March 2013
(I found this alternate analysis of her March 26 poem in another journal – I keep about four usually over different topics). This review was written earlier. While it makes a lot of the same observations as the later review, it makes so different assumptions as well. So, I figured I’d post it for comparison, since the poem is incredibly complex. In this version, the person on the phone is a woman – what was I thinking – and the poet allegedly had an affair with the falling man, which I apparently rethought when doing the later version. All very bizarre.)
The poem is about receiving a phone call (most likely) from another woman, younger than the poet is, about the attempted suicide from a man about the poet’s age, who she’d not seen in some time, and who had jumped out a window – and was “lucky” enough to survive.
The poem suggests the poet may have been involved with the man prior to the woman’s on the phone. And in receiving the phone call, the poet finds herself in a “situation” she did not know at first was a situation and which she calls near the resolution of the poem “our situation,” although ultimately, she decides it is not about her at all.
The poem involves at least four people, the poet, the person on the phone, the man who leaped from the window, and the woman over which he made the leap.
The poet is trying to laugh a mess of her own she is caught up in – with the person to whom she is writing the poem, a romantic entanglement since she refers to this person as “my dear,” who may or may not be the same person on the phone.
The phone call is about a man who leaped from a window (perhaps as long ago as New Year’s) and – in the poet’s mind, was unfortunate enough to survive.
For some reason, the phone call brings to mind the person she is writing the poem to.
There is a bit of a caveat since she asks, “who is it?”
As if she is either confused about the person on the phone or doesn’t completely recall the man who leaped from the window.
“Who threw themselves out the window?” the poet asks in an emotionless voice.
But the incident or situation as she calls it changes her perception of the person who is writing the poem about, possibly the person on the phone and the insensitive reaction to the man who leaped, and suddenly (using an apt expression) her private world involving the person the poem is written to, comes “crashing” into this new world.
As best as I can make up, this refers to an aspect of character of the person the poem is written to which she had not previously been aware of.
The whole situation, however, seems to connect with the messy one in which she is involved.
This raises the question as to whether the person she is writing the poem about is considering suicide as a way out of the messy situation shared with the poet, or perhaps more likely brings back to the poet’s mind her own speculation in that regard, or worse, suggests to the poet that suicide might be her option, something she might not have considered before.
Again, I get confused and get the impression that the poet may be flashing back to a suicide attempt by a man who was the poet’s age at the time but is the same age as the person to whom the poet is writing the poem now.
Timing here is tricky.
The poet may be talking about someone she knew when she was much younger – a teen – who is now around her age – although the man leaping from the window appears to be more contemporary.
In the poem, the poet refers to the man on the pavement, alive, and the irony of saying he was “lucky” when she (the poet) reflects on how he must have felt after having finally worked up the courage to take the leap only to find himself back in the same place only in a worse condition than when he started.
He had hoped for a different end, perhaps a new beginning.
“It is time to stop laughing at the emotionlessness required of those in our situation, and in his, as he only is,” she writes, making the comparison and distinction between his situation and the situation the poet and the person she is writing to are in.
At this point, she makes her point, how it takes only a moment to go from this life into the hell of the next – alive or dead “and those that throw stones (or bodies) have no right, except for the right to a “private struggle” without judgement “we have no right to make.”
Then, returning to the phone call, the poet says to the person on the other end, “Sometimes I feel like whatever god there is is testing me.”
“Did you pass the test?” the other person seems to ask.
“What?” the poet responds.
“You didn’t fall apart, you didn’t run away, you acted with empathy.”
But the poet is thinking that constructing barriers against all this in her brain, to be so remote from the situation is a failure.
At this point in the poem, the poet concludes this is not about her or her messy situation, but about the other man who jumped and the woman he was involved in, and that she (the poet) is still alive and managing to cope
Then, as if concluding the conversation, someone perhaps the person on the phone says, “you passed the test.”
Since I’m guessing about most of this, I can’t completely trust what I conclude from the poem, but I’ll speculate anyway: The attempted suicide by this other man brought into the poet’s mind suicide as an option for her own mess, something she has considered in the past, and is comparing that man’s situation from the messy situation she is involved in.
She is aware of the social judgements made about people who seek this way out, and is critical of people who judge other people, when everybody is entitled to their own “private struggle” without judgement. People should not throw stones (or bodies) and while she concludes her situation is different from the person who attempted the leap, she also says it’s none of anybody else’s business – and she’s probably right.
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