Today’s poem by Joseph Harrison, the second of five favorites I’ve chosen, has a title that invites us to consider one of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes.
HAMLET
It’s quiet here. A stoic rectitude
Props up the weather-pummeled citizens,
Craggy yet almost cheerful. Uniform
Gray granite cottages, precipitous
And sturdy, make the most of things. The wind
Does all the talking hereabouts, and who
Would think to think about the universe?
Their certainties define them, not their doubts.
“Weather-pummeled”: yes, we say to ourselves, we’re in the rotten state of Denmark. It’s cold out there, and “The wind// Does all the talking hereabouts.” Clever, we think: Harrison must be referring to the early appearance of Hamlet’s father’s ghost, and the sentries’ questioning whether he’s really there and really speaking. Like that ghost, the poet speaks in iambic pentameter. “Precipitous”: that suggests the precipices of a high castle, as well as the danger Hamlet poses to Claudius, and vice-versa. Yet… when the poet asks “who// Would think to think about the universe?” we stop to question the implication. Hamlet does think about the universe, as does his friend Horatio; even pompous Polonius can claim credit for philosophizing.
The poem’s final line makes us doubt everything we’ve been thinking: “Their certainties define them, not their doubts.” Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the quintessence of doubt. The poem cannot be primarily about him or his environment, we understand now, but about a village, a little town, a hamlet, where nothing is large scale! We see “gray granite cottages,” “almost cheerful,” for what they are, not castles, and the inhabitants of the hamlet as provincial, limited souls who are defined by all they’re (probably wrongly) certain about. People in the hamlet are the unheroic opposite of Hamlet. The shortness of this poem makes the title that it shares with Shakespeare’s longest play a wry comment in itself. Brevity is the soul of wit.
— Mary Jo Salter
“Hamlet” is from Shakespeare’s Horse by Joseph Harrison, Waywiser Press (2015)
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Author: The Best American Poetry
