Tuesday Poem: “I am a Tyger” by Michael Harlow
‘I am a Tyger’
Despite 10 years
of ‘talking cure’, twice
weekly, such intimate
conversation between strangers,
he remains quite convinced
that he is still, you know,
a tyger
As a child no taller
than a table leg, he always
suspected he was a cat
It was the last of the litter,
Chatterwot, the family favourite,
who taught him, age 11,
to speak ‘cat’
And he did. Not dog
or stag or unicorn, he knows
himself to be a tyger, ‘burning
bright’, in a body made strange
And of course he believes
he was adopted – his true parents
you see, were tygers, too.
© Michael Harlow
from Cassandra’s Daughter (Auckland University Press) 2005
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From Michael:
Most immediately the poem grew out of note in a medical journal, so there are one or two ‘found’ items of language there, translated imaginatively. From early on I’ve been fascinated by the imaginative role animals play in our collective psychic life — and that’s universal. In all manner of ways we identify with the animal world psychically, that is imaginatively alive in all of us. The ways in which we do this, and why, tell us a great deal about how we survive even ourselves. The extraordinary power of the imaginative reality ‘I am a Tyger’ that can overwhelm another and actual reality. The spelling of ‘Tyger’ is meant to be a kind of underlying resonance to Blake’s poem.
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About Michael:
Michael Harlow was born in the United States but arrived in New Zealand in 1968. In the 1980s, Harlow was an editor of the Caxton Press poetry series and poetry editor of Landfall. His poetry is distinctly European with a whimsical, questioning sensibility. His collaboration as librettist with the New Zealand composer Kit Powell is extensive. A practising Jungian psychotherapist, Harlow was awarded the 1986 Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship and was the 2009 Burns Fellow at the University of Otago. Michael’s most recent collection, The Tram Conductor’s Blue Cap, (Auckland University Press), 2009, is a finalist for the 2010 NZ Post Book Award for Poetry
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Nice. I gave birth to a tyger too although these days he hides it well. I caught a glimpse of another one in the street the other day – still small, but I knew immediately he was a tyger. I wonder if his parents know.
I’m not quite sure exactly what it is about this poem that ‘speaks’ to me—something about the quirks and diversity of our human condition perhaps? But then again, perhaps the important thing is simply that it speaks.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry and what shoulder and what art… how could any poet not love this little homage, and what child hasn’t been that tyger – although some more resolutely than others.
It’s definitely kind of fun …
Hi Helen – really enjoyed this poem. Different. And a new poet for me too.
Hi Kathleen—glad you enjoyed! I hope we get a chance to catch up at the Christchurch Writers’ Festival!