At Last, The Real Distinguished Thing

In his essay on "Old Age," Emerson wrote that "there is a proportion between the designs of a man and the length of his life: there is a calendar of his years, so of his performance." In advancing this optimistic theory, Emerson suggests that there is a deep and fundamental relationship between creation and the span of a person's life, and that fostering creativity over the arc of a long life is essential to cultural as well as to personal health. It is Kathleen Woodward's purpose not so much to test Emerson's theory as to acknowledge our present need for a model of wisdom in old age. She studies the late poems of four twentieth-century American poets, in each case focusing on a major meditative poem within the context of earlier work: T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets of 1943; Ezra Pound's Pisan Cantos of 1948; Wallace Stevens's "To an Old Philosopher in Rome," from The Rock in 1954; and Book V of William Carlos Williams's Paterson of 1958. Some of the important questions she addresses include, Do aging and old age bring poetic fulfillment? With what insights into the experience of aging do these writers provide us? What are the satisfactions of old age? How, through the work of these poets, do we come to understand the nature of wisdom? Kathleen Woodward is assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.