What is one supposed to make of a
poem that begins, “Love me love me love me love me love me / I am in need
thereof, I mean of love”? I guess it’s a love
poem, huh? I do suspect the definition of “love” here is the more narrow one,
though it broadens out into actual emotion by the time the poem is over. The
emotion is complicated when he acknowledges that to marry the young and
beautiful Kate was a “hasty & violent step” for her. Then this: “Slowly the
sloth moved on in search of prey”—a reference to conventional sloth & laziness
clearly, but also a more complicated reference to the work-inhibiting habits,
like booze intake. The sloth crossing
the road over crackling electric wires is an emotionally complex image, at
least, and then a reference to real complication: “Swiftly the wind rose,
gorgons showed their teeth, / while the bombs bombed on empty territory
beneath. / I love you.”
To juxtapose that last obsequious
“I love you” with violent images of bombs and monsters raging over a landscape
of emptiness—yikes. Relationships can be loaded with this kind of thing, of
course, though it’s generally not supposed to be held up for public consumption
and commentary. You talk it out with a trusted friend or two over lunch or a
beer. If you live near one of the coasts, you pay extravagant money to work it
through with your therapist. This? I feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, like I
should politely turn my head and cough. In a bar, I’d just throw this out: Show some pride, will ya? Keep your
squabbling and your hat-in-hand groveling and begging for sex to yourself, will
ya? Jeez! But that was not how
this guy rolled. I do sometimes find his emotional exhibitionism distasteful,
and I question whether he crosses the line between courageous art and a simple
undignified dropping of his pants. I want to hand him a canvas tarp from out of
the shed, or grab a towel off the clothesline and toss it at him. Then pretend for
a couple hours I didn’t see what I saw. I’ll work on the car in the garage,
change the oil and the sparkplugs, while listening to the Reds and Cardinals game
on the radio. Then I’ll go fishing, and when I catch the first bass of the
evening I’ll pop the hook out of his jaw, and there will be some blood, and I’ll
hand this business to the fish and let him carry it to the bottom of
the river and stash it under a goddam rock, where it belongs. I will feel
grateful to the fish and acknowledge the animal’s admirable stoic dignity. Fish
are solid that way.
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