Article #264-2 | Gutenberg Articles

Excerpt

Excerpt from Main Street, and Other Poems, by Joyce Kilmer

Monsignore,
Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus,
Sometime of Interamna, which is called Ferni,
Now of the delightful Court of Heaven,
I respectfully salute you,
I genuflect
And I kiss your episcopal ring.

It is not, Monsignore,
The fragrant memory of your holy life,
Nor that of your shining and joyous martyrdom,
Which causes me now to address you.
But since this is your august festival, Monsignore,
It seems appropriate to me to state
According to a venerable and agreeable custom,
That I love a beautiful lady.
Her eyes, Monsignore,
Are so blue that they put lovely little blue reflections
On everything that she looks at,
Such as a wall
Or the moon
Or my heart.
It is like the light coming through blue stained glass,
Yet not quite like it,
For the blueness is not transparent,
Only translucent.
Her soul's light shines through,
But her soul cannot be seen.
It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, infantile, wise
And noble.
She wears, Monsignore, a blue garment,
Made in the manner of the Japanese.
It is very blue --
I think that her eyes have made it more blue,
Sweetly staining it
As the pressure of her body has graciously given it form.
Loving her, Monsignore,
I love all her attributes;
But I believe
That even if I did not love her
I would love the blueness of her eyes,
And her blue garment, made in the manner of the Japanese.

Monsignore,
I have never before troubled you with a request.
The saints whose ears I chiefly worry with my pleas
are the most exquisite and maternal Brigid,
Gallant Saint Stephen, who puts fire in my blood,
And your brother bishop, my patron,
The generous and jovial Saint Nicholas of Bari.
But, of your courtesy, Monsignore,
Do me this favour:
When you this morning make your way
To the Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with roses
because of her who sits upon it,
When you come to pay your devoir to Our Lady,
I beg you, say to her:
"Madame, a poor poet, one of your singing servants yet on earth,
Has asked me to say that at this moment he is especially grateful to you
For wearing a blue gown."

Explanation

Joyce Kilmer’s "Monsignore" (from Main Street, and Other Poems, 1917) is a lyrical, devotional, and deeply romantic poem that blends religious reverence with earthly love. Written in the voice of a supplicant addressing Saint Valentine (the "Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus"), the poem is both a prayer and a love letter, weaving together Catholic imagery, medieval courtly love traditions, and sensual aestheticism. Below is a detailed breakdown of the excerpt, focusing on its textual mechanics, themes, literary devices, and significance, while grounding the analysis in the poem itself.

Context & Structure

Source & Occasion:
- The poem is part of Kilmer’s Main Street, and Other Poems, published a year before his death in World War I. Kilmer, a devout Catholic convert, often infused his work with religious and romantic duality.
- The poem is addressed to St. Valentine on his feast day (February 14), framing it as a petitionary prayer—but one that subverts expectations by focusing not on the saint’s martyrdom or holiness, but on the speaker’s love for a woman.
Form & Tone:
- The poem mimics a medieval devotional address, with its formal salutation ("Monsignore," "Right Reverend Bishop") and ritualistic gestures ("I genuflect / And I kiss your episcopal ring").
- The tone shifts from reverential (to the saint) to ecstatic (describing the beloved) to playful (the final request about Mary’s blue gown). This blend of sacred and profane is central to the poem’s effect.

Themes

Sacred & Profane Love:
- The poem juxtaposes divine and earthly love, treating the beloved’s beauty as a quasi-religious experience. The speaker’s devotion to the woman mirrors (and even rivals) his devotion to saints.
- The blue motif (her eyes, garment, Mary’s gown) becomes a sacred color, linking the beloved to the Virgin Mary (traditionally depicted in blue). This elevates the woman to a Madonna-like figure, though with a sensual edge ("wanton, infantile, wise").
Synesthesia & Sensuality:
- Kilmer’s description of the beloved’s eyes and garment is tactile and visual, bordering on the erotic without being explicit. The "blue reflections" on objects (wall, moon, heart) suggest her presence stains the world with beauty, much like stained glass in a cathedral.
- The garment, "made in the manner of the Japanese," adds an exotic, artistic dimension, reinforcing the aesthetic worship of the beloved.
Playful Reverence:
- The poem’s humor lies in its audacious request: the speaker asks St. Valentine to thank the Virgin Mary for wearing blue—the same color as his beloved’s eyes and dress. This collapses the divine and the mundane, treating Mary’s sartorial choice as a personal favor to the poet.
- The mention of other saints (Brigid, Stephen, Nicholas) as his usual intercessors adds a colloquial, almost gossipy tone, as if the speaker is confessing a whim to a celestial confidant.

Literary Devices

Apostrophe:
- The entire poem is an apostrophe (addressing an absent figure—here, St. Valentine). This creates intimacy, as if the speaker is whispering to the saint in a church pew.
Imagery & Symbolism:
- Blue: The dominant symbol, representing purity (Mary), mystery (the beloved’s soul), and sensuality (the "stained" garment). The comparison to stained glass ties the beloved to divine light filtered through art.
- Translucency vs. Transparency: Her soul is "translucent," not "transparent"—suggesting depth without full revelation, a teasing ambiguity.
- Japanese Garment: Symbolizes artifice and natural beauty combined—the dress is both man-made and seemingly transformed by her body ("the pressure of her body has graciously given it form").
Catalogue & Asyndeton:
- The description of the beloved’s soul as "elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, infantile, wise / And noble" uses asyndeton (omitting conjunctions) to create a breathless, accumulative effect, as if the speaker is overwhelmed by her contradictions.
- The list moves from childlike ("infantile") to mature ("wise"), capturing her paradoxical nature.
Irony & Understatement:
- The speaker claims he loves her attributes more than her—yet the attributes (blue eyes, garment) are extensions of her essence. This is false modesty; he clearly loves her through these details.
- The final request is whimsically irreverent: thanking Mary for her fashion choice as if it were a personal gift to the poet.
Allusion:
- "Ivory Throne that bursts into bloom with roses": Alludes to the Song of Solomon (a biblical love poem) and medieval Marian imagery, where Mary is the "rose without thorns." The throne may also reference heavenly glory (Revelation 4:6).
- St. Brigid, St. Stephen, St. Nicholas: Each represents a different facet of the speaker’s spirituality—maternal care (Brigid), martyrdom/fire (Stephen), generosity (Nicholas)—contrasting with the romantic, aesthetic focus on Valentine.

Significance & Interpretation

The Poet as Lover-Priest:
- Kilmer casts the speaker as a devotee of beauty, treating love as a sacrament. The act of writing the poem becomes a liturgical offering, blending prayer and poetry.
- The kissing of the bishop’s ring (a gesture of feudal homage) parallels the kissing of a lover’s hand, merging religious and romantic submission.
The Beloved as Artifact & Icon:
- The woman is both real and idealized. Her blue eyes and garment are like relics—objects of veneration that contain her essence. The poem suggests that love is a form of idolatry, but a joyful, unapologetic one.
The Color Blue as Sacred & Sensual:
- Blue in Christian art symbolizes heavenly truth (Mary’s robe) and mystery (the unseen soul). Here, it also becomes erotic—the beloved’s gaze "stains" the world, much like a sacramental wine (another Catholic symbol).
- The Japanese garment adds a modernist, cross-cultural touch, suggesting that beauty transcends tradition.
Humor & Devotion:
- The poem’s playful ending—asking Valentine to thank Mary for her blue dress—is both charming and theologically cheeky. It implies that the poet’s love is sanctioned by heaven, as if Mary’s blue gown were a cosmic wink at his own beloved’s eyes.

Line-by-Line Highlights

"I genuflect / And I kiss your episcopal ring": The physicality of devotion sets the tone—this is a tactile, embodied poem.
"Her eyes... put lovely little blue reflections / On everything that she looks at": The beloved alters reality with her gaze, like a living stained-glass window.
"It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton...": The accumulation of adjectives mirrors the unpin-downable nature of love (and the soul).
"Sweetly staining it / As the pressure of her body has graciously given it form": The garment is shaped by her presence, like dough under a baker’s hands—a sensual yet reverent image.
"Madame, a poor poet... has asked me to say / That at this moment he is especially grateful to you / For wearing a blue gown": The final request is both absurd and profound—as if the poet’s love is part of a divine plan, and Mary’s blue is a celestial echo of his beloved’s eyes.

Conclusion: Why This Poem Endures

Kilmer’s "Monsignore" is a masterclass in blending the sacred and the sensual. It takes the form of a prayer but fills it with earthly longing, treating love as a kind of worship. The poem’s genius lies in its tone—reverent yet playful, devout yet desirous—and its central metaphor of blue, which becomes a bridge between heaven and earth.

In an era where modernism was fracturing tradition, Kilmer’s poem reconciles old and new: the medieval saint, the Japanese garment, the Catholic Mary, and the modern lover’s gaze all coexist. It’s a love poem that feels like a hymn, and a hymn that throbs with human passion—a rare, radiant fusion.

Would you like any specific aspect explored further (e.g., Kilmer’s Catholic influences, comparisons to other love poetry, or the WWI context)?

Questions

Question 1

The poem’s description of the beloved’s eyes as casting "lovely little blue reflections / On everything that she looks at" serves primarily to:

A. establish the beloved as a passive object of idealized beauty, devoid of agency.
B. suggest that the beloved’s presence transforms the speaker’s perception of the world, imbuing it with her essence.
C. contrast the artificiality of human love with the divine purity symbolized by stained glass.
D. emphasize the speaker’s artistic sensibility, which seeks to aestheticize even mundane objects.
E. critique the Catholic tradition of associating color with spiritual significance.

Question 2

The speaker’s request to St. Valentine—"say to [Mary]: / 'Madame, a poor poet... is especially grateful to you / For wearing a blue gown'"—is most effectively interpreted as:

A. a blasphemous reduction of Marian devotion to a superficial appreciation of color.
B. an attempt to elevate the beloved to the status of the Virgin Mary through shared symbolism.
C. a humorous acknowledgment of the poet’s inability to distinguish between sacred and profane love.
D. a literal belief that Mary’s sartorial choices are divinely ordained to mirror human relationships.
E. a playful collapse of hierarchical boundaries, treating heavenly and earthly beauty as part of a unified aesthetic devotion.

Question 3

The phrase "elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, infantile, wise / And noble" is structurally and thematically significant because it:

A. employs asyndeton and juxtaposition to convey the beloved’s paradoxical, unknowable nature.
B. adheres to a strict iambic meter, reinforcing the poem’s liturgical cadence.
C. prioritizes intellectual virtues ("wise / And noble") over emotional or sensual traits.
D. mirrors the Catholic tradition of cataloguing saints’ virtues in hagiographies.
E. undermines the beloved’s complexity by reducing her to a series of contradictory clichés.

Question 4

The poem’s shift from addressing St. Valentine to describing the beloved’s blue garment "made in the manner of the Japanese" primarily functions to:

A. introduce an exotic, modernist element that disrupts the poem’s medieval devotional framework.
B. highlight the speaker’s superficial fixation on material beauty over spiritual depth.
C. suggest that the beloved’s allure is rooted in cultural appropriation rather than inherent grace.
D. contrast Eastern aestheticism with Western religious iconography.
E. imply that the garment’s blueness is a divine sign, like the Virgin’s robe.

Question 5

The speaker’s claim—"I believe / That even if I did not love her / I would love the blueness of her eyes, / And her blue garment"—reveals a tension between:

A. the idealization of attributes and the irreducible complexity of the beloved herself.
B. sacred devotion and profane desire, with the former ultimately subsuming the latter.
C. the speaker’s aesthetic sensibility and his failure to engage with the beloved’s inner life.
D. the transience of human love and the permanence of divine symbolism.
E. the poem’s lyrical beauty and its underlying theological shallowness.

Solutions and Explanations

1) Correct answer: B

Why B is most correct: The passage emphasizes that the beloved’s gaze alters the speaker’s world, casting blue reflections on objects as disparate as a "wall," the "moon," and his "heart." This suggests her presence is transformative, not passive (A), and that her essence permeates his perception rather than merely aestheticizing objects (D). The stained-glass comparison (C) is a simile, not a contrast, and the poem celebrates rather than critiques (E) the fusion of color and meaning.