Only now, do I realize that I analyzed this poem out of order – after having been sidetracked by other poems that I went back to instead of taking everything as she posted them.
And this poem of liberation I thought came at the end of April actually came at the end of May, explaining why it seemed so jarring to me after the love poems prior to it.
Taking ii in context, I realize she had been building up to this poem, and how fair and unfair, good and bad no longer matter to her in the larger scheme of things.
Apparently, I did take note of the poem when she posted it, scribbling things down in several places about my first impression, and how shocked I was about her views of what many might consider traditional morality, and how they are defined by words, and not by her concept of truth.
Her obsession in her poetry over what is true is very much reflected in this poem. But truth is rarely what people make it out to be and certainly never objective, or as from one of the Indiana Jones movies, science deals with fact, not truth. If you’re seeking truth, you’ve edged over into the quasi universe of philosophy, which means anyone’s point of view is truth.
Unfortunately, as her poem points out, good and bad, right and wrong are also relative, subject to opinion and to circumstance, which may invalidate them. What appears as good or bad or right and wrong, are also subject to motivation, what a person intends, and in many cases, what looks like good or bad on the surface, may not reflect the true aspirations of the person they describe.
They, like truth, are just words.
Justice, unfortunately, falls into this same category, depending on too many factors we can’t possibly evaluate.
Yet, her poem (which I call her poem of independence) is much more specific in that it is making a judgement about those words themselves, saying she should not be held accountable, and perhaps goes deeper in saying, nobody should – that life is a series of events which we act out, and must do the best we can to gauge our progress, and should not be saddled with the baggage of social judgement.
As I said in the previous journal entry, she is shedding all pretense and admitting where she stands, and daring people to challenge her or judge her, using a girl she spent an hour with who “made my everyday reprise of wantonness and regret a breeze.”
This meaning her self judgement over what she enjoys doing in life. And this meeting of this girl helped stop “the tiresome, selfish monotony of everything is wrong and how could this be?
The poem awards this girl near sainthood, as a pure spirit, who lives by the credo that fair and unfair are just words,” not reality, and that the world does not revolve around the concept of guilt. It is not a fair world. People aren’t rewarded for merit, but for other reasons, a very poignant point when it comes to her situation, not just where she is now, but where she has been.
Nor can you base your worth on right or wrong, which basically binds you to a way of life that keeps you down.
“Life – it is,” she says. And she needs to live life without regret.
As said before, my first reading of this poem shocked me, and I’m still unsettled by its conclusions, even though I suspect she is right.
I’ve never been ambitious the way she is, and never nearly as wanton (though I wanted to be) and so I can pretend to live by rules when I know they don’t work, and that people who get ahead ignore those rules.
I’m sure I’m not done with this poem because it reveals more about her inner being that most of her poems, less blatant as trickle up, less disguised as her change of priority.
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