Saturday, March 14, 2015

#69

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/john-berryman/3601

Yeah, I’ll admit it—this kind of think rolls around up beneath the balding pates of various middle-agèd Henries, though not all of them. It does strike some as passing ridiculous. But the provenance of lust dates back to well before the Middle Ages. In fact, Pompeii, that Roman town so famously preserved by the volcano that not-coincidently also destroyed it, is filled with scandalous mosaics depicting scenes of nubile young things indiscreetly getting down with middle-aged Romans with their togas draped over the window instead of their thinning shoulders. Pompeii was famous in its day for its production of a particularly fine vintage of garum, the culinary condiment sauce made of fermented fish popular all across the Empire, but Pompeii was also renowned for its panoply of fine brothels. It had a volcanic reputation, so to speak, well before it got what you might call vulcanized. So there’s nothing new or even that particularly scandalous here.

B. wrote this in a bar in 1959. Bars, with their combination of gathered people and multiple alcoholic beverages for sale, do invite this dance of preening and display in couple with the attentions of uninhibited—sometimes drunken—lusters, and we know which end of this timeless flirtation spectrum Henry rests at. Throw middle age as a concept into the mix and the word “creepy” creeps in, but I guess not always. I’ve given up trying to interpret what makes men attractive to women when they’re so often not actually that attractive. But, to be honest, that’s just a pose I adopt because it’s less challenging. I do sort of get it, but that’s all on that.

The “Sleepless One” is of course His Satanic Demon-ness. Henry’s got it bad here. But, well, you know, it’s just a moment that passes, and comes around again, now and then, and maybe again, and the esteemed poet here has fixed and immortalized these normally volatile vapors of the libido, and here I sit—with an aching lower back, to boot, got from working too diligently on house-repair with all these college kids chastely (for the week at least) and cutely energizing each other and working their slipshod way into the big confusing erotic mess of youth and life and figuring it out as they go—forced into consciousness of that which, in my world, at this point, ought better stay locked beneath ones hat. (I can’t imagine reading this poem to an assembled literati.)

Still, I’m still smiling about it. B. is playing here, all in good fun. That Mrs. Boogry, she might as well be on Mars, as he says way back in DS 4 in the midst of another, more famous, foray into geezer lust. Garum, from what I read from the culinary archeologists who have worked on recreating it—with great satisfying mess and a powerful, old-oceanic stink—comes on strong with intense fish on the nose and heavy salt on the approach to the palate, but resolves into unexpected herbal and organic complexities: An attractive and compelling condiment indeed, they claim.

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