Ouch!
After a marathon weekend of poem-writing that seemed to grow
less and less hostile towards me, she unleashes this zinger, clearly designed
as a body blow to my abdomen.
I might argue against its basic premise, but I’ve made a vow
to myself not to inject my side when I am trying to interpret her poems.
There are plenty of other places in these pages where I
whine about how unfair this is and where I get to defend myself. The point of
my analyzing her poems in these pages is for me to understand her side better
and to have her side represented in these pages when I later look back into a
journal already prejudiced in my favor.
Although the poem seems simplistic at first, it is multi-layered
as many of her poems tend to be. Its genius is in its simplicity. While there
are likely more layers to this, I’ll focus on two.
On the surface, she appears to represent herself as a
butterfly pinned to a wall, quivering to escape as a stranger holds her wings
to a fire, wings frantically flapping to do what comes naturally, to fly. But a
stranger – me – keeps her pinned down, a stranger who lacks real knowledge of
who she is and what she is about.
The butterfly is more than just an innocent victim, personified
as the poet, but a symbol of nature. Few creatures in nature are so beautiful
and so fragile as the butterfly is.
And the poem makes clear this icon of the nature is being
abused, kept – by force – from doing what comes naturally, a specimen perhaps
in some dark stranger’s laboratory, which performs ghastly experiments on it.
This poor creature is held to a fire for no clear purpose, held
against her will, “pinned to a wall.”
There is a clear demarcation here between good and evil, innocence
abused routinely by someone with ill motives.
The only cavate – and it is a slim cavate at best – is that
he villain in this poem is performing these atrocious acts out of ignorance, he
never knew her, and these actions are done without knowing who or what is or
what she is about.
On a deeper level, the butterfly represents something more fundamental
even and the poem is about the abuse and destruction of something extremely beautiful
and frail. It is not merely her as victim; the butterfly is clearly a symbol of
love, loved that is pinned down and dissected, love struggling desperately to
survive, love seeking to be what love is, but is kept from being that by this stranger
who clearly hasn’t a clue as to what love is, and perhaps is taking it apart to
find out, little understanding his actions are destroying love in the process.
He clearly does not understand the damage and pain he is inflicting on
something so utterly precious.
Love is too fragile to endure this kind of ruthless
reconstruction.
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