General Dwight D. Eisenhower
If I were to retitle this poem, and I wouldn't, I'd call it "daydreaming." I was thinking of Eisenhower as I wrote it, because I've been reading a lot about him recently, but the poem isn't about him. If it's representative of anything, it's memory, not the kind of remembering where we all long for some idyllic past, but the kind of disorienting memories that while entirely vivid, make no easy sense, even to the one who experiences them.
ike
I got in the car and drove until it broke down
crying; his mother and father were gutted by
the color of the changing leaves in spring.
I got out of the army on a technicality; my arm
was gone fishing, said he’d be back for supper,
but no matter how long we waited, through the
sun and the moon and the deaths of white stars,
no one came home with a rack of meals in hand.
The message I got granting me my discharge
your firearm only after confirming hostile
intent: “how do I know he wants to kill me?
does he have the same orders? will our rifles
stare at each other until the sun breaks down,
and the earth’s complaints against us are mute?”
At some point, I decided for myself that I would write in a manner that's even a bit hard for me to grasp. I'd prefer concrete, often silly images whose sinister undercurrents (i.e. left turns) are meant to be deeply disconcerting. From just last night,
I’m writing to you from a desk in a computer
in a mind made up: it won’t die, won’t lie
and
a-musing
a little and a lotta love alone
in the brief tickle of light to trickle
through the canopy: he can’t
make can-o-pees outta canapés
or the sun from a ruddy sunburn.
the first of which still doesn't make much sense to me, yet I keep rereading it for some reason. And the second, with its oddball reworking of the word "canopy," is precisely how I feel sometimes when trying to rework one idea into another: sometimes, they are wholly incompatible. So, if words and things never come home to roost, well, it's because you really don't have a clue what words and things are, and that's perfectly fine.
posted by Nicholas Theisen @ 5:48 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
You can only take so many left turns before you start driving in circles.
All right, that wasn't fair, to hit and run. But I really can't find any point of entry into this, and I actually find myself wishing you accompanied it with the usual self-conscious commentary so that I at least would have some compass points. I know you're working in a non-representational tradition, but you could at least throw us a bone. If words and things part ways - as they often do in my world of irony - they do have to meet up again every now and then for their parting ways to be meaningful. My question for you is: Do words ever correspond to things when you sit down to write?
It was very hard for me not to right my usual self-conscious blather, but I wanted to see if this poem actually communicated anything.
If I were to retitle this poem, and I wouldn't, I'd call it "daydreaming." I was thinking of Eisenhower as I wrote it, because I've been reading a lot about him recently, but the poem isn't about him. If it's representative of anything, it's memory, not the kind of remembering where we all long for some idyllic past, but the kind of disorienting memories that while entirely vivid, make no easy sense, even to the one who experiences them.
If the poem is not an appealing wall to beat your head against, that is a problem.
My Point? The Point is if this poem has a spiritual forefather it's Beckett, not Joyce.
Okay, the post has been heavily edited.
for some reason, i find these lines most appealing if you could remove "crying." the first line carries more poignancy without that footnote for me.
I got in the car and drove until it broke down
crying; his mother and father were gutted by
the color of the changing leaves in spring.
hehe, drive until it broke down, i wish i could do that.
Your first three lines of "ike" remind me directly of the Herzog film you just told me about. And this brings me to a strange point: I have frequently thought of writing lyrics poems from the viewpoint of film characters. How or why I would be tempted to do this is beyond me. The heights of artifice required are almost unimaginable. I guess it would be something like fan fiction in poetic form.
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