236 Poetry for Students
might say then, that Nemerov, like most poets, de-
fies easy categorization. He writes about the mate-
rial that moves him, and lets the philosophy work
out itself. The myth is important enough to merit
the poem. One thing we may find, however, seep-
ing up through the characterization of the phoenix,
is how Nemerov is enamoured with language as the
mediator among the poet’s imagination, religion,
and objective reality. The final line, where we
might start the explication of this poem, capitalizes
“Word.”
In the Bible, the word, logos, is represented
physically by Christ. Nemerov connects the Chris-
tian and Egyptian myths in the poem by using his
last two lines to articulate the resurrection of the
phoenix in terms of the trinity and the immaculate
conception. The mythic bird is the Word, the son,
but it is also its own father and mother (because of
rising from its ashes). This unity of myth is fore-
shadowed in the poem’s second line, in which the
preparation for burial of the father is made. Myrrh
is an aromatic gum resin from a tree that grows in
the Middle East and Africa. It was used in mum-
mification, and was also a gift brought by one of
the wise men to Christ’s cradle (the image men-
tioned at the end of stanza one). Myrrh may have
been one of the phoenix’s foods. R. Van Den
Broek, in his studyThe Myth of The Phoenix,ex-
plains that the mythic bird subsisted on many aro-
matics.
The cradle and bier (a funeral pyre) are the
birth and death images, but the “solar” nature of
the myth is called by Nemerov “unholy lust.” But
at the beginning of stanza two, the “City of the Sun”
is capitalized, valorized, much like the Augustine
“City of God.” This could be a reference to the ne-
cessity of polarity, of the binary in belief that to
have good one must have evil, and the phoenix, by
its cyclical nature, accounts for both. He indicates
this again in the final stanza, by casting the story
in its darkest terms. The Phoenix lives by commit-
ting a sin, and continues through its life toward the
moment of committing that sin again. In conjunc-
tion with the last lines of the poem, this implies
that all myths have some element of the evil in their
goodness, and vice-versa.
The “sacred, purple bird” is a Christ figure
with which we might not be comfortable, but, in
keeping with Nemerov’s philosophy, it is “Gen-
uine”—a myth as the real thing, and is still “di-
vine.” As in much of Nemerov’s work; the sim-
plicity of polarized images often belies itself; it
makes us question how simple that split between
good and evil, holy and unholy, birth and death,actually is. Perhaps the magic of the phoenix is the
way in which it casts doubt on the distinctions we
make between how certain subjects are best raised
again over the ages in our poems, and demands that
we bring our imaginations to the world of objec-
tive reality. That way, we choose carefully the sto-
ries that most need to be retold, reborn.
Source:Sean K. Robisch, in an essay for Poetry for Stu-
dents,Gale, 2001.Sources
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———, Review of Guide to the Ruins, Sewanee Review,
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