Out of the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram, Mary R. Bast, Ph.D. 
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved. Revised: January 14, 2010  

Poetry & Personality

"Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!"

Sevens love to tell anecdotes and may forget to invite others to talk. They're sometimes perceived as oversimplifying or skating over the surface because they are so interested in a variety of attractions. Driven by a search for pleasure, they are over-focused on enthusiasm and uneasy activity. They are also charming, optimistic, forward-thinking, energetic, and inventive. When in the grip of their compulsion, however, life MUST be fun! Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving but Drowning" captures the often unconscious quality of this compulsion to enjoy at all costs:

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought...
Poor chap, he always loved larking...
it was too cold always...
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

If we look beyond the surface of this personality style, we see that all the happy chatter and good times may be symptomatic of underlying pain ("drowning"). Thus the person in Smith's poem appears to be "waving" (having a good time, "swimming"), but always "much further out than you thought," in pain, beyond what we can see on the surface. The line "I was much too far out all my life" is razor-sharp in its double meaning -- too much "larking" and yet reminiscent of the joyful Sixties comment, "Far out!"

The title of Paul Zimmer's "Zimmer Resisting Temperance" is an irony because temperance (or renunciation) is the spiritual path for Sevens who are entranced in their addiction to variety and pleasure:

Some people view life as food served
By a psychopath. They do not trust it.
But Zimmer expects always to be happy.
Puzzled by melancholy, he pours a reward
And loves this world relentlessly...
Someday he may fall face down
In the puke of his own buoyancy.

All of our lives entail emotional bruises and all of us cope at times by seeking pleasure to avoid pain. That's why we're drawn to such poetry. Good poets are good observers, able to share their own emotions and experiences in ways that touch us as readers: when we see someone seemingly waving, we are drawn to join in the fun. We need also to be aware of the pain behind a perennial smile. The persona of Zimmer's poem is looking for meaning in the wrong places.  

Nonetheless, those of us who know Sevens applaud the joy they bring to our lives, the certain way they have of lightening things up when we get too dark.  One of the funniest and most touching poems I've read is The Belly Dancer in the Nursing Home. Ronald Wallace describes the pleasure his father and others get from a belly dancer's performance:

The crazy ladies are singing again,
clapping their hands and gums to the music,
dancing their wheelchairs to and fro
with a frail and bony toe.
In the front row, some old men,
flushed with the heat of the season,
are thumping their tuneless canes and stumps,
driving old age and infirmity
out of the room like an unwanted guest.

If I ever land in a nursing home, without my teeth, I hope I'll get a chance to clap my hands and gums to the music! On the other hand, I hope no one forgets that old age can be a well-earned time to appreciate the life we've created, that we don't hold on inappropriately to youth, treating old age as "an unwanted guest."

Often young at heart, Sevens tend to skate on the surface of things. Like all of us, however, they are complex. As they become more self-aware, they begin to feel the draw of deeper experience. In Billy Collins' delicious poem Osso Buco, both the external pleasure and the pull to the inner "secret marrow" are hinted at in the first verse:

I love the sound of the bone against the plate
and the fortress-like look of it
lying before me in a moat of risotto,
the meat soft as the leg of an angel
who has lived a purely airborne existence.
And best of all, the secret marrow,
the invaded privacy of the animal
prized out with a knife and swallowed down
with cold, exhilarating wine.

Later in the poem, Collins acknowledges there is suffering in the world, yet brings us back to the pleasant "warm glow" of this exquisite meal, seemingly to counter the pain of considering hunger:

Somewhere, a man is crawling up a rocky hillside
on bleeding knees and palms, an Irish penitent
carrying the stone of the world in his stomach;
and elsewhere people of all nations stare
at one another across a long, empty table.

But here, the candles give off their warm glow...

Sevens need to learn that real depth comes from a balanced life and not one that ignores the reality of pain. That happens when they notice they're lying to themselves. Dorothy Parker does this with self-deprecating humor in Comment:

Oh, life is a glorious
  cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that
  can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

Gradually, Sevens discover that true joy comes from developing the maturity to be centered in the moment, whatever it brings. May Sarton captures this possibility gloriously in "Now I Become Myself":

O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

Other Poems by Published Poets that Illustrate this Personality

Prisms (Philip Dacey)
I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed (Emily Dickinson)
The Windhover (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Child (Sylvia Plath) 
A Story That Could Be True (William Stafford)

Poems by Readers

The Slammer Escape (Rus Bowden)
For the Love of Yourself (Sherrie Connelly)
Blue Room (Woody Pine)
Dilworth (Woody Pine)