David Stevens Elegy -- "Mountain Dulcimer"

MOUNTAIN DULCIMER

By Robert Morgan

Where does such sadness in wood come

from? How could longing live in these

wires? The box looks like the most fragile

coffin tuned for sound. And laid

across the knees of this woman

it looks less like a baby nursed

than some symbolic Pietà,

and the stretched body on her lap

yields modalities of lament

and blood, yields sacrifice and sliding

chants of grief that dance and dance toward

a new measure, a new threshold,

a new instant and new year which

we always celebrate by

remembering the old and by

recalling the lost and honoring

those no longer here to strike these

strings like secrets of the most

satisfying harmonies, as

voices join in sadness and joy

and tell again what we already

know, have always known but forget,

from way back in the farthest cove,

from highest on the peaks of love.

Robert Morgan was raised in a small town in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, in the heart of Appalachia. The perspective he gained through his upbringing informs his poetry, and with “Mountain Dulcimer” he adapts the elegiac form to Appalachian culture. In many ways, it is a traditional elegy, except for its unique subject: the titular dulcimer. Through this lens, Morgan illustrates the mourning rituals of Appalachia as a whole.

The poem begins with a lament; Morgan describes the “sadness” and “longing” imbued within the materials of the dulcimer itself. The instrument is compared to a “most fragile coffin.” Thus, Morgan uses funereal imagery to evoke a sense of loss. The lament is further strengthened with a Biblical motif: the woman cradling the dulcimer is described as a “symbolic Pietà”—the image of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus Christ in her arms.

The poem moves on to praise the dulcimer, whose chords “dance and dance” with life. In the dulcimer’s song the author feels the approach of the future, of “a new instant and new year.” This segment also expresses the instrument’s ability to connect Appalachian culture through time—the dulcimer allows people to celebrate the future and, simultaneously, remember those who came before them.

The poem resolves by finding solace. Morgan acknowledges that life is a mixture of “sadness and joy”; he compares these vicissitudes to the harmonies created by a dulcimer—indeed, life would be incomplete without a full range of experiences, just as many tones are required to form a chord.

In conclusion, “Mountain Dulcimer” is a thorough exploration of loss, especially as it relates to Appalachian cultural traditions. Emily Dickinson said “success is counted sweetest by those who ne’er succeed,” and as Robert Morgan shows, life would be incomplete without loss to temper our successes.

Morgan, Robert. “Mountain Dulcimer.” Poetry. Mar. 1999. Print.