The "All-Inclusive Metaphor" of P.K. Page's "Kaleidoscope"

The end of P.K. Page's poem, "Kaleidoscope," reads like an invitation as she impels us to reconsider the analogy she has drawn: "Through [the kaleidoscope] – see/...the perfect, all-inclusive metaphor" (71-73). What is the metaphor she has lain out? What is it that the speaker sees through the "celestial kaliedoscope" (28)? To be quite frank, she sees everything – the world, its people, and, generally, the state of things.

At a literal level, through the kaleidescope, the speaker views the world of objects and, significantly, it is entirely transformed. “Pots and pans [become]...leaves and flowers” (51-52); a leaking faucet drips “diamonds [and] stars” (54); even “square roots” (49) come alive. In brief, the mundane becomes marvellous. People are also seen differently through the kaleidoscope. In the first section of the poem, Byron sees his lover's palms as “sand dollars” (6) and then “petalled stars” (9); her mouth transforms into flowers, her naval into “shells and pearls” (17), and so on.

Notably in this first section, Page continually mentions the number four: Byron's lover's mouth becomes “four hearts...to kiss and kiss and kiss/and kiss a fourth time” (10-14); shortly after, “her naval...[quadruples] for him” (16-18). The number immediately evokes a variety of things – theseasons, the elements, the bodily humours, et al. – which are deemed to be in a state of constant change (for example, the seasons cycle; the proportion of humours within a body are unfixed). It is possible, then, that Page is suggesting that people, like “multiple Terese” (31), are ever-going through motions of “shift and flux and flow” (36). Perhaps this is why Page chose to allude to the Romantic poet, Lord Byron: he was known to be a temperamental man (Stillinger 611).

Through the kaleidoscope, then, one sees a changed view of the ordinary world - it becomes extraordinary. One sees also the multiplicity and mutability of others. In the final stanza, the speaker mentions a final aspect of what the kaleidoscope reveals: "each single thing is other-/all-ways joined/to every other thing" (62-64). The kaleidoscope presents her with a vision, that is, of the interconnectedness of things about her, the abstract blending of entities.

If the shifting, beautiful, interweaving shapes it shows represent the world, human nature, and interconnected humanity, what could the kaleidoscope itself metaphorically signify? One might see the kaleidoscope, as it involves seeing, as a symbol of perception. I venture further, however, that the kaleidoscope symbolizes a particular kind of perception - one which lets the perceiver see the world about him or her as the kaleidoscope does, as beautiful, changing, and interconnected.

I venture that the kaleidoscope is a symbol of poetic perception. This explains the allusion to Lord Byron, the "arch Romantic" responsible for the creation of the Byronic hero (Stillinger 610) - responsible, that is, for popularizing a character that is defined neither by good nor evil but an interplay of both; it is as though Byron had a kaleidoscopic vision of human nature which recognized its multiplicity.

Later in Page's poem, she writes,

My eye falls headlong
down this slender tube,
its eyebeam glued
to shift and flux and flow. (34-37)

By writing thus in first person and present tense, Page creates the effect that what she is relaying is happening immediately. Of course, we are prone to read this passage as though the "slender tube" denotes the kaleidoscope (and it certainly does, at some level), but, literally, what is she doing in the moment of writing those words but writing? Thus the "slender tube," the "cylinder" (39) with which she is "interdependent/paired in serious play" (42-43) just as plausibly refers to a writing utensil - a pen or pencil - and the things which happen - the transformation of her surroundings into beauty and the realization she gains that "nothing is what it seems" (60) - are a result of her poetic/kaleidoscopic perception of the world.

In conclusion then, Page's poem is, indeed, an "all-inclusive metaphor!" The kaleidoscope and what is seen through it not only metaphorically convey a vision of the world and humanity as changeable, beautiful, and interconnected, but also a vision of vision itself, of how to view the world, and a vision of the poet as visionary.

WORKS CITED

Page, P.K. "Kaleidoscope." An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 512. Print.

Stillinger, Jack and Deidre Shauna Lynch. "George Gordon, Lord Byron." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed.Vol. D. Eds. Jack Stillinger and Deidre Shauna Lynch. New York: Norton, 2006. 607-611. Print.

The Butterfly and the God - Artistry in Layton's "The Fertile Muck" and "Butterfly on Rock"

Irving Layton's “Butterfly on Rock” and “The Fertile Muck” concern themselves primarily with the same issue. In “The Fertile Muck,” the speaker asks “How to dominate reality?” (25); in “Butterfly on Rock,” the poet contemplates the “desire/to be a thing alive” (7-8). In both pieces, that is, Layton ponders how to bring significance to mere existence. He explicitly provides two answers - “Love is one way;/imagination another” (25-26) – and the latter of these he brings to the forefront and focus of each of these poems.

In “Butterfly on Rock,” Layton explores the concept of the creative artist through the metaphor of a butterfly which settles on a rock, thereby making “manifest” (8) the lifeless object's yearning. He employs this metaphor, as well, in “The Fertile Muck,” where he describes insects as having a poet's “crafty eyes” (8). The image of the butterfly is evocative. Butterflies connote beauty and fancifulness – qualities which may be attributed to the artist or his craft – but, above all, they represent transformation. Layton suggests, then, that imagination is transformative; it has the power to “extend...rooms...without cost” (“The Fertile Muck” 19) – to transform, and transcend, what is.

Layton is, however, not content with settling on this earthy, delicate representation of the poet. In “The Fertile Muck,” for example, though “the winged insects...wear [his] crafty eyes” (7-8), they are no “better off” (7) than the empty wind. Perhaps butterflies are simply too common for Layton, too much a part of the “bleak forest” (“Butterfly on Rock” 10) he desires to escape. Layton does not see the butterfly as the ideal image of the poet because it is fragile; it can be destroyed or confined in “moth-proofed cupboards” (“Fertile” 17), its “irregular footprint” (“Fertile” 22) erased.

Being thus discontent with the fragility connoted by the butterfly, Layton elevates the poet further, to the status of a god. For instance, in “Butterfly on Rock,” it is not until the speaker most epically brings his “hand down on the butterfly” (14) that the rock actually comes alive, so to speak; it is the poet's hand which achieves the miraculous. In “The Fertile Muck,” Layton writes,

There are brightest apples on those trees
but until I, fabulist, have spoken
they do not know their significance
or what other legends are hung...
on their black boughs. (1-5)

The image of the tree and its legendary fruit is allusive: it brings to mind, for instance, the golden apples of Greek mythology, or the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. By putting his speaker in the position of the “fabulist” (2) then, Layton not only conveys that a poet is a mythmaker in a dual sense. The poet is a creator, an artist, drawing from the “fertile muck” of his mind and surroundings, and, like the religious Creator, he makes life meaningful.

While Layton, then, associates himself as an artist with the butterfly, evidently he is not satisfied with a purely natural symbol. In both of the poems in question, he chooses to represent his poetic expression as Godlike. He shows staunch - indeed, almost arrogant - conviction in the power of the creative artist - but perhaps Layton in his time, unlike the Romantic poets in theirs, though he is inspired by it, simply feels no complete reassurance in or by nature. Nature is death, “shattered porcupines...in [a] bleak forest” (“Butterfly” 9-10). To feel secure in his vocation - to bring significance to his art and thereby his own existence - Layton must, as he does, envision the poet - himself - as indestructible, Godlike.

WORKS CITED

Layton, Irving. “Butterfly on Rock.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 512. Print.

---. “The Fertile Muck.” An Anthology of Canadian Literature in English. Eds. Donna Bennet and Russel Brown. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2010. 508-509. Print.