This is fresh paint :). It's the first poem I've written since turning in my thesis. Any suggestions for improvement would be most welcome! And a brief note, I'll be at my final MFA residency from January 2-14. I will try my best to comment on poems during this time but will write comments after I get back if need be. Thanks for your patience.
Survival, or Letter to a A Lover
What was hard
at first
became less so
over the years. This slow
releasing of
self: of trusting again.
It's like snow melting on a window pane.
It's like snow melting on a window pane.
Like a blue
checkered table cloth that finally,
finally allows
itself to sag onto the floor.
The smallest pull
unravels it all.
After years of
erecting barriers, sealing
foundations,
putting plastic on the windows,
I’ve become so
tired: it’s grueling
to keep the
world out. But don’t you see,
my dear, that
all the body wants
is to take it
all in? Together, let’s unglue
the hinges,
take in the aches:
yes, the
grease, sugar plums, and
the rust, too.
Lean in closer: taste
the browning sugar
on my tongue—
and later,
perhaps this memory
of a fleeting
sweetness will be
enough to
sustain us both.
Shannon, Happy Birthday and congratulations on your MFA!! I enjoy the slow and careful way your lyrical poem unfolds. I appreciate the core image of the body as house, and this questioning of boundaries, of what's inside and outside. I especially like the line-- 'it's grueling//to keep the world out.' I also loved the "grease, sugar plums and/the rust" I'm not so sure about 'let's unglue the hinges, take in the aches'-- (mostly I don't get what it is to 'take in the aches'). In the second stanza, while I appreciate the directness of --'of trusting again' -- I think it might be too 'on the nose', as they say. Does the body want to take it all in? That is a very brave statement!
ReplyDeleteShannon, it's such a joy to read your poems again. (And yes, yes: congrats on your MFA!) The voice here feels rich and true to me. What's at stake is huge: the speaker's relationship, not just with the lover, the "you," but with the world - which, as she says, the body wants to take in - her desire to let go of protecting herself, a desire to trust and to open. Like Vasiliki, I love the body-as-house, particularly the tablecloth and the plastic over the windows. The figurative language seems to me to fall into a couple of different categories: house (foundations, hinges, windows, rust, and grease); weather (snow melting - plastic covering the windows seems to me a weather image, too); and food/sweetness (browning sugar, plums). It seems to me the house images are the strongest - perhaps because there are more of them, and also because many of them are particular and lovely (again, the tablecloth, the plastic!). I'm wondering about focusing in on house (and maybe weather too? since it is so closely related) in revision - centering the poem on those images. The sweetness/food images are pulling in a different direction, I think - although another way to go would be to delve into these more deeply, make them more specific. I hope this makes sense! This one feels very moving to me. I've missed this voice - so glad to be with it again.
ReplyDeleteHi Shannon,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this lovely poem and congratulations on the MFA. I tend to enter poems first through sound and form, and your couplets move really well, build upon each other, and keep me engaged. I agree with Kasey that the house imagery is most intriguing, and I too wonder about letting those images do most of the work for you. George Opppen's short poem "Solution" comes to mind, even though your voice is much more lyrical, as Vasiliki points out. I can't find a link to the poem, but I'll see if I can dig it up and copy it here later. I hope this is useful!
Congrats on the MFA, Shannon, and thank you for the poem!
ReplyDeleteI love the intimacy of the couplets here; that form seems so fitting to the subject at hand. I'm interested in the relationship of the opening sentence to the rest of the poem. The opening sentence made me understand that the poem was going to articulate an increasing ease - In the past, this thing was difficult, but it got easier. But the poem itself seems to do something a little different - to still be in the point in the time line when this thing is still hard, and maybe just emerging into a point where it is getting easier. The speaker seems to be trying to convince herself, on some level, that this releasing/trusting is possible, is inevitable, and is ultimately easier. I'm wondering how others read this (opening line versus how the poem plays out) and if the poem would be stronger if the two gestures were more consistent, or if the poem exists to explore the tension between them. In the latter scenario, I like the idea of the opening line reflecting the speaker's incomplete self-knowledge or ~wishful thinking about the ease of releasing, and the rest of the poem reflecting perhaps a more realistic view.
Congrats on turning in your thesis, Shannon -- that must have felt good! I love the mention of sugar plums (a surprising image in the world of this poem), but agree with Kasey they may pull the poem in a different direction. This may be a perverse thought, but could something from the world of the house imagery/materials sub for the sugar plums, be even more surprising? Is there a sweetness in the grease? Or the taste of rusted metal? For me, the heart of the poem is "that all the body wants/is to take it all in?". An aside: What I found interesting and effective is the choice of writing "window pane" as two words (puts the emphasis on pane/pain) and "table cloth" (such a different feel/reading from "tablecloth").
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for your comments and congrats! I really appreciate your feedback.
ReplyDeleteHi Shannon! Congrats on your MFA as well. Sorry I'm so late with my comments--and it's hard to be the person who comments last--I agree with so much that has already been said. I too enjoyed the central metaphor of the poem. I loved the image of that tablecloth sagging to the floor--what pulled it down? What has left it in that suspended, slowly sinking state? (These aren't questions I need the poem to answer, but interesting that they come with the image.) I wonder what would happen if the poem had fewer clues as to its intent--halving the title, for example, or beginning with one of the similes? I like the inclusion of the sugar plums in that list with the grease and rust--so interesting to imagine the tastes of them all, and to know that there can be sweetness in with the other two. It does make me think of the Nutcracker. I wondered if just "sugared" plums could change that, or maybe that association works too...
ReplyDelete