Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Barbara Jordan?s "Peaceable Kingdom" meditates on themes of memory, perception, and the human drive to impose order on existence. Drawing from Edward Hicks’s famous Peaceable Kingdom paintings, which depict an idyllic harmony among animals and children, the poem explores the interplay between innocence and knowledge, unity and separation, and the fluid boundaries of human consciousness.

The opening lines establish a serene tone: "Distance is at bay, and emptiness has gone / where emptiness goes." The rhythm is measured, suggesting a calm equilibrium. Emptiness, an abstract concept, is personified and sent "wordlessly back to its distillates," suggesting a return to an elemental, undefined state. This return "before myth" evokes a primordial moment, predating even the Genesis narrative, when the world was unmarked by human naming or differentiation. Jordan situates her meditation in this prelapsarian void, where the raw potential of existence had yet to be shaped by language or meaning.

The poem transitions to the biblical story of Adam naming the creatures: "before Adam / named the serpent and the bee, / said fox, and wood thrush." This act of naming is portrayed as the beginning of differentiation, a process that simultaneously defines and divides. The "elemental light" in which Adam glimpsed "the fact of yes and no" represents a primal awareness of duality—the realization that to name is to separate, to categorize. Jordan suggests that this fundamental act of knowing is a double-edged sword: it grants understanding but at the cost of unity.

The poem’s central metaphor, drawn from painting, underscores the consequences of this differentiation. "As a painting needs perspective," she writes, "else lion and lamb float beside the child enlarged beyond proportion." Perspective—both in art and in cognition—requires a horizon, a sense of distance and separation. Without it, the elements of a scene become distorted, losing their coherence and proportion. The idyllic image of the lion and lamb lying peaceably beside a child, a familiar motif in Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom, depends on a certain structure to appear harmonious. Jordan links this to a broader "teleology / of matter," implying that all material existence is shaped by an inherent tendency toward order and purpose.

Yet, the poem resists a purely rationalist interpretation. The lines "memory will coincide the parts into a whole— / insubstantial, primitive / as Eden—" suggest that the human mind retains a capacity to reassemble fragmented realities into a vision of wholeness. Memory, though inherently subjective, has the power to evoke Edenic unity—a state not of literal reality but of imaginative synthesis. This "coinciding" is described as "innocent distortion," a phrase that captures both the creativity and the inherent limitations of memory. Through this distortion, the disparate elements of experience are gathered into a unified vision, even as they remain rooted in impermanence and loss.

The concluding lines bring the meditation full circle: "some rib of thought / extending its imaginary line / back to what was, is, and not." The "rib of thought" recalls the biblical creation of Eve from Adam?s rib, a metaphor for the generative power of imagination and memory. The "imaginary line" extends across time and space, linking past, present, and absence. This temporal and existential fluidity challenges fixed notions of reality, emphasizing instead the interplay of being and non-being, of what is remembered, forgotten, or imagined.

“Peaceable Kingdom” is a richly layered poem that reflects on the human need to reconcile fragmentation with unity, differentiation with harmony. Jordan uses the motifs of art, memory, and biblical myth to explore the tensions between innocence and knowledge, perspective and distortion. Her language is both precise and expansive, weaving together philosophical inquiry and lyrical imagery to evoke a vision of existence that is at once profound and elusive. Through its measured cadence and evocative metaphors, the poem invites readers to contemplate the delicate balance between order and chaos, memory and creation, as they navigate their own paths through the world’s multiplicity.

Copyright (c) 2025 PoetryExplorer

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...