Of the three of four poems she posted this weekend, this is the most intense and the most personal, thick with multiple meanings and allusions, all of which I don’t pretend to comprehend.
The poem on one level appears to reflect the struggle by the
poet to retain her indemnity and perhaps her tender feelings amid rising
temperatures that slowly evaporate them.
The assumption from the poem’s title is that she has reached
a point where what once was no longer exist, a gradual process in which she has
nothing left.
Boiling point is that point in which a liquid begins to turn
into vapor, often, depending on the substance, what remains is a gradually
thickening substance that she in this poem compares to syrup.
In this case, the metaphor is saying what once was is soon
to be gone as the level of the drink grows lower.
Although I can’t be certain, I suspect this metaphor has two
meanings, first one that may be what was once a promising relationship going up
in steam, but perhaps more fundamentally, a loss of identity. A part of herself
is lost in this transubstantiation.
She uses the word “accent,” which implies the rising steam, but also an
altered condition, of vapors rising taking some of the essence with it, leaving
behind the imperfections.
As the liquid shrinks and gets thicker, it gets slower to
move, turning to “glue” as she describes it in her opening line. In a clever
metaphor, she compares it to a “drawl” and alludes to Southern culture that grows
slower because of the intense heat, in this case, “too hot for soul.”
Too hot to handle, and heavy with a stench (suggesting how spoiled love
or whatever had become as a result of the process.) It is too hot to
move or think.
Again, there is a duality going on in the poem, first this
is a draught being slowly boiled down, and at the same time, something else, perhaps
a sense hope, a drink “that would quench you” consumed quickly, not as originally
intended – partly because it has become a bitter brew rather than the cool
drink first assumed.
It is a bitter sultry brew that must be consumed quickly or
not at all.
Love turned sour, perhaps, because of the heat causing it to
turn into vapor and vanish. The residue left behind has stench, again a sense
of a duality here, as the poet personalizes this to “stench of yourself.”
This does not appear to be attack on someone else, but on
herself, perhaps a resentment at what might have been implied about her, but
also suggesting that something stinks which at one time might have been sweet.
Again, there is a duality here, the metaphor of the slowly
thickening bitter brew and the poet, as if she is the liquid struggling against
the inevitable. On one hand, the liquid is love or once good feelings boiling
out and leaving a rancid thick puddy behind, a sense of wretchedness that is has
become so thick she doesn’t understand how it can continue to “flow,” yet as
the poem says, “keeps the flow, but low, lower, and still somehow flows.”
Despite the intense heat (conflict, emotions, hostility?)
the essence still flows but is eventually gone, leaving behind a memory of something
that might have been, something good or cool, Eventually, all that remains is a
scent, a hint of what she thought she had been.
The poem essentially says something good as boiled away, and
with it an essential part of herself, who she was, or what she hoped to be.
This is an extremely complicated poem to interpret, and I’ve
made assumptions that may or may not be accurate. These are the kind of poems
that take years of study to more fully comprehend, and even then, may not get completely
right.
But it is clear from the basic metaphor that she has reached
the boiling point, which had caused a change, ruining what might have been
good, and causing her to lose something valuable in herself.
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