What I'm struck by in this poem is the honest confrontation with helplessness. It seems a likely subject for a poem whose occasion is the mother's sickness, and the radiation therapy she is undergoing, and the months of diagnosis the family has been put through.
And maybe it's the speaker's confrontation and then acceptance that brings on her joy. I'm not completely sure. I sense it, but I think the true merit of this poem "On Joy," in the Spring 2009 issue of Ploughshares, is the vague, but powerful source of the speaker's emotion. It comes from some place outside her, outside her purview. "Past these fields are others no one sees, / and past them oak and poplar trees." For me, this unknown place hovering just past sight, and the speaker's knowledge that this place exists even if she can't see it, makes me believe this "unaccountable" joy that rises in her. At least this is what she calls it, despite every reason she has for not feeling joy. And when I read this poem, I want to call it joy too.
I find it touching that a poem can make this earnest consideration of a serious situation still full of wonder. Why joy? Thankfully joy.
Related Links:
Ploughshares (worldcat search for Ploughshares)
Houses Are Fields
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