Used

Here’s a Rita Dove poem that I’ve liked for a few years now. It makes me think of my mother and wonder if she ever felt this way.

USED
by Rita Dove

The conspiracy's to make us thin.
Size threes are all the rage,
and skirts ballooning above
twinkling knees are every man-child's
preadolescent dream.
Tabla rasa. No slate's that clean--

We've earned the navels sunk in
grief when the last child emptied us
of their brief interior light.
Our muscles say
We have been used.

Have you ever tried silk sheets?
I did, persuaded by postnatal dread
and a Macy's clerk to bargain
for more zip.

We couldn't hang on, slipped to
the floor and by morning the quilts
had slid off, too. Enough of guilt--
It's hard work staying cool.

Do mothers get this way universally once their children are grown and they’re not having any more babies? Is this something all mothers feel, or just the ones who define themselves as “mother”? (You know the type: the one who, at the end of the day, is nothing else but ‘mom’ and would choose to be ‘mom’ over every other single mark of identification.) It’s not a knock on women who are not this way; my own mother would probably define herself as “teacher” before “mother.” Maybe I’m wrong about that, but even so, I wonder if she ever felt this sort of empty feeling that Dove describes.

My mother slept in my old bedroom on the night I moved to college. I didn’t find this out until years has passed, and I don’t know why she didn’t tell me so when we spoke a few days later. When I left home, she never seemed to have a problem with it. She never had an overly sentimental moment of motherly affection, and I’m grateful for that. But if she was feeling “empty” enough to sleep in my bed, why did she not tell me? And a few years ago, when I was ending a call with her on the phone and accidently said “I love you” in that casual way I end calls with my wife, did she stammer through “uh… I love you too”? That lead me to think about the last time we’d said this to each other, and I honestly couldn’t remember. Needless to say, it hasn’t happened since. (And again, it’s not that I mind. I know my mother loves me. I’m just pointing out that I don’t think she’d define herself as “mother” if she were given the choice.)

It’s weird what poems can bring out. Songs are like this too, and I suppose most art forms are. I had no intention of writing anything about my mother when I sat down at the computer to post this entry, but when I read this poem, it just sort of happened. Someday I’ll write a poem that does this to someone, and then I can die happy.

Big Grab

I think this poem originally came from one of the humor issues of Poetry. If not, it could have.

BIG GRAB
By Barton Springs

The corn chip engineer gets a bright idea, and talks to the corn
chip executive and six months later at the factory they begin
subtracting a few chips from every bag,

but they still call it on the outside wrapper, The Big Grab, so the
concept of Big is quietly modified to mean More or Less Large, or
Only Slightly Less Big than Before.

Confucius said this would happen: that language would be hijacked
and twisted by a couple of tricksters from the Business Department

and from then on words would get crookeder and crookeder until no
one would know how to build a staircase, or to look at the teeth of
a horse, or when it is best to shut up.

We live in that time that he predicted. Nothing means what it says,
and it says it all the time. Out on route 28, the lights blaze all
night on a billboard of a beautiful girl covered with melted
cheese--

See how she beckons to the river of latenight cars; See how
the tipsy drivers swerve, under the breathalyzer moon!

We're in the wilderness now, confused by the signs, with a
shortness of breath, and that postmodern feeling of falling behind.

In a story whose beginning I must have missed, without a name for
the thing I can barely comprehend I desire, I speak these words
that do not know where they're going.

No wonder I want something more-or-less large, and salty for lunch.
No wonder I stare into space while eating it.

I feel like this poem should be an email forward or something. It’s just like that stupid old cliché (when a butterfly flaps it’s wings…). There’s not much depth to it or hidden meaning; it’s just fun to read.

The last stanza makes me laugh out loud. “No wonder I stare into space while eating it.” I dare you not to think of this poem the next time you see some idiot on the street or in a car or at work who is staring blankly ahead while eating chips from a small crinkly bag. I dare you. I’ll bet you can’t do it.

I Finally Managed to Speak to Her

This is a poem that makes me glad that I don’t have to go through the nonsense of dating anymore. Not that I ever really had to, seeing as how I married my “high school sweetheart” and all; but still, watching all my single friends do the whole dating thing makes me want to vomit. (Lovely image, I know.)

I FINALLY MANAGED TO SPEAK TO HER
By Hal Sirowitz

She was sitting across from me
on the bus. I said, "The trees
look so much greener in this part
of the country. In New York City
everything looks so drab." She said,
"It looks the same to me. Show me
a tree that's different." "That one,"
I said. "Which one?" she said.
"It's too late," I said; "we already
passed it." "When you find another one,"
she said, "let me know." And then
she went back to reading her book.

This poem illustrates just how hard it is to meet someone. If you’re an introverted person, like the speaker, you have a hard time striking up a conversation with someone. And when you finally do find an opening line, it’s usually quite meaningless and trite. An observation about the trees or the weather is so banal that it puts the intended audience on defense, thinking, what does this weird guy want???

But at least the speaker in this poem finds someone who will (a little bit) play along. Rather than just saying “uh huh” or “okay,” she actually responds with a question and a half-joking statement. That indicates that she is either a very nice person or that she is maybe interested in him too. But either way, she goes back to reading her book, so the speaker obviously thinks that he failed.

When I first read this poem some time last year, my friend Scott had just changed jobs and was working in the city. He took the bus there and had a two-hour commute every day. Sometimes he would call me from the bus while he was riding home (he had to do something to pass the time, I guess). Every now and again, he mention a beautiful woman that was sitting near him, or a “hottie” who was near him on the subway. But my friend is just like the speaker: way too nervous to know what to say to a woman to whom he is attracted, and so, every time, when I asked him “did you talk to her?” he would respond with some excuse as to why he couldn’t have gone up to her this time. There was always an excuse.

So to see this speaker make the move makes me think of Scott on that bus heading home from the city. I always wonder if anyone is looking at him thinking the same thing; I guess that’s human nature though.

Thank god I’m not part of that nerve-destroying world.

What the Doctor Said

Here’s a poem that I have always found to be somewhat perplexing. Not that it’s difficult or deep or anything like that; it’s just that it states a simple truth of life that baffles me (and I’m sure everyone else too).

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID
By Raymond Carver

He said it doesn't look good
he said it looks bad in fact real bad
he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before
I quit counting them
I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know
about any more being there than that
he said are you a religious man do you kneel down
in forest groves and let yourself ask for help
when you come to a waterfall
mist blowing against your face and arms
do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments
I said not yet but I intend to start today
he said I'm real sorry he said
I wish I had some other kind of news to give you
I said Amen and he said something else
I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do
and not wanting him to have to repeat it
and me to have to fully digest it
I just looked at him
for a minute and he looked back it was then
I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me
something no one else on earth had ever given me
I may even have thanked him habit being so strong.

Carver points out something that confuses and astounds. Why do we say “thank you” to doctors who give us bad news? We all see it, we all know it, and we all know it’s ridiculous—yet we all do it when we’re in that situation.

I have led a very sheltered life, and have been very grateful to the Fates for it. I come from a stable household; my parents love each other and love me; we never struggled for money but never had so much excess that we got spoiled; I never had a best friend betray me or commit suicide or take ill with caner; my grandparents all lived long enough to attend my wedding. I could go on, but I’ll spare you the Little House on the Prairie speech. My point is just that I don’t know much about loss or suffering or sorrow. So when I read a poem like this, it reminds me of that one moment that stands out as the most painful I can remember.

My wife and I got Spaz when we first moved in together about seven years ago. He was a September 11^th cat, one of the abandoned ones whose owners must have either been lost or simply lost track of him. So we adopted him, fell in love with him, and, two months after he arrived, lost him. He had feline AIDS and he was suffering. We had to put him down because it was the only responsible thing to do. But it hurt. A lot. We had him just long enough to be sure that he was a member of our family, and we were comfortable with our routine with him. So that night, a Friday, we took him to the vet and put him down. He had his little green catnip mouse in his paws as he lay on the cold metal table, and we left it with him when we numbly went out of the office. As we walked through the front door, we both were sobbing, practically unable to walk. But for some reason, we both, through our tears, felt compelled to say “thank you” to the vet techs behind the counter. What they were thinking I can’t say, but all these years later I still think of that moment and wonder why did we say that? They just killed our baby and we thanked them!

So this poem rings true, even to me.

*Homonymic Translation

This poem is my second attempt at a homonymic translation. The original work was a 13th Century Middle English poem called "The Cuckoo Song." I wrote this a few years ago and don't remember why I chose this particular poem as my jumping-off point, but I do remember that I was (at that time) reading a few books about the origins of English diction. So here's the "translation" that I wrote:

Summer is coming in,
The cuckoo sings loudly!
Grow strong and blow more
And spring the world anew.
Sing, cuckoo!

All bleed after the womb,
Lost after calling clues,
Bulling streets, barking underneath.
Merrily sing, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo,
The cuckoo sings well.
Day swallows the newest news.

I really love the first line of the second stanza, and I've been trying for years to come up with a way to use that line as the focus of a totally original poem; so far, I have failed. But I love the idea that we're born in blood that is not our own and then spend the rest of our lives bleeding ourselves. Juxtapose that with the image of a merry bird singing a happy spring song and it creates an eerie tone that I'm usually at a lost to find in my writing.

This is one of my favorite exercises to do when I'm suffering from writer's block. I will grab any ol' poem in a foreign language that I don't speak (which is all of them) and try to translate it based solely on sound. The result makes no sense at all, but then if you take that translation and attempt to use it to make something new, you can usually find inspiration for something you didn't know you had.

The Rejected Husband

I don’t know if I have ever read a more depressing poem than this. I’m adding it to the blog now because of a daydream I had yesterday that made me think of it.

THE REJECTED HUSBAND
by Wendell Berry

After the storm and the new
stillness of the snow, he returns
to the graveyard, as though
he might lift the white coverlet,
slip in beside her as he used to do,
and again feel, beneath his hand,
her flesh quicken and turn warm.
But he is not her husband now.
To participate in resurrection, one
first must be dead. And he goes
back into the whitened world, alive.

So, want to cry yet? Nothing like a good ‘ol “dead wife” poem to kill a mood, huh? A guy in my Dodge group read this a few years back and I’ll always remember his sadness when he read it. He was married, but there was something powerful and resonant in his tone as he read it that made everyone see immediately that there was a real connection between the man and the poem.

The imagery is what makes this so affective (and effective, too!). There is a very clear picture of the graveyard, the stone, the man, and it all comes together perfectly. The poet doesn’t say “he remembers her”; instead, he describes the memory of touching his lost wife. A perfect example of the “show, don’t tell” philosophy of writing.

As for me, I had a terrible daydream yesterday about what I would do if I lost my wife. She didn’t answer the phone when I called her, and that’s not like her at all. So being the eternal worrier that I am, I of course imagined her hit by a bus or a bitten by the all-too-common NJ poisonous viper snake. And that was followed by a series of alternating panic and sorrow, and then the realization that I would be just like the subject of this poem: alone, rejected (by death) and sad to even be alive.

What a depressing post. Sorry.

Warning

I was meandering around www.poemhunter.com (as I often do when I’m killing time on my laptop) and I came across a poet that I’d never heard of. This is not an altogether unfamiliar experience, but here’s the catch: I in the list of “The Top 500 Poems of All Time”! So I was very surprised to see a poet that I’d never heard of listed as having written number 15. I clicked the link and read the poem, and here it is:

WARNING
by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

How much fun is this poem? My wife and I love to laugh at the old ladies in their Red Hats and purple pantsuits; we get a good chuckle at their “kid at heart” mentality, knowing full well that she could one day be among them. But the voice in this poem is hilarious. She knows that she’ll be cranky and cheap when she gets old, and so she’s setting the stage for it now “so people who know me are not too shocked and surprised/ when suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.” What a great concept.

Today we are younger, and thus, have to be more responsible. We can’t do the things that the clichéd “old lady” does because we have to appear mature and “adult.” Why is it that it’s socially acceptable for an old man to take the sugar packets from the restaurant table but if I did it I’d be arrested for petty theft? I’m only half joking, but the idea is true nonetheless. Do the elderly do the strange things they do (as noted in the first two stanzas) because they have forgotten the social norms or do they do them as a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy? Do they realize that the arrogant young (me) make fun of them behind their backs and not care? Or are they ignorant of how they are perceived? I would try to pose these questions to my grandparents (my pop-pop Fred is turning 90 next month) but something tells me I wouldn’t get a serious answer. He’d probably look at me as though he didn’t understand—which makes me wonder if he does understand and just chooses not to give an answer….

Whatever the answer, I’m glad that I found this poem. I tried to look up the author but I haven’t had much luck with it yet.