Willowware Cup

by James Merrill
page 248

This poem caught my eye for its amazingly descriptive language. Although I had a little trouble understanding what some of the lines and phrases meant, I was still able to get a feel for the poem, for how the story in the poem felt like. Another thing for me that was hard to grasp was the connection between the story about leaving lovers leaving her father and the actual cup itself. The vocabulary that was used in the poem has many connections to the Orient, such as "Cantonese", "pagoda", and just the way the scenery is described gives the reader a feel for a beachside situation in the region. Merrill is actually describing the patterns on the Willowware Cup and sees a human dynamic within the patterns. The poem paints many images, using many nouns paired with adjectives to give even more detail. Some of these images will paint a picture using color more than the actual object itself, especially using the color blue such as "Blueblooded Cantonese", "like ink in flesh, blue anchor", and "thunderhead blue". A couple lines in the poem are very musical with in interesting beat, such as "plum in bloom, pagoda, blue birds, plume of willow". This line incorporates both rhyme and alliteration, making it stand out. The way the cup is described makes it sound bigger and more important that what it really is, like it is another world that encompasses many other stories within itself. It is referred to as a "lone, chipped vessel" and has its own "inner horizon". Some phrases in the poem are harder to understand within the context of the poem or may be found confusing, such as "gene pool Lux-opaque" and "dimestore mutants". I thought the poem was great in they way the author thoroughly described what was happening to these people he saw in the patterns, even though the whole thing came from only blue swirls and lines on a cup.