"'Where We Take Shape in the Dark Air': The Specter of Our Humanity in John Hollander's 'Swan and Shadow'" by Raewyn Kraybill

"'Where We Take Shape in the Dark Air': The Specter of Our Humanity in John Hollander's 'Swan and Shadow'"

Raewyn Kraybill, Chatham University

Abstract: In the 1966 edition of Poetry magazine, five concrete poems by John Hollander appear, one of which is “Swan and Shadow.” “Swan and Shadow” is a calligram in the shape of the side profile of a swan with its image reflected over a line. In the poem, Hollander describes the appearance and disappearance of the swan as the sun sets, focusing on time and the nature scene. Hollander’s choice of form, point of view, and perspective creates a disconnection from nature in “Swan and Shadow,”. The point of view in “Swan and Shadow” sets the reader up to understand the distance humans have put between themselves and the rest of nature. The first-person point of view includes the reader as part of the speaker, allowing the reader to experience the poem firsthand. Once the reader is drawn into the poem as a part of the point of view, Hollander denies the reader/speaker the ability to truly be a part of the nature of the scene. The speaker/reader floats above the action of the poem, unable to participate or affect the world of the poem. The form of the poem also serves to separate the reader and Hollander from the natural world, as the shape of the poem is not a real image of a swan, only a two-dimensional representation. The shape of the poem itself distances the reader from the reality of nature. This separation mimics the distance humans have created from the rest of nature using labels, culture, and categorization. “Swan and Shadow” anticipates ecocriticism by commenting on the roles of humans within nature through its content, form, perspective, and point of view.

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In John Hollander’s 1966 concrete poem, “Swan and Shadow,” the speaker’s feet never touch the ground. Formless, limbless, and entirely ghostly, “...we take shape in the dark air” (Hollander, line 14) and look down upon a scene focused on the movement of a swan as the sun sets. The speaker, in the first-person point of view, is not allowed to take action within the poem except to watch and to comment. The poem is in the shape of, as the title indicates, a swan and its shadow. Yet the two-dimensional, black and white depiction falls flat against the description of the swan within the poem and against the reality of a swan. The form, perspective, and point of view in “Swan and Shadow” set the speaker apart from the nature scene Hollander describes, pointedly othering humanity from nature. Hollander notices the divide that humans have placed between nature and culture, and then exacerbates this divide through the concrete form, perspective, and point of view of his “Swan in Shadow,” creating a poem that brings attention to the dissonance between humans and the rest of nature.

Hollander explores the roles of humans within nature, signaling an ecocritical approach. Hollander would not have called “Swan and Shadow” ecocritical when it was published in 1966; such a word did not yet exist. However, while the word ‘ecocriticism’ did not exist, the culture that birthed it in 1978 did. “Swan and Shadow” was within the blades of the grassroots environmental movement that led to broader attention in the 70’s. Cheryl Gofelty’s introduction to The Ecocriticism Reader pinpoints the aims of ecocriticism. Gofelty writes, “such a critique questions the dualism prevalent in Western thought, dualisms that separate meaning from matter, sever mind from body, divide men from women, and wrench humanity from nature” (xxiv). Hollander’s willful wrenching from nature critiques dualisms by creating an alienating experience for the reader, calling the separation of humans from nature into question. 

Hollander writes mid-poem, “In us/No Upon us As at the very edges/of where we take shape in the dark air” (lines 13-14), addressing the speaker’s point of view for the first time. The consistent use of “we” and “us” begs for a definition of these groups. Who is allowed to be a part of “us”? This is the larger question that “Swan and Shadow” and ecocriticism examine. In “Swan and Shadow,” Hollander is in conversation with the speaker, both asking and answering questions. By using “we” Hollander invites the reader to be a part of the speaker, and in this, part of the poem. The speaker in “Swan and Shadow” is Hollander, the reader, and the humanity that we bring with us. The reader’s position within the poem is essential for the venture into ecocriticism. In establishing the basis of ecocriticism, Gofelty writes, “All ecological criticism shares the fundamental premise that human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it” (xix). Once the reader is engaged in the poem as a part of the speaker’s “we,” ecocritical work can take place. The use of a first-person plural point of view personalizes the poem. The separation that Hollander creates does not happen to just any speaker; it happens to us. The reader and speaker are made one. Hollander does not allow the reader to distance themself from the emotions of the poem. By placing the reader in an active role, Hollander creates an expectation of action in the reader so that he can effectively deny it. When the perspective comes into play, the reader is left impotent, in a position to engage but not actually able to. 

The perspective in “Swan and Shadow” can be best understood as the perspective of a ghost. Hollander describes the speaker as a being that is able to“...take shape in the dark air” (line 14). Taking shape implies the state of shapelessness. “...in the dark air” (line 14)  indicates the speaker is hovering in the air. There is no solid physical form belonging to the speaker. Able to form and dissolve and float, the speaker is a specter, simply ideas and consciousness collected. The specter is separated from the natural world by the veil of classification. The uncomfortable distance between human culture and nature, or rather the distinction between them at all, is made apparent through this perspective. Gofelty examines the way ecocriticism grounds literature in reality, writing, “we must conclude that literature does not float above the material world in some aesthetic ether, but, rather, plays a part in an immensely complex global system in which energy, matter and ideas interact” (Gofelty xix). While Gofelty analyzes the way literature and nature interact through criticism, Hollander analyzes it through a poem. Hollander comments through “Swan and Shadow” that there is a need to rethink the divide of nature and culture.  “Swan and Shadow,” anticipates ecocriticism, showing the reader what happens when culture does “float above” (Hollander 177), what happens when humanity itself is relegated to a “...shape in the dark air” (Hollander 177). Using the perspective in “Swan and Shadow,” Hollander invites the reader to confront this reality, and, in involving the reader in it, amplifies the sense of separation of humans from nature. 

Once Hollander and the reader are engaged in the poem, we do “a careful nothing.” The speaker cannot act, only think. In the essay in which he coined the term ecocriticism, William Rueckert brought together the theories of ecology and literature. He wrote, “In ecology, man’s tragic flaw is his anthropocentric vision, and his compulsion to conquer, domesticate, violate, and explore every natural thing” (Rueckert 133). The speaker cannot embody this flaw in “Swan and Shadow” by virtue of Hollander’s perspective. This poem is an exercise in the observation of nature, rather than the domestication. Nature is acting upon us, rather than humans acting upon nature. 

That nature is an illusion. The title “Swan and Shadow,” alongside the shape of the poem, gestures at a swan. This black and white, two-dimensional thing tries to convey a swan and its shadow, but cannot capture the reality of a swan. A swan cannot be viewed at the angle that the poem’s form seems to mimic. The line between the swan and its shadow is not water. It can be extrapolated that it is meant to be water because the shadow is reflected over it, however, it does not look like water. It is still and solid. The shadow itself is also evidently disconnected from nature, still and solid. The form of the poem, when held up against the reality of a swan, shows the dissonance between the human interpretation of nature and the materiality of nature. The form of the swan and its shadow is a human-created thing of convenience. 

For Hollander’s purposes, the form of “Swan and Shadow” allows him to play with time. The words in the curve of the neck jump over to the wing in a separation that allows for the conversation Hollander has within the poem. “In us…” (Hollander, line 13) appears within the neck, and then the concrete form of the poem allows a space before “...No Upon us” (Hollander, line 13), which is written in the wing. This spacing creates the effect of an answer and has the impact of a different speaker reacting to the first speaker’s question: in us? This form also allows him to play with time and converse with the speaker within the poem. In using the swan’s two-dimensional shape as the poem’s form, Hollander is able to take the separation of culture and nature to its logical extreme, where nature is objectified to serve culture’s purposes. Where, as Hollander writes, “this image bears its object darkening” (line 21). Hollander flattens and objectifies nature, and then places the reader in the scene, wrenched away from the physical world and left floating in the aesthetic ether. 

Nature is objectified to be a tool for humans. Pastoral poetry, for example, uses the environment as a conduit for human emotion. Lynn Domina explores the effect of form on pastoral poetry. In her article “Pastoral and Ecocritical Voices in Modern Prose Poetry,” she explores the relationship of pastoral poetry to the environment, writing, “Nature is the means through which the poem creates meaning, but that meaning often reverberates back to the speaker and humanity in general” (213). Based on this definition, it may be tempting to define “Swan and Shadow” as pastoral. The poem seems to reflect on the speaker’s sense of time, showing the calm sadness of a sunset and a swan moving out of sight. However, Hollander’s emphasis on disunity with nature and careful evocation of discomfort through the reader’s position in the poem, as well as the form of the poem, lends a critical view to the roles of humans within nature. Hollander takes pastoral poetry to the logical extreme in order to highlight ecocriticism. 

The creation of a poem shaped as an object creates another pathway into the issue of classification that ecocriticism explores. Ecocriticism challenges the classification of humans and nature, and the concrete poem creates an issue of classification. Is it art or poetry? It is both an image and words. Domina addresses the prose poem as a similar issue of classification, stating, “The contemporary prose poem draws attention to the form, simultaneously daring the reader to classify it and frustrating any attempt at classification. Such frustration makes an appropriate entry point particularly for eco-critical poems, those challenging the characteristic tone of more pastoral poetry” (214). The concrete poem raises the same issues of classification, which leaves the poem ripe for an ecocritical questioning of roles and labels. Hollander tells us this is “Swan and Shadow,” but there is no real scene that could match Hollander’s image. Concrete poetry demands an interpretation of the shape presented by the poet that aligns with the poem’s meaning, asking the reader to suspend reality. Entering the poem with the reality of nature already suspended, Hollander sets up the reader for failure, to be removed from the poem and feel the dissonance between nature and culture that he calls out. 

 One expects to find the elegance of nature in Hollander’s poem, and the subject of nature is there, but it is a flat, constructed nature marred by culture’s insistence on separation from it; nature made practical; culture made useless; a swan made a symbol of all that is floating away from us, all that our constructions will not allow us to touch, that will soon end, as Hollander ends the poem, “sudden dark as/ if a swan/ sang” (lines 34-35).   

Works Cited

Domina, Lynn. “Pastoral and Ecocritical Voices in Modern Prose Poetry.” The Edinburgh Companion to the Prose Poem. Edinburgh University Press, 2021, pp. 213-229.

Gofelty, Cheryl. “Introduction,” The Ecocriticism Reader. The University of Georgia Press, 1996. 

Hollander, John. “Swan and Shadow,” Poetry, December 1966. The Poetry Foundation, 1966.  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=109&issue=3&page=35

Rueckert, William. “Literature and Ecology: An experiment in Ecocriticism,” The Ecocriticism Reader. The University of Georgia Press, 1996.