Alice Oswald’s collection Falling Awake, published in 2016, captivated many readers, but the second piece, simply titled ‘Swan’, particularly resonated, lodging itself in the mind. This swan poem is both captivating and unsettling, drawing the reader in with its unique language, structure, and shifting perspectives. It sparks a complex reaction, a mix of admiration for its strange beauty and perhaps annoyance at its unconventional form, particularly in its later stanzas. The disembodied voice, the interplay of line and time – these elements create a perplexing yet deeply moving experience.
Upon encountering ‘Swan’, one might initially wrestle with the structural and tonal shift that occurs, notably after the lines beginning ‘say something…’. There’s a temptation to wish the poem concluded earlier, perhaps at the urgent cry of
quick/ quick
say something to the frozen cloud of the head
This desire stems from a feeling that the subsequent stanzas embark on a different trajectory, one that doesn’t immediately feel congruent with the haunting, disembodied exploration that precedes it. While the later imagery is admired for its spellbinding strangeness, the poem can feel almost like two distinct pieces fused together.
Often described as a celebration of nature, Falling Awake contains poems like ‘Swan’ that delve deeper. This particular swan poem transcends mere celebration; it feels like an articulation of shock, a profound wonder at existence, and indeed, a celebration of life itself. Yet, it is inextricably linked with the traumatic, perhaps incomprehensible, realization of existence’s finite nature, capturing this awareness potentially as it is unfolding.
Reviews frequently highlight ‘Swan’ alongside other notable poems in the collection such as ‘Fox’, ‘Flies’, and ‘Body’, consistently referring to a ‘dying’ swan. However, part of the poem’s mystery lies in the ambiguity surrounding the swan’s state. The lines describing it
lifting away again and bending back for another look thinking/ strange/ strange
suggest a creature potentially not dying, but already dead, with the mention of ‘A rotted swan’ hinting at the onset of decay. The juxtaposition of ‘rotted’ and ‘swan’ is striking, bringing together the associations of degradation, discoloration, and falling apart with the traditional image of a swan – a creature often embodying dazzling whiteness, wholeness, and grace.
A rotted swan is hurrying away…
This image immediately raises questions: Where is this swan now? How are we privy to its perceptions? How can it articulate thoughts, let alone in English, from a state of disembodiment? What name can we give this disembodied swan-voice – ghost, spirit, soul, consciousness? The Celtic tradition offers a resonant link here, where the swan is often seen to represent the Soul.
The poem’s form is integral to understanding how it might be read. The complete absence of punctuation and capitalization (save for the initial ‘A’) is notable. In the initial section, the extensive white space surrounding the text can be interpreted in multiple ways. It might represent the air or water supporting the physical body of the poem, or perhaps a void that is either consuming the text or being consumed by it. The line breaks are precisely used to control the poem’s pace, checking or accelerating its flow and emphasizing individual words. Repetition of isolated words like ‘one here/ one there’ conveys physical separation, ‘strange / strange’ highlights confusion or realization, and ‘quick/ quick’ underscores urgency or desperation.
Despite an initial impression that sections of the poem are scattered randomly, like a ‘plane-crash mess,’ the layout is meticulously arranged to evoke a sense of randomness, potentially reflecting confusion, anxiety, or disembodiment. Every word is carefully placed, with white space strategically employed to control pace and emphasis. Moments described as ‘breathless’ accelerate the poem’s momentum – ‘getting panicky up out of her clothes and mid-splash/ looking down again’. The subsequent indent after ‘splash’ signifies a shift in perspective.
Listening to a recording of Alice Oswald reading the poem illuminates how her deliberate pauses allow the white space to function as silence, making it as crucial to the poem’s effect as the words themselves.
From the opening assonance in ‘rotted’ ‘swan’ ‘from’ (at least aurally), the language is intensely active. The phrase
a horrible plastic mould
introduces an unsettling metaphor. ‘Horrible plastic’ suggests something cheap, synthetic, perhaps discarded and unclean. The word ‘mould’ itself carries dual meanings: from Old English ‘molde’ related to soil, and the suggestion of something ‘mouldy’ or decaying.
The metaphors used for the swan’s body parts – ‘plane-crash mess,’ ‘clothes,’ ‘plastic mould’ – are strikingly inorganic, cold, and inanimate. Their use in this context evokes the abject and degraded. They are accurate as metaphors but also contribute significantly to the ‘strangeness’ perceived by the disembodied voice. The swan is depicted as
leaving her life and all its tools with their rusty juices trickling back to the river
This suggests mutability and transience. Yet, the spiritual ‘consciousness’ that Oswald intermittently inhabits and speaks from remains suspended in time, not yet departed. She is presented as
lifting away she is taking a last look thinking
Regarding her own body, she ‘sees’ it described using manufactured or human-associated objects. The ‘clean china serving dish of a breast bone’ evokes the presentation of a cooked bird. The quill points are ‘thickly-symmetrical,’ suggesting their power in the living bird and their historical use by humans for writing and drawing. These components are now viewed as parts of an object.
threaded in backwards through the leather underdress of the heart …
A ‘leather underdress’ is another ‘human’ object, possibly bringing associations of archaic or restrictive clothing. This fragmentation, mixing of human and avian references, and the use of synthetic objects contribute to a sense of alienation, detachment, perhaps amazement or fascinated horror. Existence is portrayed as transitory, with mutability and decay paralleling adaptation and function. As one thing ends, another begins. The ‘rusty juices’ return to the river, suggesting a cyclical process.
and that surely can’t be my own black feet lying poised in their slippers
This line injects a note of infantile innocence and lack of sophistication. It sounds like something a swan in a children’s story might say. ‘Slippers’ are deeply personal, domestic items linked to comfort, home, and relaxation. This sense of vulnerability contrasts sharply with the earlier cold, inanimate object metaphors (‘cockpit’, ‘serving dish’, ‘clips’, etc.).
The miraculous physiology of the swan feels, in one sense, like ‘a waste’.
what a waste of detail
However, Oswald meticulously assembles this detail, ensuring none of it is ‘wasted’. It is preserved within this elusive, disturbing, shifting mosaic of images, interspersed with utterances from a dislocated consciousness. This intricate analysis resonates with the depth found in discussions of cool poetry, which often pushes boundaries of form and content.
Oswald’s poem continues:
‘what heaviness inside each feather’
What could this ‘heaviness’ signify? It might point to the poem’s weighty subject matter: ‘being’ and ‘non-being’, arguably as profound a topic as possible. The isolated cry of
‘quick/ quick’
surrounded by white space, feels imploring, desperate, frantic. Who is being implored? The reader, the disembodied swan, the poet, or all three? It suggests a desperate need for ‘something’ to be said, however inadequate or impossible, to acknowledge life and its passing. This urgency echoes the intense language described in analyses of poets wrestling with complex ideas, much like discussions around figures embodying struggle or intense focus, reminiscent perhaps of reflections on figures like nero redivivus in their symbolic weight.
The ‘quick/ quick’ also brings to mind Ted Hughes’s skylark poem, possibly an echo of Shelley’s ‘To a Skylark’, as the bird ‘scrambles / In a nightmare difficulty / Up through to nothing’. Hughes describes its feathers trashing and heart drumming ‘like a motor / As if it were too late, too late / Dithering in ether’. In Paul Bentley’s analysis, this ‘nightmare difficulty’ also relates to the poet’s struggle with language to capture the lark’s true nature.
Hughes noted that Shakespeare’s language often seems ‘invented in a state of crisis, for a terribly urgent job’. This description feels remarkably apt for the first section of Oswald’s ‘Swan’. Alice Oswald herself stated in an interview that “poetry is not about language but about what happens when language gets impossible.”
There is a palpable restlessness in this swan poem, as Oswald attempts to bridge the gap between what language can signify and the state of being, or unconsciousness. What words can adequately address death, the point of departure, the consciousness left behind or leaving?
The initial section of ‘Swan’ could be viewed, in Bentley’s terms applied to Hughes, as ‘verbal scraps’ that don’t form a language but rather an ‘extenuated state of language’ that struggles to represent the bird while simultaneously acknowledging its own ‘arbitrary, makeshift status’. Perhaps the ‘something’ being said is the poem itself – a memorial, a record, a tribute, a defiance against time, silence, and death.
The ‘swan song’ voice of the poem recedes as we enter the final stanzas. These stanzas are visually distinct, neatly aligned to the right, leaving a significant block of white space on the left margin. As noted earlier, this shift can feel like a rupture, an estrangement from the preceding section. This may be because the first part seems to grapple with making sense of an emotional experience, while the latter section shifts towards a colder, more alienated reality. The tone becomes colder, and there’s a finality and formality, like an observed ritual. This detachment feels born of certainty rather than the sympathetic or empathetic connection with the confusion and anxiety embodied in the disembodied voice of the first section.
A chilling calmness seems to descend as the poem becomes more narrative and physically descends the page in regular stanzas. These contrast sharply with the brokenness, sparseness, and spaciousness of the preceding lines. The poem condenses into trim stanzas, offset by that white slab. There is a blend of fairy-tale horror and beauty in the ‘frozen cloud of the head’ (whose head? – the poet’s, reader’s, swan’s?), whose ‘dead eye/ is a growing cone of twilight.’
Note how the repeated ‘o’ sounds slow the poem: ‘frozen,’ ‘cloud,’ ‘growing,’ ‘cone,’ ‘snowing’. A cruel spell seems cast, placing us in a scene where a bride has ‘just’ set out, late (‘twilight’) and in the middle of winter, ‘to walk to her wedding’ in a ‘little black-lit church’. (The author wonders if ‘black-lit’ is a trick with or of the light, perhaps read initially as ‘back-lit’).
The scene emphasizes the coldness (‘so cold’ – those ‘o’s again) and introduces ‘the bells like iron angels’ (what purpose have angels made of iron?). These bells ‘hung from one note’ (certainly not a joyful wedding peal) and ‘keep ringing and ringing’. The phrase ‘ringing and ringing’ might suggest an unanswered phone call or the ‘wringing’ of hands. This entire scene, incredibly, unfolds inside ‘the one dead eye,’ recalling Ted Hughes’s poem where the ‘Thought Fox’ enters ‘the hole in the head’.
The bride could symbolize the poet or the swan. A bride traditionally represents hope, faith, fidelity, or innocence. Here, she sets out on a seemingly hopeless mission, starting late into the snow in her white dress. Why is the church ‘black-lit’? Perhaps the poem itself is a kind of church, a structure of ‘black-lit’ words that illuminate and contain. And why the ‘one note’? As John Donne might pose, ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. While this analysis focuses on the complexities of existence and mortality, the presence of themes like hope and journey, even in a challenging context, subtly links to broader human experiences often explored in poetry about love, where journeys and unions are central, though typically depicted differently.
In Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, the poet desires to join or fuse with the ‘immortal Bird!’, seeking escape from the ‘weariness, the fever and the fret’ of human existence. Listening to the bird, death seems appealing. Through writing the poem, Keats achieves a temporary flight on the wings of his own music. However, his imaginative flight and the poem turn earthward in the final stanza:
Forlorn! The very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self!’
The ‘fancy’ he created ‘cannot cheat so well.’ Keats’s concluding stanza might imply that poetry offers only a temporary escape from ‘reality’. It is plausible that Oswald’s final stanzas serve a similar function, a return to a starker reality after the disembodied flight. This engagement with themes of mortality and transcendence, and the poet’s struggle with the limitations of art, is a common thread that can be seen in comparisons with other forms of classical expression, though distinct from the lyrical focus found in classical love poems or the romantic intensity found in analyses of love william shakespeare poems.
Is this a nihilistic conclusion? Perhaps. Yet, the unforgettable images and the shock and emotion of the first section simultaneously offer confirmation, an affirmation that the body and consciousness did and do exist. As in Hughes’s final line of ‘The Thought Fox,’ there is undeniable evidence that something, someone, was here. Words on a white page testify that consciousness has been at work, that imagination has asserted itself and left its mark. ‘The page is printed.’