A day after posting a poem about the devastation of a storm, she picks up on a similar theme, a resurrection out of the ruins in the guise of a phoenix.
Most offend associated with Greek and Egyptian mythology as symbolizing immorality, resurrection and life after death, reborn from the ashes of its predecessor. It is often associated with sun worship, which she makes good use of in this poem.
The use of it as resurrection is apt considering the pattern of her life which has seen similar regenerations and comes at a time when she is once more reinventing herself with her new job in public relations for her mayor and his collection of scallywags.
A big fan of the Harry Potter series, she may well also see the phoenix as a symbol of rebellion and entitlement. The wizard Dumbledore makes use of the Phoenix to make his escape from self-deluded superiors in the Ministry. Perhaps more importantly, the mystical bird aids Harry Potter and his loyal band of junior wizards in his conflict against the evil Lord Voldemort.
It is uncertain whether she intended to Potter analogy, but certainly the poem comes at a time when she is at her lowest, and she is resurrected.
In the poem, there is great relief in tone as she claims to be astounded by the rising of the son after “a long, long night of cries and unwelcome surprises.”
This alluding to other poems that describe her waking in the early morning hours in fear, the locking and unlocking, the dread and danger she feels.
But the poem goes on to talk about unfulfilled joy, situations not fully explored or understood, which she apparently was deprived of.
And now, at the point where she assumed that all that “could have happened,” has happened, leaving her in darkness, a ray of hope appears, the flaming peaks of dawn’s arrival, the first hint of a new day, a dominant idea in her life, resurrection, reaping what she has gone through, a surprise perhaps because she failed to anticipate what has happened so often before.
The poem clearly shows her surprise at the pattern of her life, how – as her previous poem suggested she being among the ruins of a previous life – a new incarnation is born.
The sun is rising after a long darkness filled with despair and the presumption that things have come to an end, the poem alluding to all the trials and tribulations she has suffered leading up to her resignation, only to see hope arriving on the horizon, filled with the musical refrain that has become a motif of her life, almost a deus in machina in which the heroine is saved last minute by some unforeseen force setting the stage for the next verse in her long life.
The poem is structured using light and dark, the rising sun near the opening and closing, hinting of fire with the use of the word “smoldering,” and “flaming peaks” of pink and orange near the horizon, leaning heavily on the Egyptian myth of the Phoenix which is strongly associated with the sun.
There is a musical reference “symphonic motif” that also suggests a repeated pattern of reprise, rebirth, even salvation.
Unlike other of her poems, nearly all the descriptions in this poem are surface images, external observation, not a mix of internal monologue that would give the poem a deeper expression of feeling or would define a truly emotional response. The dawn is just arriving with color on the horizon, but she is not completely confident in what it means.
While clearly overjoyed at the promise of redemption, she fails to provide any internal reference to support this feeling, and so we get a kind of “wait and see” tone to see how it all turns out before she gets too ecstatic.
We are still at the dawn of this thing, and while it may still prove to be extremely positive, she clearly not yet committing herself to it emotionally.
It still has the potential to go up in flames.
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