Close Reading of 'Green Madrigal (I)' by Lynette Roberts
Growing naturally through all its
Discomforts, trials and emergencies
Of growth.
It is green and resolved
It breathes with anguish
Yet it releases peace, peace of mind
Growth, movement.
It walks this greening sweetness
Throughout all the earth,
Where sky and sun tender its habits
As I would yours.
In Lynette Roberts' 'Green Madrigal (I)', a tree of unknown species is introduced as both "peace" and "my stranger". The poem is wholly concerned with the slippages of language where meanings pivot on puns and contradictions that present a plant-like mode of reading. To listen to the poem requires an open ear that allows words to act on multiple registers; to hear the poem is to undo the normative signification of language and register the experience and affect lying beneath. The poem speaks to a relationality based on mutual learning, intra-action, and growth; a relationality where experiences are neither negative nor positive but tangible facts of a shared life lived in companionship with all one's surroundings.
Roberts categorises the poem as a Madrigal, a secular poetic and musical form that originated in Italy in the 14th Century and quickly fell out of fashion, though was later revived as a more general use term in 16th Century Italy (Fischer, et al.). The form, in its initial incarnation, was an improvisational encounter between two (occasionally three) voices based on a text. The higher voice was the first to be written and the lower voice would accompany in harmony; the two never cross until the final section. Roberts has imitated this dualistic form by setting up a relation between the speaker and the tree, which then crosses over into another relationship in the final line with the unnamed "yours".
The majority of the poem, however, also enacts an improvisational relationship. Many of the lines contain some sort of apparent contradiction: "my stranger is a tree", "Discomforts, trials and emergencies / of growth", "It breathes with anguish / Yet it releases peace", "It walks", "sky and sun tender its habits". Though seemingly conflicts of meaning, I would argue each of these descriptions are events in which the tree is constantly navigating and adapting to adverse conditions. Though I use the word adverse, the poem seems not to offer the same judgement, instead framing each event as peaceful, soft, sweet, and an opportunity for growth. Roberts lets her language take on the same adaptive process, letting meanings shift partway through a phrase when a new interpretative angle can be taken. The word "emergencies" initially is taken to mean a catastrophe or disaster, as it's primed by the preceding "Discomforts" and "trials". It pivots in the next line, as the emergencies are "Of growth", thus the word takes on meaning closer to emerge. This meaning fluctuation then echoes back through the previous line and softens the initial negativity of "Discomforts" and "trials". By adopting the tree's adaptive and improvisational essence and applying it to her language, Roberts shows her reader their own tree-growth potential to not judge experiences but instead make peace with them.
To make peace with something implies, of course, an interaction (perhaps intra-action) of some sort: "to make peace with". In 'Green Madrigal (I)', the two present relationships are between speaker and tree, and speaker and the unnamed "yours". First, the speaker enacts a learning from the tree which views it not anthropomorphically, not as any sort of context for the human, but as a tree with its own temporal existence that strives for a balance between growth and peace. The speaker learns its positive improvisation, its tendency towards adaptation and away from resistance, and finally crosses this experience onto an (assumedly) interpersonal relationship, hoping to bring that learning into future encounters. The reader, also (as mentioned above), learns this improvisation through Roberts' language - in each case the learning is gained or applied relationally.
I would use this poem as the starting point for my e-concept: coprovisation. To coprovise is to be necessarily relational and focus on the positive implications buried in its root improvise. To improvise is to do the opposite of (im-) foreseeing or providing (-provisus). To coprovise is to together/jointly/reciprocally foresee or provide. Coprovisation undoes improvisation's negation, propelling into the future a tree-like sense of positive mutual adaptation. However, it maintains improvisation's flexibility, tending all experiences immediately towards the positive by non-linguistically punning: seeing the multiple possibilities of an event, knowing one's own possibilities, pivoting when needed on any disaster to shape it towards peace. Whether the goal be growth, healing, understanding, kin-making, or else, coprovisation is a unifying tool that needs no hierarchy or rule of law, instead honouring and elevating every interaction by recognising its infinite fecundity. Coprovisationneeds no carceral justice, no punishment, since everything that once was wrongdoing is now a chance to teach and provide love in whichever way is needed - for love is of course the sweetest peace.
Finally, coprovisational ethics are an opportunity to undo our ecological catastrophe. The coprovisational society insists on harmony, needs no more than is given and gives only as much as its neighbours can take. Institutionalised culture cannot exist in this society as nothing is normalised, everything is known to be both unique and no different from anything else and as such every encounter is a balancing imbalance.
References
Roberts, Lynette. Lynette Roberts Poem Green Madrigal [I], blueridgejournal.com/poems/lr1-madrigal.htm.
Fischer, Kurt von, Gianluca D’Agostino, James Haar, Anthony Newcomb, Massimo Ossi, Nigel Fortune, Joseph Kerman, and Jerome Roche. "Madrigal." Grove Music Online. 2001. Oxford University Press. Date of access 26 Apr. 2021, <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592 630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040075>
“Improvisation (n.).” Index, www.etymonline.com/word/improvisation.
"co-, prefix." OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2021, www.oed.com/view/Entry/34948. Accessed 27 April 2021.