Humbles

Humbles

 

If you have hit a deer on the road at dusk;

climbed, shivering, out of the car

with curses to investigate the damage

done, and found it split apart and steaming

far-flung in the nettle-bed, utterly beyond repair

then you have seen what is not meant to be seen

is packed in cannily, coiled, like parachute silk

but unputbackable, out for the world to witness

the looping, slicked-up clockspring

flesh’s pink, mauve, arterial red,

and there a still pulsing web of royal veins

bearing the bad news back to the heart;

something broken, something hard, black,

the burst bowel fouling the meat

exposed for what it is, found out – as Judas,

ripped from groin to gizzard, was found

at dawn, on the elder tree, still tethered to earth

by all the ropes and anchors of his life.

 

Frances Leviston, “Humbles”, Public Dream. London: Picador, 2007.

© Frances Leviston.

Frances Leviston's Poetry 

I like how this poem presents itself in a long, complex, sentence, which might be a lesson on how not to interpret poetry. T.S. Eliot once claimed that “comparison and analysis need only the cadaver on the table, but interpretation is always producing parts of the body from its pockets, and fixing them in place”. Eliot is favouring facts and the description of a poem’s technical characteristics over interpretation, i.e. over choosing a meaning for the poem. “Humbles” illustrates what happens when the cadaver is already on the table, describing a “What's done cannot be undone” type of situation, in which those “who have seen what is not meant to be seen” know that some things are “unputbackable”.

In Frances Leviston’s poem, someone hits a deer on the road, leaving the car to find out “the damage done.” From this moment on, the observer seems to be characterizing what happened to the deer and to his “flesh’s pink, mauve, arterial red” where there is “still pulsing web of royal veins”. Still, the language used is mechanical, as may be perceived in expressions such as “apart and steaming,” “utterly beyond repair,” “slicked-up clockspring,” which may refer to a clock, but also to a piece of a car’s motor. This is followed by an enumeration of the things that were once packed but, after being broken, are difficult to put into place again, such as a parachute silk. The line “but unputbackable” establishes a difference between the parachute silk and the deer’s bowel, between objects difficult to put back into place, and lives which cannot be replaced, thus causing certain moral guilt.

In a moment of pause, the observer sees the time it takes for blood to stop pulsing, the interval which is needed for the veins to bear “bad news back to the heart”. Everything changes and might not be repaired, “something broken, something hard, black”. In what is “out for the world to witness” lies the exteriorization of what is usually hidden and may now be “exposed for what it is”, thus leading unexpectedly to the biblical image of Judas, who, like the deer, was discovered at dawn “ripped from groin to gizzard”, his insides exposing the nature of his crime for all to see.

A piece of literary criticism might be willingly trying to reveal what is hidden, the formal technique of the poem, which, if exposed, may not be put into place again. One could, for example, describe Leviston’s brilliant use of consonantal repetition within lines or how the use of alliteration in “black / the burst bowel,” “from groin to gizzard,” “out of the car / with curses to investigate the damage/ done” is extremely skilful. One could also explain how her punctuation of the poem, which helps to delay meaning, places the reader in a similar position to those getting out of the car or observing Judas and pausing to make sense of what is happening.

Dissecting a poem’s internal organs, interpreting it to decipher its meaning affects irrevocably its reading. The exercise of “humbling” the reader (umbles names the insides of a deer, but “humbles” is also the way Judas is here doubly murdered, both hanged and ripped apart) should lead him to read the poem and nothing more, without showing its internal or external organs, as I’m afraid I might have done. 

Maria Sequeira Mendes

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Maria Sequeira Mendes is a professor at the Faculty of Letras, University of Lisbon, and collaborates with Teatro Cão Solteiro. She wrote for the first time about poetry at primary school, but the composition had spelling mistakes. It was then she promised she would never write about poets who used difficult words to copy. This has proved to be a difficult oath to live by.

Ectopia

Ectopia

A stout bomb wrapped with a bow. With wear, you tear. It’s true you sour or rust. Some of us were sure you’re in a rut. We bore your somber rub and storm. You were true, but you rust. On our tour out, we tore, we two. You were to trust in us, and we in you. Terribly, you tear. You tear us. You tell us you’re true. Are you sure? Most of you bow to the mob. Strut with worms, strew your woe. So store your tears, tout your worst. Be a brute, if you must. You tear us most terribly. To the tomb, we rue our rust and rot. You tear. You wear us out. You try your best, but we’re bust. You tear out of us. We tear from stem to stem. You trouble, you butter me most. You tear, but you tell us, trust us to suture you.

Harryette Mullen, “Ectopia”, Sleeping with the Dictionary. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. 

© 2010 by the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.

I like this poem because it deceived me not once, but twice. At first, I thought it portrayed a relationship which falls apart after a betrayal. Lines such as “some of us were sure you’re in a rut,” in which “rut” has sexual connotations (to copulate, to be sexually excited) seemed to point to this direction, as did lines such as “You tear us. You tell us you’re true. Are you sure?,” which appeared to illustrate the case of someone who, despite his\her promises, tears the relationship apart. This explanation did not, however, seem very persuasive: why would betrayal be wrapped in a bow? Perhaps clarification of the poem lay in Mullen’s book, Sleeping with the Dictionary, in which the correspondence between words and poems appears to be problematic. This would explain lines such as “You were to trust in us, and we in you. Terribly, you tear. You tear us.” To a poet who, in a way, relies on language and needs to trust in it to be able to write, “tear” could refer to one’s (in)ability to tame the words in a poem, which would be why, despite the fact that the poet trusts the poem and vice versa, this would not be enough.

However, both these readings ignore the title, in which interpretation for the poem is only half-concealed, as if it were a riddle. “Ectopia” points to an ectopic pregnancy, a case in which the fertilized egg implants in the fallopian tube or somewhere in the abdomen, instead of heading up to the uterus. Such pregnancies require emergency treatment and are always terminated before reaching their end, which is why the first line is “a stout bomb wrapped with a bow,” to which follows “With wear, you tear,” alluding to the possibility that, if the pregnancy progresses, the fallopian tube may be ruptured. But “rut” is also a variation of “route” and, more importantly, according to the OED, it meant “to beget a child”, which further helps to prove this reading of the poem.

In “We bore your somber rub and storm”, the verb points to the bearing of a child, which was being bore through the child’s somber rub, a word which illustrates two things which move or cause to move to and fro against each other with a certain amount of friction, i.e. mother and child in conflict. In the line “It’s true you sour or rust,” sour alludes to something which has gone sour in taste, but which has also become disenchanted, while “rust” also points to a colour and to the degeneration of something, of the baby. The reader then discovers that on “our tour out, we tore, we two,” which could indicate the rupture of the fallopian tube or an early abortion. Notice how in this beautiful line “we” and “we two” are repeated, mother and child together, while “Terribly, you tear”. And this is unexpected, they were to trust one another, they existed as a single entity, but were also separated when the embryo tore both of them. The woman speaking asks the baby not to display his misery (“strew your woe”), to keep his tears, he can do his worst and be a brute, but he is leading them to the tomb, to rue and rot, being torn apart from cell to cell. He wears them out, and tries his best to persuade her, but they are bust. This extraordinary poem thus describes the conversation between a mother and her baby, not only an ectopic pregnancy, but also the baby's and the mother’s utopia in which all could go well, that for a moment they were not away from each other. 

Maria Sequeira Mendes

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Maria Sequeira Mendes is a professor at the Faculty of Letras, University of Lisbon, and collaborates with Teatro Cão Solteiro. She wrote for the first time about poetry at primary school, but the composition had spelling mistakes. It was then she promised she would never write about poets who used difficult words to copy. This has proved to be a difficult oath to live by.

There is nothing wrong with my sister

There is nothing wrong with my sister

 

After you told my sister

that there was no one else

but you no longer wanted her,

she went to bed and tried to work out

what she had done

and what was wrong with her

and spent the night awake.

 

There is nothing wrong with my sister

but may there be something wrong

with the Ikea wardrobe

she helped you to build,

so that tonight it falls apart

and wakes you

from your unaccompanied sleep.

Lorraine Mariner, “There is Nothing Wrong with my sister”, Furniture. London: Picador, 2009.

I like this poem, as I always secretly wished my Ikea furniture punished the person who ended up staying with it, but also because it is an overt way of defending someone and of threatening another, making use of cuteness and formal simplicity to reenact long-term revenge, forever printed in the form of a poem. In fact, this poem seems to illustrate Sianne Ngai’s perspective, in Our Aesthetic Categories, according to which, in certain poems “Delightfulness offered by cuteness is violent”. In a chapter which relates cuteness with modern poetry, Ngai shows how some poems make use of characteristics such as “smallness, formal simplicity, softness or pliancy” (HUP, 2012, 64) to portray situations which are “neither precious, small or safe” (70).

“There is Nothing Wrong with my sister” is not a difficult poem to read or to understand, overtly refusing the notion that poetry should be understood as a riddle or as a text concealing a hidden message only to be comprehended by a clever few, nor could it, after all, we don’t know how good are the sister’s boyfriend hermeneutic skills. The poem is a message, in the likes of William Carlos Williams note about plums in “This is just to say”, which is why none of the vocabulary is complex.

The boyfriend’s choice of an Ikea wardrobe – the symbol of a type of furniture not meant to last – could say something of his relations, while placing him in the position of doubting whether it is safe to sleep near it, transforming this daily object into something potentially dangerous. At the same time, certain lines have a double meaning, in the sense that they portray the poet’s sister situation, but also the difficulties of those trying to assemble a piece of Ikea furniture. This may be perceived in the following lines: “she went to bed tried to work out /what she had done / and what was wrong with her / and spent the night awake”. Those of us who have faced Ikea’s apparently simple, yet difficult to follow, instructions, know the feeling of trying unsuccessfully to built a piece of furniture, giving it up for a few moments so as to resume the task, while thinking where it all went wrong and where we have failed.

The fact that the title of the poem is repeated in the first line of the second stanza also contributes to highlight the message being conveyed (and which is now an affirmation, but might also have been a form of advice conveyed to the sister during her sleepless night). At the same time, if the poem also describes the sorrows of those trying to assemble a piece of furniture, then the title, which is repeated in the second stanza, may equally allude to those trying to piece together Ikea’s furniture (and to the idea that there is nothing wrong with it, guilt lies always in those trying to assembly it wrongly).

The two stanzas have a similar dimension, but the clear and humorous message becomes slightly aggressive when the 3-beat pattern of the first lines is disrupted in the following lines, to be resumed in the initial lines of the second stanza and breaking-up again in the final lines of the poem. Even though the prosody is loose, thus, it does use form to produce tone. This implies that the tension between the pattern and the exceptions to it make the poem conversational, but also confrontational in the final lines, as if it is doing two things at the same time: repeating the pattern of the sister’s relation (and of those trying to assemble Ikea’s furniture), in which all goes well at the beginning, but is suddenly disrupted, and characterizing in a light way a situation which then becomes a warning (beware of the wardrobe) and a written form of revenge (everyone will know what you did to my sister). “There is nothing wrong with my sister” is, thus, a poem overtly clear, unlike the feelings of self-doubt which the boyfriend has left to the poet’s sister.

Maria Sequeira Mendes

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Maria Sequeira Mendes is a professor at the Faculty of Letras, University of Lisbon, and collaborates with Teatro Cão Solteiro. She wrote for the first time about poetry at primary school, but the composition had spelling mistakes. It was then she promised she would never write about poets who used difficult words to copy. This has proved to be a difficult oath to live by.