Yesterday, as you could tell, I was feeling a bit, well, poetic. I defer, with all humility, to those readers out there who are indeed either real poets or real connoisseurs of poetry, for such might find my poems tedious, trite, and rife with cliché. Others of you may disdain poetry, finding it too vague or esoteric, too pretentious or aloof. It is without shame that I confess that I love poetry for its freedom––the freedom to write with precision or imprecision (for effect), and the liberty to make obscure what is obvious (and too often forgotten), or to make clear what has become obscured by either indifference or forgetfulness.
For those of you who read my Lenten post, A Eucharistic Chore, Trash Bags In Hand, you will undoubtedly recall that it read a bit like a prose-poem: it was meant––in a sense––to bombard the reader with powerful images. Several of you understood its message immediately; others of you found messages that are entirely your own (which is fine). But I thought I'd share that an editor to whom I submitted that piece for consideration in a Christian journal felt that the "take away" value, ie. the lesson the reader should take from the piece, was too subtle, too hidden or ambiguous. This critique is wildly interesting to me, for I would think that the "take away" from A Eucharistic Chore is pretty obvious. But what I think that the editor was saying (she confirmed this in a later letter to me), was that she likes to present to readers ideas and lessons that are direct, immediate, and, most importantly, explained. In other words, the writer should not leave too much for the reader to discern and divide; the writer should not only do the writing, but also the thinking––even the concluding––for the reader. Readers, in her mind, need to be gratified immediately.
For me, this is exactly what I DON'T want when I read something literary, particularly a poem. A poem, to me, is really a riddle: it is like a novel in fragments, with the story mostly found between the lines. A poem should require some work on the reader's part; it should engage and steer and provoke the reader, giving the reader just enough clues for what should be an epiphany of some sort, a "Voila!" moment that bursts inside the mind of the reader, a revelation caused not because of heavy-handed pedagogy by the poet, but by the clues the poet offers and the discerning attentiveness of the reader. Poetry in a sense is prose's shorthand; or perhaps it is a bit like what a jazz improv is to a symphony: it is a fragment of a whole (and whole itself) that points to something between and beyond the notes. Or perhaps it is like a minimalist painting, or even pointillistic or impressionistic, where the strokes and dabs and points of paint hint at something that is not painted at all.
I would like to share one of my poems that was published last year in the Northern New England Review. I wrote it one night at Colgate University while attending a week-long poetry workshop there in 2002. I present it in its original form (only tiny adjustments) as written that night (and into the wee hours of the morning) after I was pressed on the first day of the conference to write about something I knew. Well, this poem is about something I indeed know. And I had the privilege of reading this poem to the whole conference, with Pulitzer-Prize winning poet W.D. Snodgrass among the listeners. Let me know what you think.
Spectacles en route
by Bill Gnade
There’s a flash from her hand as she reaches for him
and he puts his arms around her while another man
takes her from behind saying, ‘Can you manage? Try.’
She wears a mask through all of this, this breathtaking struggle
going on inside her, as both men hurt her
trying to give themselves better access
Some are resigned to watching, others waiting
to take their turn, to carry at least one woman to the waiting beds
in this makeshift red-light district that suddenly appeared
from nowhere like the wind with these sirens needing so much
in this tangle of motion with limbs writhing, seeking relief,
muffled mouths crying out to be lifted
carried away with straps and surgical tubes
each having taken the scenic route to this sudden tryst
to these impersonal, intimate encounters
as one woman’s chest is suddenly pressed hard by hopeful hands
her mouth pressed to his until better equipped men
arrive in time
lip to lip
by accident
My nose tingles with the sweet smells
wafting in the burning pungent heat of both women’s
dripping radiators
ferrous moans creaking in smoldering rhythm from iron manifolds
while the sun burns its face upon the skin
amid fevered groaning and whispered concerns
whispered behind hands held close to reddened cheeks
the sun a floodlight on bloodlight and broken teeth
men and women gripping wrists gauging pressures
and the fading throbs of fading heartbeats
other men charge their long hoses and pump
primers on generators, opening jaws
stretching hydraulic pistons, leaking fluid
on fragments of broken glass
beneath so many urgent feet
as another woman comes
wearing latex gloves
giving gentle instructions,
‘Place your hand here,
just inside her thigh.’
A dog peers from a shattered window
and is pulled gently into the arms of a man
who can do nothing else
but take the dog for a walk
toward some distant tree
no name on the dog’s collar as collars are
placed on two swollen women in heat
the feverish heat of the burning, sudden sun
with their tops pulled back, giving room
for more hands to massage hearts with tactical
shock
I pick up bifocals lying in the road at my feet:
‘How did no one see these?’
I lift them, gently blowing away dust,
and I raise them to my eyes
to see what she might have seen:
far: a husband who loves her
who in a pale rush
will rush toward hard news
after calling the children;
near: a sudden crush of metal and glass
and two women
surrounded by strangers
who met in the middle of the road
moments ago
one now like a deflated airbag
the other gripping to life,
her diamond ring shining in the sun
flashing blue, yellow, red.
______________
Peace to you.
©Bill Gnade 2002/2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
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