In October 1992 I received a copy of a small book of poetry in the mail. It was entitled: "The Language of There." It was from the Canadian poet Roger White. Six months later Roger left this mortal coil and all its "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," "the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is air to" that Hamlet spoke of so eloquently in the beautifully modulated rhythms of that soliloquy in Act III Scene I of Shakespeare's play by that name. The last published poem and piece of prose on the last two pages of this small volume of poetry speak volumes and so I will quote some of them here. White's last words, quite literally, seemed perfectly appropriate in my own final essay on his final works. These last words embody the thinking of a lifetime, his lifetime, as so many of White's poems do, and the delight he found for his spirit in giving expression to the truths he found in life. What follows is, for me, the finest poem I have ever read on the afterlife: THE LANGUAGE OF THERE I mean to learn, in the language of where I am going, barely enough to ask for food and love.-James Merrill Yes. There, light will be our language, a tongue without words for perhaps, or arid, or futile, though shadow will be retained that we may contrast the radiance. Almost will no longer be a measure. We will learn a hundred synonyms for certitude, and love will have a thousand conjugations. Ours will be the italicised vocabulary of delectable astonishments. The possessive case will play no part in the grammar of joy and burgeoning, infants will speak at birth, and only the ancients will remember the obscenity exile. There, laughter will be spelt in capitals, sadness grow obsolete, and negation be declared archaic. Hell will be pronounced remoteness, and vast tomes will be devoted to the derivations of yes. Where all is elation and surprise exclamation points will fall into disuse. There, food and affection will be ours for a smile, and immortality for a fluent, knowing wink. In time, our desire to speak will abandon us. All that need be said the light will say. Yes. -------------- It would seem that White found, at least gave expression to in his poetry, what literary critic Leone Vivante describes in the opening paragraph of his book as "a principle of inward light, an original self-active principle, which characterizes life and spontaneity as contrasted with mechanism." This concept of self-activity revealed and developed itself in White's poetry in a supremely genuine and direct way. There is a quality of truth in some poetry, what Vivante says can claim to be "an ultimate truth which is essential to their poetical value." While I'm not sure I'd go all the way here with Vivante, I can appreciate the direction of his philosophical thought. For there is for me a certain 'truth claim' which gives White's poetry much of its impact, its force, its unity. There is a certain 'spiritual essence' in his work which gives me a deeper sense of the spirit, deeper than I would normally have had without his art. White's literary value is partly, for me, a reflection, a discovery, of the intrinsic nature of my inner being and the truths of the religion I joined nearly half a century ago. For the "grand power of poetry," as Matthew Arnold wrote back in the 1860s, "is its interpretive power…the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations with them." As I read White's poetry, I frequently sense he is putting me in touch with the essential nature of things, taking some of life's bewilderment out of things, giving me some of the secret of things and some of their calm and harmonious inner life. This, too, is poetry's highest powers.
