Summary
Lines 1–3
The very first line of “Fading Light” introduces several key aspects of the
poem. The poem begins with an immediate, emphatic “Now,” followed by an
impersonal “one” who could be the poet himself or, indeed, anyone, a pronoun
that is followed by “might catch” in which the possibility of seizing a moment
is at once asserted and then immediately questioned. Terry R. Bacon has
remarked that “Creeley’s poetry is expressed in the perpetual NOW. It is a
‘real time’ rendering, in a very solipsistic sense, of the universe he
perceives.” The title of poem has helped to establish that the poem is about
dusk, and it is this moment of dusk to which the poet directs attention, as
though perception could freeze the moment into something palpable. Creeley
repeats verbs, as he will do throughout the poem—“catch it see it.” His refusal
to punctuate conventionally or to add connective words such as “and” begins a
pattern of disjointed phrases marked by verbs that are connected elusively to
their grammatical subject. The reader, indeed, must supply the subjects and
make sense of the phrasing in order to make this poem meaningful.
The transition from the first line to the second line demonstrates that Creeley will use the poetic technique of enjambment in this poem. Enjambment occurs when a line’s sense continues into the next line, with no pause. Commonly, lines that are not enjambed, which are called end-stopped lines, have some kind of punctuation, such as a comma, period, or dash, to show the reader that a pause is necessary. Enjambed lines, on the other hand, rush onward, usually to find a pause in the middle or end of a subsequent line. All the lines except the last one in this poem are enjambed. Interestingly, Creeley says in the interview included in Just in Time, “I read the breaks.” Thus, in his own reading, the poet would pause at the end of lines, whereas the meaning of the lines clearly demands that one go on into the next line. While there may be other interpretations, there seems to be a pause after the first “it,” in the first line, with a second pause after the word “shift.” Thus, the natural reading of the first line seems to go over into the second, and would be punctuated thus: “Now one might catch it, see it shift . . .” That the poet does not write it as it would be spoken is a clue that his intent is to frustrate the reader’s uncritical expectations.
The second line repeats the uncertainty of the first. The “it,” which we infer to be the fading light of the title, is “almost substantial blue,” teetering just outside the poet’s certain grasp. The light is indeterminate, being “blue / white yellow light.” The jumble of adjectives will be paralleled later in the poem by a heaping of verbs and adverbs. All of this is deliberately confusing, but the confusion in syntax is related to the confusion in perception. The light is fading, indeterminate, of changing color and quality, and the concepts and recollections about to occur in the poem are similar in their elusiveness.
Lines 4–6
The reader has to supply the connections between the subject and the various verbs of the poem. While one might fairly easily interpret that one might “see it shift . . . become intense definition,” the word “think,” which is characteristically poised at the end of a line, is a verb without a clear subject. Perhaps Creeley is telling readers that one might “catch it” and one might...
(This entire section contains 1358 words.)
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“think / of the spinning world.” Here, there is a transition from object to concept. Creeley has steadfastly tried to eliminate concepts and abstractions from his poetry, following the advice of the American poet William Carlos Williams, with whom the young Creeley corresponded and who is credited with the poetic slogan “no concepts but in objects.” The spinning world is something, however, that has to be thought about, not directly perceived. This shift starts to take the poem beyond sight into what lies beyond.
Readers see the abstractions and ambiguities become more apparent as the poem progresses. The “of the spinning world is it as” is very easy to stumble over when reading aloud. Perhaps Creeley wants readers to read his words as “think of the spinning world. Is it as ever?” The answer is not obvious, and in struggling for a resolution to the demands of the tortured syntax, perhaps the poet makes his point. The fading light is hard to catch, and the meaning is hard to catch, and it may be the reader who has to supply the meaning that the world and the poet fail to make clear. A striking image, “this plate of apparent life” contains both the abstract word “life” and the concrete word “plate” which will foreshadow “supper” in the penultimate line. By this point, the poem has gone beyond perception to asking questions about the world and about life. The world has changed, or why else would the poet seem to ask “is it as / ever?” Likewise “apparent” gives no clear direction to “life”; it merely seems to undercut the solidity of life. Everything Creeley says, he seems to contradict.
Lines 7–12
Suddenly there is a different kind of shift, occurring as usual right before
the end of a line. The poet says “hold on / chute the sled plunges down ends /
down the hill . . .” It is as though he puts some motion into the middle of a
deliberately confused situation, and the reader speeds up and reads, right
after the word “patient” about a chute and a sled plunging down. The word
“down” is repeated three times in two lines. “Patient” is used twice, once in
the middle of the poem and once in the last line. Additionally, Creeley uses
“time” twice within three lines. This repetition and quickening pace push the
poem to its conclusion. Memories, triggered by the fading light of the poem’s
title, start rushing out like objects down a chute, like a sled rushing down a
snowy hill in winter. In keeping with the indeterminate, contradictory nature
of this poem, this rush is juxtaposed with the repeated word “patient.”
Thom Gunn has said that as Creeley has matured as a poet “the book rather than the individual poem becomes the meaningful unit.” It might be useful to note at this point that this poem was placed near the end of a book titled Windows and is immediately adjacent to other poems that are clearly observations of the world through windows of various sorts. A poem on the facing page is titled “Echo” and talks of weather that is grey and cold. The darkness, the sled, the position next to other winter poems all make “Fading Light” a winter reverie. The fading light is a real event outside a literal window, and the poet observes the ways the colors shift at dusk, and he thinks of the passage of time and life, which seems like a plunging sled going downhill to the “field’s darkness” but, back inside, “supper here left years behind waits.” The vision of light fading into darkness triggers in the poet memories of suppers years before, and yet he does not act, but “patient in mind remembers the time.”
In this poem, Creeley plays with language so that readers’observations of reality are brought into question, so that they can think mindfully about the things of the world. On the other hand, it is reasonable to notice that this is a poem written by a man who is entering old age, that the “fading light” may also be the fading energy and life force of the writer. It would be very much like Creeley to hide any personal reference in wordplay and tortured syntax. In this reading of the poem, Creeley recognizes that even the fading light is transitory and ephemeral, that the world continues to spin, and that what is ultimately left to him in the face of death is a patient holding on and a looking back as his life’s story rushes on faster and faster.
