Looking at “Halley’s Comet”  

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at Stanley Kunitz’s poem, “Halley’s Comet.” It’s one of my favorites — the work of a poet at the peak of his powers — and it’s still fresh and relevant over twenty-five years after it was written. It covers feelings many of us are experiencing today in varying degrees — fear of death, fear of the unknown, and a sense of loss — subjects that, at first glance, some readers may want to turn away from. Yet Kunitz tackles them with skill and insight, and even humor. Besides offering solace during difficult times, poetry can provide an alternative lens for viewing ourselves and the world — in this case, a telescope. If you were born after 1985 (when it last appeared) you may not have heard of Halley’s Comet, but every seventy-six years it swoops visibly near the planet earth, and when it does it arouses both fear and awe. Kunitz’s poem shares the impact of this event on the poet as a child — he was just five years old when the comet passed by in 1910. Late in life, he commented that, “I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.” I think he achieved that here. (Spoiler alert: you can hear this poem at www.poetryarchive.org.)

The first sentence glimmers with the qualities that make it so poignant in its entirety — a sense of immediacy, of place, of intimacy, and wonder — transporting us into another time, and into the heart and mind of the young protagonist. In that brief introduction, we learn that Kunitz  is in the first grade and that his teacher, Miss Murphy, has written the words “Halley’s Comet” across the blackboard with the advisory that if the comet “wandered off course/ and smashed into earth/ there’d be no school tomorrow.” The fear of disaster and the promise of “no school” is a heady mixture for a child, and I wonder how kids today might relate to this poem since their own schooling has been interrupted due to the pandemic.   

The second sentence develops the theme of fear in the description of an itinerant “preacher from the hills with a wild look in his eyes” and his warnings to “repent,” a familiar scenario today, as well. The fourth sentence offers details of the young poet’s home life with the observation that “At supper I felt sad to think/ that it was probably/ the last meal I’d share/ with my mother and my sisters.” The directness of this statement is in keeping with a child’s perspective, revealing the depth of his of anxiety. In the sixth sentence, Kunitz changes the tense from past to present, depicting his younger self sneaking into the hall after the others have fallen asleep, and climbing “the ladder to the fresh night air.” The effect of this subtle change takes us out of the realm of reflection and closer to the moment.

The concluding eighth and ninth sentences confirm an absent father, establishing longing in contrast to the vastness of the universe as seen from the rooftop “of the red brick building/ at the foot of Green Street.” It’s there a boy in a “white flannel gown” on a gravel bed searches “the starry sky/ waiting for the world to end.” Although it’s emotionally resonant, there’s only one word in this poem that describes a specific emotion. Yet the accumulation of details evokes a felt sense of commonality and something we don’t usually associate with childhood — existential awareness. This quality can be found in other examples of the poet’s work, too, and it’s no doubt been observed that some of them represent a kind of dialogue with the father he never knew.

Poetry can help to connect us to each other but it can also connect us to parts of ourselves we may have lost touch with. Kunitz was approaching 90 years of age when he wrote this poem, and by looking back to the events surrounding the comet’s arrival, he was able to reconnect to the boy he once was. As a student of Jung, he would have recognized this archetype as the “wounded child.” For younger readers, the image of a child alone under a starry sky will have other implications. One of them may be that loneliness is relative. In the poem, we see that the young Kunitz isn’t exactly alone; his mother and sisters are in the apartment, below, and there’s an entire town that surrounds the building on Green Street — asleep for the moment, but still there. And there’s the sky itself, boundless, darkly glimmering, containing everything. (The Collected Poems, S. Kunitz, W.W. Norton, 2000).

Connecting with Poetry

Political turmoil and uncertainty about the pandemic have left people feeling stressed-out and anxious about the future. Author and educator Diana Raab believes that poetry can help. “Reading and writing poetry encourages a certain interconnectedness and helps establish a sense of community between oneself and others,” she says (“How Poetry Can Heal,” Psychology Today, posted April 11, 2019). That interconnection is vital to mental health, and can help to overcome feelings of isolation. “It can also be a form of meditation because it encourages a sense of mindfulness and the ability to tap into what we’re feeling, seeing, and experiencing at the moment of writing,” she says. Poet Tess Taylor suggests much the same, and believes that reading poetry can help us to reconnect and recharge. The author of “Rift Zone” told PBS recently that “sharing breath with people outside our family is a big no-no these days. And, as a result, a lot of us are lonely” (March 2, 2021). She recommends “spending some time each day with a poem” as a way to connect with its cadence and syncopation, and to experience the story the poet is telling. Doing so, “you become the poem’s instrument. You share its breath,” she says. “In a time when we’re cut off from other people, poems allow us this conversational intimacy…” and “we can feel larger, more awake, more social, more whole.”