Coming out at last May 8, 2013
Far and away, this is her most controversial poem, shocking
in its admissions, even after a whole year reading her other poems.
I’m not going to say this poem vindicates my early reactions
to her – because the poem is far more than just an admission, it is a testimony
to new found freedom and an outpouring of relief that should not be judged by
any outsider, especially me.
For this reason, I am going to do my best to refrain from editorializing
and do as straight an analysis as possible, letting her own words explain her
logic – which may or many not fit with my sometimes too straight morality.
(It would be unfair – if I can use that word in this contest
– to pass judgement, especially at time has largely proved my previous judgments
wrong.)
Oddly enough, as shocking a poem as this is, it is not an
indictment or a confession, but a celebration, an coming out in poetry that she
has largely resisted in the past. Previous poems like the one about trickling
up or even about changed priorities hid behind complicated metaphors that only
the savvy could unencrypt. There is very little encryption here.
She opens the poem telling about a woman she spent an hour
with “Who made my everyday reprise of wantonness and regret a breeze,” she
writes.
The implication is that she has lived her life to this point
feeling guilty about her “wantonness,” a word that describes lascivious and
other excessive behavior, especially in regard to sex.
Who this woman is, she does not say. I might be her drinking
buddy from our office, but possibly not.
The poem calls this
woman “a seed of change,” blown in on some breeze and grew into a rare flower”
that turned into reality and stopped our poet’s constant self-reprisals – this rare
and wanton flower reminding the poet that “fair” and “unfair” are just words, “not
the way things are.”
The poet refers to this flower as a pure spirit, a miracle
that jolts the poet out of her “older, time-worn ways” and into liberation.
The world does not revolve around guilt and perpetual
penance, nor does life follow the prescribed rules of merit in which talented
people who work hard will succeed and get their just rewards. There is no karmic
light around the concept of “doing the right thing.”
“This is wrong,” she writes.
The key to happiness is not to base your worth on “right and
wrong,” “fair or unfair,” which ties you to a kind of life that makes you bleed
while you sit patiently waiting to serve.
“Life is, it is simple,” she writes.
In other words, if you buy into the bullshit people tell you
about doing the right thing then you’ve waited the beauty of what is.
The idea is to live life without regret or guilt, and not to
try to make it make sense.
Essentially, the poem says do whatever it takes to make
yourself happy and do not bind yourself with outmoded morality that only brings
you guilt and pain.
This is a poem of liberation, the culmination of a number of
poems over the last month that seem to be building to this idea of an unfair
world and that by obeying rules you are holding yourself back – and if you are
made unhappy by obeying other people’s rules, then to hell with the rules.
The shocking aspect of the poem is the fact that she finally
opens up about things she previously kept quiet or disguised in complicated
poetic metaphor, alluding to a robust sexual life style and her ambitions for advancement
as she struggled with resulting guilt.
The joyous tone of the poem comes from her throwing caution
to the wind and proclaiming in a loud voice she won’t be ashamed any more of
doing things that make her happy.
In some ways, this is a lot like a long-closeted gay finally
coming out, no longer having to live with guilt and fear.
And as shocking as it is to read how openly she professes
her life style (and how shocked I would have been and was a year ago by it
all), the poem is a declaration of independence, and at the same time, defuses
everything her enemies might use to discredit her.
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