Look, I'm just not used to writing
something straight and having enough
trust in language as an arrow rather than
as a deep pool that you happen upon
in the woods, the kind of woods you can
use the words "crystal" and "diamond"
with, maybe "shimmering," and the kind
of pool that kings throw their swords
into. The kind with an opaque surface
which may hide passageways to the center
of the earth. The kind where it's always
night. I'm not good at it. And this is all
why I've got to apologize, for the fight I picked
over a board game, or for the note I gave
in a cafe, or for everything that just hasn't added
up lately. I'm sorry: you aren't anything
more important than an experiment - less
actually: you are a variable, and I am
the hypothesis. Really, I am trying to get at
something real and weighty that you can
put in your pocket and remember when
you pull your jeans out of the washer because there
it is, crumbled and ugly. I'm trying to say
that if existence the way we know it is a kind of
qualifier, then we can predicate everything
by it, like the color of your hair or the nose
that you hate or the brotherhood you've
bound me by, even if who you are is confused.
And what I'm trying to say is that If X, Then
Y just may not apply, or in a twisted way,
the most meaningful pool may not ever be
discovered. I'm saying that I'm sorry for using
you to test this world, and that however often
I am wound around by something so simple as
hunger or exhaustion, I don't know if
it's real, or perhaps worse, if it's worth
throwing oneself over cliffs for. So you've got
to understand that that note - look, I know you
thought it would be something else, maybe
short and beautiful - but you've got to understand
that the important part of the note isn't what's
on it. It's that I gave it to you. It's that saying something
has to be worth it being given an existence of crumpling
and being thrown away, even if it's nothing.
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Immediate reaction: spoken word.
ReplyDeleteSecondary reaction: I love that this piece starts out in the defensive mode about writing in general, as if you're writing an apologia for your aesthetics, and that it ends up as a very specific apology. I think that structure is brilliant. That being said, I'm hungry for more details about how the speaker uses the "you" to test the world. I understand that it has something to do with trust and straighforwardness, which is undermined by the long diversion into the pool in the woods, which is exactly what the speaker is apologizing for. "You aren't anything more/important than an experiment" is devastating, especially because (again) it's undermined by the need to write the apology and get defensive at all. I am confused by never finding the most meaningful pool.
I don't know if any of that is helpful, but I really really like this poem, T.
I had trouble at first collecting any sort of feelings about the narrator's voice...BUT after reading Dinah's comment about spoken word, I was like - hell yeah, that's it. I'm with her on the "but more detail thing" too. Though it may seem like you're just telling us exactly what happened, that's okay, we won't get it. Tom Petty did the same thing and his lyrics rock. Think of all the college-aged girls that love him.
ReplyDeleteI dunno--I think it's important that this is written. Not even the connection with the written note, but this poem exists as a kind of silent inner monologue, i felt--because communication with the "you" was already achieved with the note--and i got no sense that the "you" was able to hear this...
ReplyDeleteI don't care so much about the lake metaphor as the rest of the poem--I love the frantic tone that keeps trying to rephrase the ideas. I think that can be even tighter but I think this is the right feel to the poem.
Agree with Dinah that "You aren't anything more/important than an experiment" is heartbreaking. Love the multiple math metaphors. Great great great.