iranian have soptted 2 poems. One from Ahamd Shamloo named "The beginning" and the other by Esmail Shahroodi named "the seeds of wine"
In poems, most of all, each word counts. So, two errors in the text of "Rowing" should be noted, if not corrected. The dolls have "plastic" mouths, not "plactic". I learned this from listening to a recording of Anne Sexton reading the poem. And a simple misspelling of "inside" towards the end is careless and an affront to a beautiful and haunting poem. To be fair, the "plactic/plastic" error is on several other sites. The poem still works in spite of these errors.
Perfect
"and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I’d say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyeball,
but I am rowing, I am rowing"
The song-writer Townes Van Zandt wrote, "You cannot count the miles until you feel them." In just the same way, you cannot really appreciate this passage until you've reached your middle years. It's one of the passages that's etched in my mind.