Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow

"Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow" is a poem written by Robert Duncan in 1960. The poem was published in his book The Opening of the Field.

The narrator describes a meadow to which he is "often permitted to return." This meadow seems to represent a place that is metaphysically, spiritually, and emotionally valuable for him. The notion of permission is ambiguous: it is not made clear who does the permitting or why permission is needed.

Contents

Themes

Duncan sets up dichotomies and hierarchies which he subsequently twists and folds. He suggests divisions between artificial and organic (made, not made); natural and cultural (meadow, hall); and freedom and ownership (not mine, mine). It also plays with the theme of place by positing the meadow as a real location that also represents a pinnacle of metaphysical abstraction. Other important dichotomies include youth/age, mental/physical, reality/dream, landscape/architecture, and light/shadow.

Nature and Culture

The poem spans nature and culture with a series of equivalences: meadow, pasture, field folded, words within words, hall, hill, etc. Another series of connections: light, shadow, forms, architecture, I, First Beloved; this leads into a series of female titles: First Beloved, Lady, and Queen Under The Hill. All of these series constitute journeys to and from the oft-permitted meadow.

Time

The sixth stanza describes the meadow in relation to the progress of the sun. The time of the dream is "an hour hour before the sun's going down"; at the same time, the grass of the meadow is "blowing / east against the source of the sun." These images invoke circularity: the meadow encompasses a whole day, even when viewed from a single present. This perspective is reinforced by the final stanza, which describes the meadow as a "place of first permission, / everlasting omen of what is." These lines convey the idea of a place that entangles past, present, and future in an orderly and perhaps transcendent fashion.

Boundaries

The "certain bounds" that "hold against chaos" enable the poem's narrator to return to this particular place. The meadow is eternal and originary, yet paradoxically requires these boundaries to retain its unique position. These boundaries apply not only to Duncan's idea, but also to the signifier "meadow," which unsteadily holds this place "near to the heart."

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