Comparative literature May 2013
To show why I suspect there is sometimes an interplay between
what I post and what she posts in apparent response, I’m going to take two
recent poems, one I posted and one she posted afterwards.
Although I believe my original assessment of her poem is
correct, this alternative comparison is a bit suggestive.
My poem opens with “If I get to know you from the inside
out, what more can I go on about, the real feel under the skin where there is
no sin, where no lies lie, my truth and your truth rubbed raw, scraping all
that crap that clogs the pores with all that superficial clap trap we can all
live without. I don’t want to go in and out, shouting out like a water spout, I
want to get in and stick until I know the thick of it, what you are all about,
until in is out and flows out my mouth or eyes or pores until I’m soaked sore
and know all of you and you me and that’s something to shout about. See?”
Her poem starts off “I’d give a penny for every time I could
open up my head and heart and put you there so you could see every time I think
of you, or see you or witness you in your endless beautiful action.”
She goes on to describe the beautiful person, sometimes
quiet, “without your arsenal of self-assuring practices,” with which he
protects his inner self, even though she sees him as perfect just the way he
is.
How he wears his heart on his brow, and carries others on
his broad shoulders… etc.
Her poem is clearly about her oldest friend, who lives
outside Philadelphia, and yet, there is that opening that suggests at least a
superficial connection, influenced by, if not a response.
What makes her poem seem relevant is its timing. She posted
hers a very short time after I posted mine, even though the subject of the poem
is someone else.
Both poems are written to someone at a distance, a longing
for someone that is not immediately available, but for whom the poets have
great affection.
While her poem is not a response, it seems that she may have
gotten the nub of an idea from reading mine, of letting someone inside her head
so that he can see and feel what she sees and feels about him.
Again, there is this fantasy in me that as poets we can
share ideas, part of a poetic conversation that even my cyber nanny might miss.
Maybe this is just my clinging to straws, hoping beyond hope
for a window to be open just a crack that allows for this meager sense of
communication, a thaw in the frozen tundra. But I may be hoping for too much.
I’m almost certain the scribe poem was directed at me since
it was full of controlled rage.
Am I to assume that I am the subject of only her angry
poems, while her nice poems are always directed towards somebody else?
I do not think her penny for your thoughts poem posting was
a coincidence, and yet it might have been something she was working on for some
time for someone she usually goes to meet when in a crisis like she did last
fall, but for some reason cannot make the trek this time – as my previous
assessment of the poem suggests.
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