Some of us have been married before. A lot of us have been married before, actually. This poem is about marriage, but it’s every bit as much about attitudes toward failure.
Instead of remembering how we tried and the ways in which we succeeded, we tend to concentrate on our failures. The poem uses the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Daedalus, an inventor, made wings out of feathers and wax for their escape from Crete where he and his son were being held captive by King Minos.
Icarus, though, was so thrilled by flight that he ignored his father’s warnings and flew too close to the sun. His wings melted and he fell into the sea, where he drowned. The moral is, apparently, your pride can kill you.
Stay between extremes. Jack Gilbert turns the myth on its head, though, as poets often do. His poem focuses on what Icarus actually accomplished.
Instead of concentrating on the failure of the expedition, there remains the fact that he actually did it. He flew! But this isn’t about flying. It’s about relationships.
The phrase that intrigues me is “anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” I notice it starts with “anything worth doing.” The relationship was, after all, worth doing.
The fact that it was done badly isn’t the point. There is the poet’s beautiful memory of being by the ocean with his beloved, all images pointing toward the eventual end. Love was “draining out of her.
” The stars were so extravagant (like Icarus’s flight), you knew they were burning o.
