A little tenderness May 2, 2013

 


 

Just when everything seems clear as glass -- if glass is really clear -- she reverts to one of her old metaphorical poems and extended metaphor that seems to (yet might not) reflect the continuing emotional situation she seems to have been writing about for months.

I'm doing this analysis out of order partly because when I printed her poems out from her blog the dates came back backwards and I found myself an embroiled in a poem she posted later.

While this poem lacks the emotional fireworks of previous poems, it would be a mistake to see it as light-hearted or even remotely positive -- perhaps a deep breath between emotional episodes might describe this poem best

My best guess is that she is looking back at her relationship as an unexpected gift nothing pre-planned that somehow merged her dreams with reality at least around the edges even blurred the line inside her soul -- so that there seemed like there was no separation between her dream and her real world.

The metaphor seems to depict him  (her lover) or at least their love as an unexpected light that comes to her life one morning and then went away and yet she managed to hold on to some of this light which continue to feed her and she fed on it in the night only against to wait with the lights still there something throbbing in her veins her mind her soul and the blur became something close to clarity.

If this poem continues the sequence of poems depicting the rise and fall of what clearly is a powerful emotional affair it has transcended beyond bitterness and we get a strong nostalgia for what has transpired and a fair remembered fondly and positively even though it has come to an end.

It is over and yet it will never be over and she caresses inside of her the torch he seems to have lit when they first started.

Her use of third person remote point of view for this poem gives it the necessary distance for the observation beyond the heavy emotional moments expressed in earlier poems. She has moved on if not without regret then without guilt a sense of getting something positive out of the whole thing she will carry away with her despite of the loss.

The predominant image for me is watching something perhaps a ship sailing way into the Mists of sea carrying a light that has briefly yet significantly been part of her life and that light source has diminished remnants of the good feeling in it brought to her clings to her more than a memory but a life-changing moment she will retain from then on

It was not anticipated encounter she merely accepted it as it came and must  also accept it as it leaves a person or life that brought together her dreams and a reality blurring the lines inside and out.

It is something that carries her and she fed off of something that gives her comfort at those unusually troubling times at night the beat of the heart that seemed to also meet in her veins too blurring the line between him and her and giving her some sense of peace.

This is a very tender heart-warming poem even if it is ultimately a sad poem a looking back at something that has passed with great affection yet also letting that something drift away if not without remorse then without overt bitterness.

 

  2012 menu 


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Take me to the river July 7th, 2013

Image
  I'll go into the possible inspiration later for this poem she posted today for now she is once more delving into the concept of a row isolation and the struggle to retain strength during several years of adversity her geography is located next to a river named after Henry Hudson as she draws on an important metaphor for life as she lives it similar to an earlier poem that had her kneeling beside the sea in order to let things go, she can no longer retain in her life the wide Hudson with its never ending ripples sits on her doorstep a safe place she goes to breathe new life into her war worn bones and hot raw nerves she goes to the river side to keep from bursting what she is full to spilling and to avoid leaking out and wasting the essence of survival she cannot afford to lose the last few years she says have been truly deep and rough like the storms that rip across the river at times I'm strong she writes but sometimes I'm tired on the shore she watches the ships...
Read more

Hoping for the best June 24, 2013

Image
        I feel sorry for everybody involved in this trickle up game, not just the so called victims (we walk into    these things with our eyes open and are taken advantage of only because we have our own lusts we can’t control), but also our poet, who knows no other way of life, and must abide by the rules of a game she finds herself stuck in – and must do what she needs to do in order to retain any sense of self-worth. This is what she is, and this is what she must do. But even at her worst, her poetry suggests she is hardly the rascal the congressman’s PR person makes her out to be. She plays the hand of cards she gets dealt. She sometimes misreads the deck, such as assuming that her chef friend in New York was competent, when he was anything else but that. She also leaped onto the bandwagon when it came to our former temporary boss, assuming he could do more for her than it turns out he could, his temporary condition making him of little more use than a...
Read more

Ships that pass in the night July 9, 2013

Image
  A mentioned yesterday, there is more going on in regard to her latest poem than just the content. Again, we come to the possibility that our posts are somehow some kind of secret communication, wishful thinking on my part, of course, because I know she really hates me. I suspect I am deluding myself with hopeful thinking that she has maintained this one thin thread of communication between us, though this poem adds increasing evidence to that illusion – since I posted a poem that in some respects foreshadowed the one she posted this week. My poem included a video of me wandering a small beach in Jersey City near Liberty State Park, and was intended as a response to even earlier poem about borrowed lives. The poem goes I find no path among these river stones, so I make my own, turning this way then that, side steps that lead me nowhere, then back, my life made up of clumps like these small eddies filled with seaweed and people I need, but never see again when I move ...
Read more