Lorine Niedecker, "Transition"

There are supple lines in poetry, lines with a breezy flexibility and realized grace. Niedecker opens with three which extend for half of her poem, "Transition." "Colors of October / wait with easy dignity / for the big change" fit the tongue and theme perfectly. I say "wait with easy dignity" and the opening alliterative w-sounds and endings of "easy" and "dignity" form a couch of sorts. I can rest there and watch as rich oranges, yellows, and browns collect the cold sunlight. The "big change" into winter that she mentions, though, doesn't feel real. The moment is suspended, and a transition is the furthest thing from my mind.

The latter half of Niedecker's poem brings us to a classic image of writing. These colors "wait with easy dignity... / like gorgeous quill-pens / in old inkwells / almost dry." It's such a strange juxtaposition. How do the leaves of trees intone quill-pens and inkwells? This question concerns creativity and its limits. Exactly what do moments of great beauty transition into?

Transition
Lorine Niedecker

Colours of October
wait with easy dignity
for the big change—
like gorgeous quill-pens
in old inkwells
almost dry.

Niedecker's imagery asks you to conjure two states of affairs better witnessed than discussed. First, trees with falling, dying leaves which have not quite fallen or died yet. Her words recall Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, when "yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang / Upon those boughs which shake against the cold." Sonnet 73 is placed right at the edge of winter; the "Colours of October" have more time. As well as a noble patience. They "wait with easy dignity / for the big change." You can picture those leaves hanging, rustling as the wind passes through. How some of them are crispy and crinkled; how some colors are uneven, how some shapes are eaten. A tree or two may look rather bare. It isn't enough to say that death is inevitable, not so much because of seasonal rebirth but because the trees refuse to flinch. They stand as they are, as they should be, wearing elaborate decay.

And then there are quill-pens, standing tall in old inkwells. I don't just picture a giant white feather at an angle in a small, shiny glass jar. I also see a solid wood writing desk, lamps and candles, landscape paintings on the wall, and windows which observe a green garden. The Declaration of Independence and the Meditations on First Philosophy. A world of thinking, enlightenment, and all the accessories this requires.

It's a world which faded away, a world that must fade away. "[Q]uill-pens / in old inkwells / almost dry." The vigor of unused ink can only last so long. Someone says no–the whole point of thought and reason lies in the immortality of ideas, right? This is what we believe. More accurate is Nietzsche's story about a planet where the inhabitants invented reason and knowledge, built and achieved many wonderful things, and then the planet and everyone on it were destroyed and completely lost to history. "I think therefore I am" is too true. Thought, just like any other being, is perishable. The conditions for its disappearance are a bit different than our journey to another realm.

"Transition" beholds a dual nobility: trees wearing the "Colours of October" and quill-pens nearing a time they cannot be used. And it goes further. What of creativity? What of writing, say, this very poem? Can we do justice to our own dignity in the face of death? I don't know there's an answer to that, simply because to have any dignity in the face of death is enough of a challenge. I know some who have completely given up on that prospect. They want to be worshipped as they unleash uncontrolled emotions on everyone. When I see their behavior, it feels like a majestic tree and a quill pen are objects from entirely different eras. Worlds where nature and craft held their weight, as their weight was us.