My Father Was a
Quality Control Engineer
1.
1.
My father was a
quality control engineer
he searched for flaws, even at home
my brother and I met his eagle eye, dark brow,
beaked nose, but sometimes we evaded
What I studied in college
was how to make meaning, to make meaning
to make, to make
out of material given
Home or Homer, human or numen.
To mean, to mean.
he searched for flaws, even at home
my brother and I met his eagle eye, dark brow,
beaked nose, but sometimes we evaded
What I studied in college
was how to make meaning, to make meaning
to make, to make
out of material given
Home or Homer, human or numen.
To mean, to mean.
Continue on.
Make meaning, search for flaws.
Make meaning, search for flaws.
Until the flaws are what remain
of meaning made.
My father was a quality control engineer,
together we raised a superstructure
made of meaningful flaws.
Make meaning, search for flaws.
Make meaning, search for flaws.
Until the flaws are what remain
of meaning made.
My father was a quality control engineer,
together we raised a superstructure
made of meaningful flaws.
2.
After he left us
he turned to the golden eagle
that led my Subaru down the road
and in that dream
from behind a mask, he told me
you, you are eagles
haltingly, as if to say
you don’t need to worry
What I studied then
made no sense to him
What I sensed
made no sense either
Continue on.
Human not numen.
Until the flaws are remade,
are what remake us.
I really love what you seem to be after in this poem: making meaning in the spaces between flaws and acceptable "quality." One of the poem's basic moves seems to be to pull into the same frame the father's work (I imagine something corporate and sort of dry) as quality control engineer with the speaker's work as writer and student of literature. I find this to be a really powerful juxtaposition and well worth the poem's explorations.
ReplyDeleteI read some of the repetitions of the first half of the poem as examples of work the father might find flawed, like an undesired duplication in software that should be removed, but that in this different context, actually serve to advance the meaning being made.
A couple things I felt perhaps unhelpfully puzzled by:
Until the flaws are what remain
of meaning made.
This seemed to express a reversal of what I was expecting the role of flaws to be in art. I was expecting something along the lines of Leonard Cohen's, "that's how the light gets in." But I read your words to say that when art is made and made and remade, the flaws are what remain. Which, for me, highlighted the negative aspect of flaws and made me think of a pile of waste material being the end result of the work. Instead I wanted the flaws to become something else, to become the meaning itself, I guess. I wanted that word flaws to be something else. This could just be me reading the poem against my own idiosyncratic expectations, though.
And "he turned to the golden eagle" made me think that he turned and looked at a golden eagle, as if in conversation. But the text that follows makes me think that he became this protective golden eagle instead. Could he have turned "into" the golden eagle instead?
Hope this helps, thanks as always for the work.
Vasiliki, it always amazes me how much information can be gleaned from your visually spare poems! (so brilliant how you describe the father in eagle terms.) And how you make every word/image circle back on themselves, adding further layers of meaning.
ReplyDeleteI am so intrigued by the relationship of the speaker and the father. But I am not sure I understand what exactly is happening with them. In section 1, the speaker feels the pressure (?) of being under the father's trained eye for flaws, and there is the further distance of not understanding one another, of not having a common language. In the second part, the father is not physically (human) present (has he left the family? has he passed away?) yet present in the sense of a numen, in the form of the golden eagle (if he did indeed "turn into" the bird). But the father seems now to be reassuring the speaker, not critical of, though there is still the distance (In the line -- you don’t need to worry -- the you is not italicized. Because of your own eagle eye, Vasiliki, I can only assume there was a reason for that!), multiple distances even, as in behind a mask, in a dream.
The specificity of the Subaru stood out for me, and I wondered if that was a clue that the father was a quality control engineer for the auto industry. (But then, the word superstructure at the end of the first section made me think architecture.) Not that it matters -- the "quality control" being the important thing.
Like Dargie, I was puzzled by the 7th stanza in part 1. But also by the last couplet of the poem. I want to know what has happened between the speaker and the father in part 2, but it is unclear to me.
I hope some of this might be useful to you, Vasiliki. Wishing you and yours a happy Palm Sunday tomorrow!
Thank you both so much for this meaningful feedback! I feel guilty because I think I post here some of my most unlovable poems, and yet you are both so perceptive and patient. I am most grateful.
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