Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "The Finger" by Robert Creeley, the poet embarks on a profound exploration of identity, myth, and the elusive nature of truth and desire. The poem layers themes of mythology, memory, and the existential question of purpose, creating a tapestry that is both fragmented and richly evocative. At its core, the poem meditates on the ways in which identities—personal, mythical, and relational—interact and intersect within the mind, and how these identities create a narrative that is both haunting and fleeting.

The poem opens with an ambiguous invocation of a "conception" that "overrides" the mind. This suggests a guiding principle or fate that controls the narrator’s life, detached from his own desires or understanding. Creeley places his narrator in a position of introspective alienation: “Again and again I was to get it right, the story I myself knew only the way of.” This creates a sense of timelessness, as though the narrator is destined to repeat an unknown or partially comprehended story endlessly, where purpose, if it exists, lies outside his grasp. This struggle against an unknowable destiny evokes a mythic quality, setting the tone for the themes of mythology and the transcendence of identity that will unfold.

The poem’s rich use of mythological references adds depth to its existential quest. The narrator describes encountering two archetypal female figures who embody different facets of the divine feminine. The first, "Aphrodite," symbolizes beauty and sensuality, appearing to him as a "girlish openness" or as a "woman turned from the light." The fleetingness of her presence, her existence solely as "beauty," speaks to the transient allure of the ideal, as well as the unattainable nature of perfection. Contrasting Aphrodite is "Athena," who embodies wisdom, power, and resilience—standing "bent by a wind it seemed would never stop blowing, braced like a seabird, with those endlessly clear grey eyes." Athena represents a grounded, enduring wisdom that feels less romanticized and more rooted in reality.

Creeley’s invocation of these two contrasting mythological figures emphasizes the duality of the feminine ideal: one side is an ephemeral beauty that eludes, while the other is a steadfast strength that remains unbroken. The narrator's ambivalence towards these ideals—unable to fully grasp or integrate either—reflects an internal conflict between idealized beauty and pragmatic wisdom. These goddesses serve as symbols of the narrator's desires and fears, embodying both the allure and the distance of understanding and love.

As the poem progresses, the narrative voice reveals a tension between knowing and experiencing. The speaker reflects on "Mercury, Hermes, in dark glasses," a figure associated with communication, trickery, and boundary-crossing. Hermes, here an intermediary, highlights the distance between the speaker’s understanding and the mystical, symbolic world he inhabits. Communication becomes a struggle, as though he’s "talk[ing] to the telephone, telling it to please listen." The telephone, an inanimate intermediary, underscores a sense of isolation; the narrator’s attempts at understanding are met with echoes of his own thoughts rather than genuine connection.

The imagery in "The Finger" grows increasingly sensual and physical as the speaker describes a woman who seems to embody all women—timeless, shifting between young and old, beautiful and ugly, warm and aloof. Her laughter, movements, and gestures reflect a primal, almost elemental sexuality, a force that is both alluring and intimidating. She becomes an archetype of feminine mystery, encapsulating an array of human contradictions: she is "young," "old," "small," "tall," "stolid in her smiling." She exists beyond any single identity, embodying an elemental allure that defies easy understanding.

Creeley emphasizes the impossibility of possessing or fully understanding this figure. Her gestures, laughter, and sensuality evade the speaker’s grasp, leaving him in a state of yearning. The description of her "nakedness" and "lust" as both magnetic and discomfiting underscores the narrator's complicated relationship with desire. She becomes the focal point of his existential questioning, an embodiment of the elusive nature of truth, beauty, and intimacy. Her laughter and shifting forms suggest the fluidity of identity and the inadequacy of human perception in capturing the essence of another person or even oneself.

The closing lines bring the poem full circle, with the narrator reflecting on the futility of attempting to possess truth or meaning. He recognizes that he dances not toward understanding but in perpetual pursuit of it, a dance driven by both foolishness and desire. His acknowledgment of “one to one to one” reinforces the notion of unity amidst fragmentation, a repeated singularity that mirrors the poem’s themes of myth and identity. The woman’s laughter, which echoes through the poem’s final lines, becomes a symbol of both cosmic irony and unattainable knowledge, leaving the narrator—and the reader—with a sense of unresolved mystery.

In "The Finger," Creeley weaves myth, desire, and introspection into a meditation on the search for self and connection. The poem’s mythological allusions and existential questioning explore the tension between the allure of beauty and wisdom, the limitations of human understanding, and the eternal yearning for connection. The narrator's final, unresolved dance underscores a fundamental truth: that life’s mysteries may remain forever out of reach, yet it is in the seeking, in the dance itself, that meaning is continually forged.

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