Saturday, March 3, 2012

Assignment: analyze this poem in 250 words or less


The problem here, it’s tough to verbalize,
but so he’s like hiding this desperate cry
for help, the author, in gimmicks,
alliteration, haphazard, half-symbolic
hoo-hah, (and oh, don’t get me
started on the oozing parentheticals,
this sort of obnoxiously hyper-literate
and deliberate betrayal of grammar and voice)
and why? Why does he, the author,
do this? It’s sadness but it’s something
more, poetry is bogus, poetry’s the dog
you ran over backing out your driveway
(whosefaultwhosefaultwhosefault)
and so how’re you supposed to set
your jaw and take ownership, you can’t
I guess, you’re stuck with these glib, twangy
Southern political speech metaphors.
He says, he actually says in this poem,
I’m not even kidding, he says for real that
“time is a pendulum, and I feel now the force
component antiparallel to the direction
of my movement growing as I rise, saying
come back down and cease, come lie
with me, with my siren song of gravity.”
His words. It’s just a joke, what is the guy,
a physicist? A physicist-poet? No
such thing, poetry is garbage, poetry
is lame,  poetry is an excuse. Explain yourself!
I could go ask this guy why he does what
he does, and he wouldn’t have an answer, just
a dropped jaw, a masked chasm secreting
simile and evading the truth, the pungent
garlic on his liar’s breath never quite
enough to keep all of these fangs at bay.

No comments:

Post a Comment