Monday, January 16, 2023

Always has her back March 10, 2013

  

  

(This is the second analysis of the same poem – more detailed about who she is writing the poem for)

 

When everybody else lets her down, when her whole world falls to pieces, she goes back home to her longest friend, someone she grew up with, went to school with, and someone she has come to rely on through thick and thin.

He is someone she graduated high school with and went to visit him in Philadelphia last fall when things fell apart at our company.

Her latest poem appears to have been written to him, and her seeing him again over the last few days suggests she may once more be in a crisis (something her other recent poems have not suggested).

 The two of them got together over the weekend for a chat over Chinese food.

The love in this poem is unmistakable and it is clear from frequent viewings of his videos and her trips to see him that she clearly trusts him above all other men in her life. She has never let him down the way other men have.

They have much in common.

Most likely they were lovers as teens. Both have a rich interest in art and writing. His humor would easily attract her as demonstrated from the clever use of word play and his humorous antics in his silly videos.

He apparently wandered a bit after high school, eventually graduating college in 2008 with a degree in creative writing.

How much he influenced her and her writing it is difficult to say.

But his later degree in culinary arts last June clearly showed how much more they had in common since she also aspired to become a chef at one point and is a nut about food. She may even have encouraged him to get his degree since he clearly needed focus.

He appears not to have worked much at writing or art over the last decade, working at a taco joint while he attended culinary school, but recently got a job in a café outside of Philadelphia, and got involved with some kind of repertory company doing performances.

For some reason, this rather impractical character has a great hold on her heart, attributes she sees in him she sees in nobody else, someone she can turn to, but not to depend on, someone who reinvigorates her and re-stokes up the fires of her ambitions.

I have seen no tenderness in her poetry as vivid as expressed in this poem, and a sense of vulnerability that in the past has been framed in outrage or despair, but here expressed in remarkable affection, acknowledging the one person who has always been there for her in her time of need, perhaps trying to reassure herself that he will continue to be there in the future.

 

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