Contributor’s Marginalia: Nicholas Pierce responding to Ashley Sojin Kim’s “The Monets in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1873”

Truth be told, until my third or fourth time through “The Monets in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1873,” I didn’t realize the poem was about a specific painting. I thought, rather, it was imagining what life was like for the Monets, with a particular focus on the son and wife of the great painter. I thought Ashley Sojin Kim was depicting a scene that likely occurred with some regularity: Camille posing for Claude while their son lounged in the garden, “his splayed / limbs half-dappled by the rippling shade.” The poet is doing that, of course, taking us behind the scenes, imagining what might have been going on as Monet worked on the painting (for those curious, it can be seen here). But she’s also looking closely at the painting itself, thinking through some of the details, questioning what it’s getting at.

One of the poem’s greatest achievements is how it masks interpretation in description. “Camille was careful,” Kim begins the poem, and if we’re not careful, we might overlook the fact that the line contains an assumption. How does Kim know that Camille is being careful “as she ambles though the bushes toward / her Claude?” What reads as careful in her expression, in the position of her arms? Is it not equally likely that she’s being “careless”? Moreover, how does Kim know that Camille is “ambling”? The painting is static, after all, so Camille might just as well be “trudging” or “skipping” through the bushes, or she might not be moving at all. These subtle choices make it clear that we’re seeing the painting through Kim’s eyes, that the poem is descriptive, yes, but it’s also interpretive and—as all interpretations inevitably are—subjective.

The poem is full of oppositions: between reality and its depiction, between stasis and motion, words and paint, order and chaos. To me, though, its central opposition is between childhood and adulthood. The final couplet tells us that Jean couldn’t fathom “in his blissful youth / quite what it was his parents fussed about.” The poem’s form becomes important here. Kim chose to write in a fairly strict pentameter, lending the lines a sturdiness that conflicts, to some degree, with the impressionistic subject. Still a child, Jean doesn’t yet understand the appeal of artifice. His mother, we learn, is irked by “the single barren patch of dirt” in the garden, “its baldness undermining hours spent / scattering little seeds into tilled soil.” Meanwhile, her husband tries to replicate the garden—or his impression of the garden—on canvas. His method initially seems devoid of artifice: his hands don’t work deliberately; they work “rapidly to paint / the present moment.” We must remember, though, that Monet is depicting the artificial environment of a carefully manicured garden, and while his style of painting seems to value intuition over intention, it is not as though Impressionism accurately portrays how we experience the world.

Couplet four is perhaps the key to the whole poem. Kim tells us that Jean “watches hairy caterpillars chew / misshapen holes into the leaves of plants.” Once again, the language animates—it might even be fair to say that it embellishes—a still subject. When I look at the painting, I can’t see a single caterpillar, hairy or otherwise. Now, admittedly, I’m looking at it on my computer screen, and it’s very possible that in person, the insects could be plainly visible. Either way, though, it doesn’t really matter. The poem isn’t purporting to give an accurate portrait; it’s trying to find its way into the painting, and it does so by inhabiting Jean’s perspective—or partly inhabiting. The word “misshapen” suggests that we’re also seeing through his parent’s eyes. The holes are misshapen, to them, because they mar the garden’s pristine beauty, but they aren’t misshapen by the standards of the natural world; they’re simply holes, their shapes neither good nor bad.

The final couplet tells us that Jean’s youth is “blissful.” Why is it blissful? I would guess that it has something to do with the child’s acceptance of the way things are. His adult parents need to fashion the world in their image, whether through gardening or painting, but Jean is content to simply lie on the green earth and watch the hairy caterpillars. Part of me wonders if Kim has included herself, however subtly, in her critique. As I said above, the poem’s form exults order, the pentameter maintaining a steady rhythm from start to finish. Perhaps Kim is lamenting what has been lost in her maturation, her need, as a poet, to impose order on her experience.