I see my book on her bed where my body should be, the smooth surface of sheets and blankets as yet unruffled, like a calm sea though not for lack of wanting, my gaze turned deliberately away, scared to stare there for too long for fear it is all an illusion, like the mirage a long wanderer in the desert sees, desperate for a sip that will we my parched lips, far too long without to risk jinxing this by wishing too hard for it, my face on the book, face up on the sheets as if my body is already there, yet absent hers, just another room in this string of rooms full of doors and windows, and stark daylight that steals away any real thoughts of romance, one more sot on this tour of her life before breakfast.
I don't absolutely know for sure if what they did to her to get rid of it from her body will keep her from bearing kids, the way something similar that they did to my girlfriend in college, ending the sheer possibility of living what we all think of as "a real life."
It is not like with me and my overly ambitious prostate that doctors give me blue bills that allegedly let me function (I still need a crane to get up what I used to try to keep down when younger, a billboard back then that fully advertised my affections, sometimes my intentions, while today it all operates in stealthy, living up to that old Seinfeld comment, "How do you men live with that thing?"
I don't know if she even considered kids, and how disappointed she is if she did and if what they did to her won't let her?
Does it all pile up inside her, losing not only the man she most desired, but all possible progeny -- her life in that regard ending even when she managed to save herself from a fate as bad as death.
When she decides to go public, she goes whole hog.
While she always used Facebook as a kind of platform to work
things out, I rarely paid much attention to it while I still had access – and
when we were friends, I sometimes unfriended her, but not so much for anything
she did, but rather because of how I reacted to what she posted (mostly amazing
selfies), my hormones going crazy each time I logged on and saw her.
As it is, I’ve not had access the few times I checked,
although last January she did something similar to what she did over the last
two weeks – during some episode with some guy she had just broken up with (No,
I have no clue as if it is the same guy then as she is trying to lure back
now.) She kept calling the guy a liar, then later removed the post.
She did similar things to my posts on her site during that
very short time when we associated with each other. I kept saying giddy teenage
things that she said made our relationship too obvious to too many people,
explaining why she removed them.
Her last week in posts has been extreme to say the least,
going from posts about needing someone to cuddle with to the last two posts
from feminist site that showed an image of a woman provocatively dressed in
public and captioned by the feminist site saying: “This still doesn’t mean yes,”
with her own caption saying “I was (am) at (wo) man and do you agree. Then, she
posted something from the same feminist site saying a woman needs to be a warrior
like a snake and as innocent as a dove.”
In-between, she continues her sale pitch for food, giving
out recipes and promoting a new Asian store to her friends, She apparently went
to a play with some older woman friend and spent the light with a couple of RR’s
friends (this is as assumption), a man and woman , and the second night with a
woman, all the time complaining she needed someone to cuddle with.
With her throwing open all the windows and doors to her
personal Facebook page, she has largely abandoned her artistic page (which I
loved) and has focused primarily on food.
Can’t tell for certain, but she seems determined to make
this perhaps into a new career path, although her messaging is clearly aimed at
one person in particular, most likely the man she wants to come back,
demonstrating apparently how open she can be, when in the past she tended to be
open only in private, saying and doing things now in public I would never imagined
her saying and doing.
You have to wonder what she went through all those years before she met me and went through it all again.
Was she like all those pretty girls I knew in school, who loved the bad boys until they came to realize bad really meant bad, by which time it was too later to find a nice boy, cause nice boys are only sugar-coated bad boys pretending to be nice, just like me,
And realizing this, she also came to realize she might need to use what she has if she is to get what she wants, just as that old lady who bobbled up brothers and sisters said, never give it away for nothing, and never give away your heart at all.
And this all making sense in some perverse way in a perverse universe where fair is only fair for people who have power to control it, and if she wants to be someone someday, she need to control it somehow or end up nobody at all.
It’s too soon to make assumption about what life was like
for her in 2003 when she allegedly wrote the poems I’ve been looking at, and too
soon after having only studied two of them closely to draw more than generalizations
about what made her change priorities when she said she did, and what
particularly she did when she did – putting aside all of my guesses about what
exactly he poem on changing priorities really means.
That said, I’m going to take a guess as her psychological condition
at the time and what social forces played into the decisions she made
(instructed, no doubt, by the old woman on the cruise who likely told her she
needed to take control of her own life.)
Although I assumed differently when I started down this
yellow brick road through her life, she apparently did not start out as master
of her own fate, and was likely the kind of girl growing up that let men walk
all over her, so hungry was she for affection and perhaps also a need to feel
cool – which means she was likely attracted to the bad boys, who looked and
acted cool, but tended to be ruthless with women, using and abusing before
throwing them away.
When she found a man to spend time with, her likely tried to
control her, perhaps intensely jealous, suspicious about other men she might be
seeing, maybe even physically abusing her, almost certainly trying to keep her
from thinking for herself, shaping her into eye candy he could lug around when
he wasn’t busy cheating on her.
And she took this because she either internalized his opinion
of her (as a worthless bimbo now body else would want) or she lacked enough self-esteem
to resist, mistakenly believing she either deserved no better or that all men
are all the same (which we are.)
Even though she told me in the one-eyed jacks poems not to
save her, this is clearly what she wanted at some point prior to 2003, a worthy
knight in armor who could help bring out the best in her.
Yet, as hard as she searched, no worthy knight appeared, and
she began to realize none might ever do so, hanging upside down in a world that
is really upside down, in which she sees other women in now-former condition
being exploited just as she was when she was like them, before being
enlightened, only her is a lonely life, a bitter life, one in which she wanted
an unfair world in which she has no place.
She is ambitious and knows she has more than enough talent
to succeed, and would so if the world was fair, only it isn’t fair, especially
when it comes to women.
She finds herself flying by the seat of her paints, knowing
success is within reach, if only she can grasp it (this based on the connect of
another poem in this series which I’ll look at more closely shortly.)
Then, she meets the old lady on the cruise, who teachers her
how to survive as a woman in a man’s world, how – perhaps – to use men’s urges
against them, or more precisely, to advance her own agenda.
It is not something she feels opposed doing and perhaps knew
it all along that this is how women survive, all of this coming at t a time when
her old world is collapsing, after the rape, after that poor girl’s suicide, after
her other aspirations have been thwarted.
It is difficult to tell from her poem exactly what advise
the old woman imparted to her, or whether or not this advise contributed to her
getting married and her pursuit of a musical career on the road with the band
(I suspect it did). Although now, ten years later, it is easy to see how she
ended up in the place where she started, living and touring with a jealous husband,
and a band full of men who had no respect for women whatsoever. But at the time
when she wrote these people, the new path seemed like the right path, and the
tools the old woman taught her out to use seemed to bring her much of what she
ached to get.
Upside down, inside out, we build coffins from trees like these, men who lobotomize our selves with lust for power, sometimes with the willing help of women, who we have not yet despoiled and so remain innocent, naive, low-hanging fruit easily shaken loose, their grip on their own lives lost, while we come to hate women like this one, who refused to come down or admit her view of our world as skewed, determined to cling to those branches she hopes she can climb her way to fame, she defying us and our vision of the universe, already wounded, already having her faith in fairness shaken as such an early age, perhaps wiser for having gone through it, learned from it, grown with it, and so she can have her own life without nailing herself up in a coffin.
Despite what I said about going onto her other poems that I
found from 2003, the first of these still intrigues me, partly because it says
a lot about her early adult years.
It is a bitter poem that opens with powerful negative images
concerning men – most likely about a particular man or a series of men who have
the same traits.
The poem is – according to its title – about freeing herself
from codependency, and this alone raises questions about her early
relationships.
Codependency is often called relationship addiction in which
one of the partners tends to adopt the role of caretaker, while the other
person becomes dependent on that person, relying on that person for emotional
or physical support.
This, according to experts, often leads to low self-esteem,
lack of autonomy, and a sense of worthlessness.
While most often, codependency is tied to a romantic relationship,
it can occur among friends or family or even coworkers.
In some ways, it is unhealthy for everyone involved, and may
make both feel trapped in roles they never intended to adopt.
Normally, both parties have the ability to make choices, but
often, this becomes abusive, as one tries to control, manipulate and intimidate
the other. This isn’t always physical abuse, but it can also include emotional,
sexual, spiritual and financial abuse.
“Abusers may use various tactics, such as intimidation,
threats, isolation, and gaslighting, to maintain power and control over their
victims. Domestic abuse leaves victims feeling trapped, helpless, and scared,”
according to one professional journal.
But even when it doesn’t sink to open abuse, the codependent
partner cannot function on their own and does not have healthy boundaries. They
arrange everything in their life around another person. This is often the case
where there substance abuse.
This may explain why she used “Coffin Nail,” “Dog Leach” and
“Lobotomy Pick” in the opening lines of the poem to describe just how
controlled she felt.
“These are the tools of men, and the tools of women who have
not been cursed with the violation intense enough to shake them free,” from
their place upside down in the tree “like me.”
She is saying that her
relationship is a coffin to which she is chained, and she is expected to serve
this man (most likely) and remain stupid (lobotomy pick).
But she feels alone in her struggle, not even apparently
having other women beside her in the tree, as she pedals backwards, the trunks
of trees like tree stops whizzing by.
“But all I see is dirt, old soda and beer cans, used
condoms, the feet of men who think they are standing straight up,” she wrote.
All she sees is the downside, the detritus of a
relationship, and yet, she seems to be seeing clearly for the first time what
the relationship really is “dirt, soda and beer cans, and used condoms.”
Although the world seems upside down, she believes she is
the one right side up, and yet, wonders how she can defy expectations and rise
above the menial existence such a relationship condemns her to.
She wants to “rebirth” herself with someone who expects more
than just a slave or dog or bimbo.
She just can’t find a man who whose feet are imbedded in
coffin, who live their lives with the death as the only change they can look forward
to, and do not seek anything new.
All lack the tools (she repeats this word from the beginning)
required to bring her rebirth.
This use of tools in a negative way first, and then again,
the more positive tools men lack is important here, perhaps indicating men prefer
to control the women they profess to love, rather than having a more positive
equal partnership.
So, she is left to her own devices (no, not a space pen because
they are a tool of men, too) again referring to the tools men use and implying
she must avoid getting into the same power trip men employ (this my assumption),
and thus, on her own, she stands a chance of achieving something.
Then, she makes reference again to what she sees from her upside
down perch in the trees (Dirt, cans and condoms).
“If I could only disentrance myself from the rubbish and
feet and lose my fear of falling on my head,” she concludes.
Her use of “disentrance” implies something significant since
it means “to awaken from a trance or from deep sleep; arouse from a reverie;
free from a delusion,” suggesting she has allowed herself to be taken in by the
man and the situation, something oddly enough seems also to be the case much
later in her dealings with RR and others, and paints a slightly different picture
of who she is in relation to me and others at the office, although what rings
out loudly in reading this poem is the quote from the one-eyed jacks poem she
wrote about me much later when she said, “Don’t try to save me.”
Einstein might have been talking about her when he spoke about his pocket watch, and how it works, how to know what makes her tick is like trying to figure her out by studying the outside of the pocket watch, she providing poetic clues that only increase the mystery, if not stopping time, then slowing it down just enough to hear each tick strike, and she, suddenly, throwing open all her windows and doors, blinding us with a sudden rush of details we can't possibly digest, all those inner springs sprung, all those tiny gears coming undone, a blaze of light we ached for before scalding us, making it impossible to study any of the details, though in it all, as it washes over us, as the ticking goes fast again, we get the sense of panic she feels and her need to put it all out there while she still can.
I don’t know exactly when she wrote this poem, but because
it was included in the five poems posted as a tribute to Koch – around 2003 – I’m
assuming it created then or perhaps as early as 2001 when she still studied under
him at college.
It could also have been written at any time after 2003,
since I do not know precisely when the collection to Koch was put together,
only that he died in 2002, and she dated one of the other poems in the
collection as 2003.
But this poem in the collection with deals with codependency
reflects many of the themes of later poems with which I am more familiar,
although with a sharper, almost feminist edge, bordering on a nearly hostile
approach towards men and this sense that men are somehow holding women down and
that some women are helping them.
She opens the poem with a description of a “coffin nail”
that hold fast the dog leach, equating it with a lobotomy pick that make slaves
of woman.
“These are the tools of men and the tools of women who have
not been cursed with the violation intense enough to shake them from their tree
place.”
She gives the impression that she has been violated, and is
upside down, pedaling backwards, looking down at the ground an at men “who
think they’re standing straight up.”
But she’s the one right side up even if she is looking down
at the ground.
Even in this early poem, she deals with a very familiar subject
-- expectations of success, and how it is being denied to her (and by default
other women).
How does she (then) escape the menial existence fate seems
to have carved out for them?
“All I want is the chance to rebirth myself through someone
who wants more,” the poem says, a theme clearly present in her current
situation of recovery, and of love she can’t have, with her seemingly still in
search of a partner who can help her achieve.
“But the feet of men I see fly by are sticking out of
coffins,” she writes. “They protect themselves – with death as the only change”
and also the only chance for something new.
They lack what is needed to provide her with rebirth: “to
spit me, gooey, sprawling into another life.”
So, she is left to her own devices – trying to avoid the
tools men use – with a chance of achieving something, although always fearful
she might fall on her head.”
It is impossible to say what transpired in her life to lead
her to such bitterness towards men (this being several years after the rape),
but this poem seems connected to her change of priorities poem (which is part
of this same collection) and to the later concept of trickling up, using her
own tools for advancement as she had been instructed by the old woman on the
cruise.
She clearly is saying in this poem that society is stacked
against her, and that she has to step outside the traditional concept of fair
play if she has any hope of succeeding – something of a foreshadowing of her
fair/unfair poem from earlier this year, or as the old adage goes: “all’s fair
in love and war.”
As noted in my entries on her changed priorities poem, she
has come to a point where she needs to be reborn, and so echoes her current
situation as well.
No man, this poem from back then suggests, is going to willingly
help her get what she feels she deserves, and so, she must get them to help her
unwittingly otherwise she’ll be hung out to dry, just another woman trapped in
a life she doesn’t want to lead.
All this raises a lot of questions about her life and what
she did to advance herself, trickling up, perhaps even using her marriage to
achieve something she could not achieve alone, eventually finding herself
trapped in another kind of servitude, playing with a band whose members disrespected
her, married to a man who cheated on her.
All this is reading too much into such a short poem, and yet
some of the elements are there in this poem and in the change of priorities
poem, as well as the other three poems in this collection, a sense of need, a
sense of being cheated out of something she believes she should have, theme
that continue up until now, when she finds herself again trapped in a situation
– not completely of her own making.
I’ll come back to this poem later. But want to look at the
other three poems first though a quick reading of those poems seems to verify
this theme of her needing to do what is necessary to survive.
Can't he see what he is missing, how lucky he is to have it at all, and how he has this one last chance to get it back, a gift on a silver platter, more than just another face in the crowd. He must remember what it feels like to be close to her, maybe too close, where her breath is his breath, where he drowns in the scent of her hair.
Can't he even remember what it feels like to touch her, to have her breast tremble under the touch of his hand, his warmth swelling against hers.
Can't he see what he's missing now that he seems miles away, the lost senses in a lost world, she offers him freely, like a human sacrifice, as if he might be a god.
Does he not miss it, the every lasting kiss, the sweetness of each precious moment beside her.
As pointed out, her most recently posted poem is an overt
message (as has her last few poems as well as those posted earlier this year)
to a man for whom she is extremely attracted, but with whom she had some dispute
that caused her to reject him.
My best guess comes out of poem
she posted in spring, when she talked about not wanting to give up her own identity,
keeping “I” rather than accepting “we,” a choice she has since come to regret.
She clearly is still attracted to
him, and perhaps needs him at a time when she is facing some of the biggest challenges
of her life, her food anxiety, not to mention her cancer.
In May, she seemed to have a
change of heart, seemingly deeply in love, although possibly a career opportunity
(although I suspect she keeps real romance apart from her tendency to trickle
up – such as with the chef in New York, who mistook her affections for love
when she seemed to be positioning herself as a person of importance, his mismanagement
spoiling it all, including their relationship, and he eventually graduated into
becoming one of her stalkers.)
The impression I get is that she
really is in love, regardless of what the old lady on the cruise taught her all
those years ago.
To win him back, she seems to be
using every trick possible, playing the sympathy card (her food problem, her
cancer, her possible loss of job, her fear of dying, her fear of living alone
etc.)
She’s even trying to show how much
she’s changed, has she’s become a do-gooder (as her essay on the death of the
baby showed, although in truth, I suspect she’s really a sheep in wolf’s
clothing, and that down deep, she is really a pretty tender-hearted person –
something I suspected when she posted her compassion poem and her quick sand
poem after I got bushwhacked on her birthday a year ago.)
She has thrown up her life for
public examination, to show him how she had turned a new page in life, and how
worthy she is for his love and compassion.
And yet, he still seems remote,
and each poem seems to get more manic as she gets more and more desperate to
convince him to come back into her life.
I go back and forth in my belief
of what is going on, whether this is all manipulation, or is she in deep crisis
and really needs this man to help get her out of it.
The quality of her poetry, even
when the shrillest, suggests he is a man of more than reasonable intelligence,
someone she fully believes will get the array of allusions and references, many
of which I even miss, and above all, someone she feels is worthy of her love.
For all its windows and doors, for all its neatness, the stacked genes, the piano and piano music, for all the glittering kitchen utensils, the paintings on the walls, the books on the book shelf, the computer and keyboard, even with the book on the bed, this place, this home , this sanctuary, exudes loneliness and isolation like a self-imposed prison to which she had times and for special people , invites visitors who no matter how often she clicks her heals or chant "there's no place like home" they leave and she -- while protected behind the might walls of this fortress -- finds herself alone, defending her most vulnerable self against real or imagined threats, having too few implements of war with which to do so, a lone defender in a lonely work, filled with things she loves, but not those people or that person she most needs to share it with, no one to watch her back, no one to make sure she's safe.
So, it appears that the poem she wrote about Koch in his old
fashioned classroom may have been done in 2001, while she was still attending
his classes and a year before he died, or at least this is how it appears on
her posting earlier this year when she labeled it “circa 2001.”
Oddly enough, this was not among the five other poems I found
recently which were supposedly dedicated as a tribute to Koch in 2003, a year
after his death.
Yet, in this group was the change of priorities poem she
reposted last December without the original title.
As pointed out already, my presumptions about the meaning of
the change of priorities poem changed somewhat when I discovered the title, she
originally posted it under, suggesting that the poem’s meaning was not what I
had assumed early on – or at least made me question the accuracy of my original
reading.
I still can't get my head around the meaning of the change
of priorities poem coming up with all kinds of alternative meetings partly
because it is so drenched in metaphor.
My first interpretation back last December seemed adequate
and accurate at the time. But on I found the five poem Koch memorial and the
original title, I revisited the poem, but I’m still not comfortable with the
revised version either.
In truth, you could actually impose whatever meaning you
want on this poem and find evidence within it to support that version.
It could be about her coming out and her getting involved
with women, which the opening metaphor might support as a metaphor for female
sexual organs, and later supported by her meeting the old woman on the sail.
Yet, there are pieces that just won’t fit that narrative, and so I still
grapple with what the poem actually means, distrusting my first impression and
yet not comfortable with later interpretations either.
I'm certain I'll revisit that poem later for more
perspective. At the moment, there are four other poems in that collection which
seem to echo themes of her poems over the last year and a half which there some
study as well perhaps may provide clues to the meaning of this poem since it is
included in that collection.
One thing for certain, something that she echoed in a poem
about me more than a year ago to be wary of mistaking the poetry for the person.
She meant it cynically, but it is also true and evaluating her work not to
mistake what she is saying as literal reality or an actual photograph of her
life although there are elements of that as well.
And yet, my logic for anticipating the poem as I did, has
some significance in literature, which might be justified even with the
original title.
As pointed out the poem opens with a declaration of expected
change, and then describes a small part of poised lips that dangle like fruit.
“A small inconsequential pair of poised lips like the fruit,
delicate, red, sincere and demanding.”
This is a strong sexual image, and in ancient times, fruit
often symbolized both an uncircumcised penis and a vaginal membrane, an image
since the 16th century, artists, writers, musicians, and others used frequently
in this regard, in particular Shakespeare and other 16th and 17th Century
writers,
referring to some of the notable ways Europeans were using
the fruit to talk about sins of the flesh.
In contemporary times, fruit – especially the cherry is most
frequently associated with the female anatomy.
Thomas Campion in his 1617 poem "There Is a Garden in
Her Face" likened the fruit to what it most commonly symbolizes today: the
sex appeal of a pure, virginal young woman, although virginity tends to be seen
as something that, sooner or later, is due to be lost.
While I’m not claiming she was a virgin in 2003 when she
wrote this poem, she may not have been as fully experienced as she later
became, and this poem – according to my initial reaction – seems to be a poem
about loss of that innocence.
The poem compares these lips to a how-to manual inscribed in
code, with those already fully experienced knowing how to read that code.
How do you get ahead in world when you are the outsider
looking in, and the first stanza with the poised lips and secret code suggests
that some people already know how to use sex to get what they want, and in this
poem, these are people who have “an entourage to shuffle” them through, while
others have to feel their way through the maze of social mores
“I used to hate them,” she wrote, but then managed to take
her place – “we’re all in the same yacht now.”
Then we get the Jezebel stereotype, an old woman with an
insatiable appetite for sex,“a strange
little thing that liked to gorge herself on brothers and sisters,” implying
that this woman may have been African American, and in some ways may echo the
horrible traditions of slavery where father’s used to force female slaves to
serve as their son’s concubine or forced even into prostitution. This may be a
stretch because the old woman seemed more in control than being controlled, as
depicted in this poem, none the less, the old woman “taught me about it.”
In a particularly difficult passage, she claims she called
on brevity, but he was at a meeting, insulting, but she seemed to know it all
along, seemingly indifferent.
Early on, I mistakenly believe brevity was her husband.
Since the poem was written prior to her marriage, I suspect it has a much
deeper meaning, perhaps referring to religion or God – the Brevity of Life
being a famous Biblical quote, and also fitting with her later poem about
fair/unfair, meaning possibly the All Mighty was elsewhere too busy to be
concerned with the likes someone as insignificant as she is, something she may
have always suspected – leaving her to feel her way through.
The reference to the planner which she wore through is
another hint keeping with the sexual theme of the poem (if you choose to read
it that way), which “was full of more than laundry lists and the to-dos.
Here she repeats “to do’s” which she equates with figures of
destiny, who are unclear and enclose her, while she thought to wait in ambush.
The figures of destiny may well tie into the Greek mythology
concerning the
Moirai or the Fates, the personifications of destiny, three
sisters, who represent the spinner, the allotter and the inevitable, death.
Any or all of these who determined human destinies, and in
particular the span of a person’s life and his allotment of misery and
suffering
The Fates were personified as three very old women who spin
the threads of human destiny, and this may be tied into the old woman, who
taught her how a woman needs to survive in a man’s world and how she might get
ahead, although in reading the last line, she also seems to equate it with
being trapped.
Does she even know what it is when she asks for it back, this memory of some feeling she used to feel and needs to feel again before she forgets what it is she felt in the first place, a soft touch, a tender kiss, strong arms that engulf her, protecting her, holing her so she doesn't fall, all now an impression of what once was and might yet be again if she can catch it fore it drives away, like a cloud or smoke, all linger just out of reach, her fingers gripping empty air teach time they reach for it.
Does she even know what it is, a dream perhaps, only vaguely remembered when she wakes, with only the indentation in the bed beside her to say it ever really existed at all, and the even vaguer scent of man, a powerful drug she needs and can't get.
Is there a recipe for it, so that if we put all the right things in and cook it the way we should, stirring it up, pouring it out, filling this mold of our expectation, we get what we ache for in the end.
This is what i think when I read things she write, the intense angst to keep what she already has, even if the recipe did not produced what she assumed it would when she put it all together, when she stared down into the mixing bowl, like on of Shakespeare's witches, conjuring up a spell she hoped would keep, and did not, love being some unpredictable outcome, even the best of witches cannot predict, and sometimes, you have to accept what fate allows and keep even this flawed cake, knowing that it is better than no cake at all.
The old saying says you can't know what a person feels until you've walked in their shoes, and maybe not even then.
But what if you climb inside them, pull their skin tight around my head and shoulders and stare out through her eyes, breathe the air she breathes, touch what she touched and what would I feel like to her if she touches me.
And as I felt before in the diner when I ached to crawl across the table and climb inside her, I feel the same here, in the midst of her world, as she cuts up what we are to consume, her long fingers touching what we are to ingest like a Holy Communion, this sacred ritual that will bring us to some other reality, if not salvation, then salivating lust that resembles love, or perhaps merely the want of it, this place, this ceremony, this holy place.
The more I think about it the more I am convinced that my
original interpretation of the poem was wrong and that other conclusions made
yesterday were also wrong.
To begin with, this poem she posted last December or
reposted was written in 2003, at least according to her dating, which means
that she wrote it a year after Koch's death and that this was more like a
tribute to her former professor rather than an effort to impress him.
That said, she could have written all of the poems
associated with this tribute prior to 2003 but I can't take that for granted.
This also suggests that the poem from last January which was
also reprinted and attributed to Koch about the classroom may have also been
wrong on this regard since it is possible, she also wrote that as a tribute as
well.
More importantly is the title that she left off her
reposting of the circa 2003 posting when she reposted it last December means a
lot more to interpretation than I initially gave credit.
The original concept of what the poem needs changes
dramatically when you view it from its original title, but also reflects a
skewed view of my own which may not be valid after all and perhaps I don't want
for it to be valid.
The original concept assumes that this was all about sex and
where she went back in 2003, when in
fact the title clearly since the poem in a different direction, implying that
she was struggling to get through the bureaucracy and the elitism of the
literary scene, perhaps and in that regard seems to reflect some of conscious
anti-establishment beliefs even though Koch eventually became part of the
establishment he rebelled against.
I think my initial assumptions were perhaps more my own
illusion about who she was rather than what she was actually saying. All this
may also be wrong but again the change the title or the lack of one reflects a
serious rethinking of this poem.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to shift gears and to erase a
previous conception or misconception of a poem simply by wishing it away.
Structurally, I have to get more remote and look at each
sentence and what it says rather than what I think it says -- an incredible
challenge
Since she changed the title between the first posting in
2003 and the posting she did last December there must be a reason which I'll
try to figure out later at this point how do the images of the poem relate to
the original title of on writing.
the first line, which later when reposted became the title
of the poem, suggest significant change in her life which may explain why she
reposted it last December maybe reflecting a similar shift in direction of her
ambition.
The poem opens with a relatively simple simile although
there are caveats to this, comparing a pair of poised lips to a how-to manual
inscribed in code. The image of loose
with dangling initially struck me as something very sexual and may still be but
she puts the caveat that they're inconsequential -- which means insignificant
-- and yet there's the implication that they hold the key to what she wants, coded
for those who already know the code which at that point she does not.
This may be a metaphor for the passing of knowledge, as told
by someone from the inside, a professor like Koch perhaps, who possesses what
she needs.
Whether this means success as a writer or the implication
that her past endeavors have not really worked as she expected, I can’t say.
But it is clear that the teaching and the poetry are things coming to an end,
and since this comes just on the verge of her marriage and her setting sail to
a new career as part of the band it may simply mean a major change in direction
from what she has previously assumed.
Tt is clear that she is envious of those who succeed and
wants to get in on it, making it clear she resented those successful people –
who seemed to have life made for them, an entourage to clear the way for them,
as she put it. But then after meeting this old lady, she learned how to be part
of that world
“All in the same yacht now,” implying wealth and power and
prestige even though ultimately, she got none of that and certainly not the
accolades she deserved as a poet and writer.
By reposting this poem when she did last December, she seems
to be making a comparison in time between the changes she was forced to make in
2003 and those she had to make after leaving our office.
Who the small woman is, I can’t say, although she may be
taken literally or as a metaphor.
In my original assessment of the poem. I took it literally,
but it also could be a metaphor for the whole writing process which gobbles up
boys and girls and yet somewhere in that there are lessons to be learned for
those savvy enough to learn them.
But there's also this implication of ruthlessness that this
is not a friendly or benign process, again trying to tie this poem to writing
rather than the literal interpretation I previously adopted.
The brevity part of the poem may signify the frustration of
dealing with the writing industry and that when she called on whatever person
they were not available, somewhat insulting but as she points out she knew it
all in an early way seemingly indifferent. I’m stretching this a bit because
this part of the poem still confuses me. Originally, I compared brevity to her
husband, but the timing is wrong. She is just meeting her future husband (did
they really get married in Las Vegas?)
Or is she playing off the odd adage of “brevity as the soul
of wit?”
The planner which he wore through may not have the dark
connotation I first thought and may well been the list of appointments she was
trying to make to break in to the career, again as part of my attempt to keep
these references tied to her original title.
I'm trying to interpret the problem through writing and the
original title, and this may be no more valid interpretation then the one that
I did last year.
I originally thought, the idea of her destiny being tied to
the contents of those planners had to do with her using sex to trickle up, but
in viewing this from the perspective of writing, she may well have meant her
inability to advance and that she thought she was on top of things when she wasn’t
and had to change direction.
The timing of her posting and then reposting seems
significant.
When originally posted in 2003, she was moving on from a
previously failed career as a teacher and a not-so-promising career as a poet
(Few poets make a living at what they do or even leave their mark on the world
and since she seemed ambitious for fame and success, this was obviously not a path
for ever to take, even if Koch somehow managed it).
Her new path appears to be tied to her husband and their
embarking (literally) on a new career in music.
And indicated previously, she may have reposted the poem
because she was in a similar position at the end of last year that she was back
in 2003 and was looking ahead to a new career.
The fact that she posted her poem to Koch a few weeks after
reposting this poem suggests some sense of regret, especially after more than a
year of her prolific posting of powerful. Poetry, perhaps some of the best writing
of her life.
There may be a kind of nostalgia for the fact that she is
looking back at what might have been with the posting of both of these again
this is more speculation then the text actually supports.
I don't know which one of these interpretations of the poem
is the most accurate or if either one is.
Her work is so wrapped up in metaphor and clever wordplay
that it leads to numerous interpretations which I'm sure I'll come back to
again.
She walks through this place like a tour guide, her whole life exposed, painting on the walls she loves, books on shelves by authors she most admires, her work station complete with at least one cat keeping the keyboard warm, couch lining the window side of one room with TV on the other and the program running with her favorite TV food personality, and further on, her bed and bedroom and the tall shelves in one corner where she keeps a variety of attire on the off chance she might not fit in one the next time she tries on the smaller size, a simple life that is far from simple, the place she feels safe in, but only if she can bolt the door, illuminated by sunlight now, by the glow of the big city by night, though in those awful early morning hours before pre-dawn, when she walked in a sweat over something she can't keep out of her head, even this place can't protect her.
