EthicalDative

The text is Marvin K. White’s “From Containment to Expansion: A Tenderloin Meditation in Two Parts” (Poetry, July/August 2024).

Part 1 contains 82 the’s, 41 does not contain’s and 41 pairings that span the elemental (sun-fire), the metaphysical (circle-infinity), the spiritual (knee-prayer), the fanciful (moon-howl); the lyrical (sky-watcher), the clinical (bone-break), the barbaric (tree-lynch), and more.

The poem states serially that the first item does not contain the second item as with the following pairs: The seed does not contain the flower… The ore does not contain the iron… The desert does not contain the sand… The cane does not contain the sugar… The pitch does not contain the tar….

The multivalence of the verb “contain” spring-loads the conceit. Containment is both a state and an act, implying absence on the one hand and quelled release on the other. Each of the poem’s 41 negations can be counted erroneous: “A” is not devoid of “B,” after all, but rather harbors “B” within itself, actually or potentially.

But then each statement is affirming for the second meaning of “contain,” which is to hold in abeyance or restrain actualization. The seed does not clutch the flower, it foments bloom. The desert doesn’t hold fast to its sands, they travel by wind. Iron and sugar are coaxed from ore and cane through refining. In no case does one member of the duo contain the other.

The dynamic turns dark with certain pairs: gun-murder, tongue-lie, danger-blackness, neck-choke, iron-chain. But the poem surrounds that darkness.

Part 2 is a soaring, incantational homily in spoken talk: irruptive, expansive, lyrically down to earth, profusely direct, associative, exultant, commanding, inspiriting. Quoting from the passage is like skimming a flat rock over limpid water and willing it to bounce again, again and yet again.

[…] I walk to work every day. You’d know that if you decided that living was your job. Your breath smell like Goddrunk. God the designated driver. God get you home safe. God make you laugh like they do in the movies. That’s what that feeling of silliness, of lucidity, of divinity is. That’s what this story is. Difference is, this morning don’t need to spill Mary’s blood. […] If you hear me singing, “Increase My Territory,” I ain’t asking for more, I’m asking less. That’s the lessen. I’m in the thought of God. Thought of God. Make sense? So unselfish. So much honor. I’m in service. I’m stronger in this wake than when I lay down to sleep. I’m gon’ do what is expected of me. You heard right. I’m expected. And anything expected cannot be contained.

(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

In an essay, Meghan O’Rourke writes the following:

Ambivalence is, like so much poetry, paratactic. (Poetry, June 2024)

Ambivalence is a state of mind characterized by mixed feelings. Parataxis is a rhetorical move. It daisy-chains independent clauses, leaving it to the reader to intuit their relationships. I came. I saw. I conquered. Its opposite, hypotaxis, introduces dependent clauses into the mix, which “can bolster the meaning of a work.” Poems forego such bolstering by flaring off fussy back story.

O’Rourke invites attention to the ending of a famous Frost poem — never mind which one. She focuses on the line break which repeats “I“ across the enjambment. “These final rousing lines enact a kind of ambivalent epistemic stutter… that often goes unremarked,” she writes. If all that can be said about the choice not to lead a certain existence is that it “has made all the difference,” that line is “trickily ambivalent: is the difference good or bad?” she muses.”

Would “trickily ambiguous” have been a better descriptor of Frost’s line? (I hear you say it’s a distinction without a difference.) In distilling its contemplations, poetry augments cognitive load on the reader. In the best of cases it earns the right to do so; the reader’s exertions add value to the poem. Hell, let’s agree on this: A poem without a good reader is a breathless tuba.

Here’s where I land on the epistemic stutter gone unremarked: Frost doesn’t need for us to know. Or rather, Frost needs for us not to know. Imagine he had jotted the following in a pocket notebook where he kept his ideas:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I stood contemplating which one to take. One looked heavily traveled, judging by the ruts; but the other path looked as if it hadn’t been traversed in months, which appealed to my instinct for discovery. I took the one less traveled by, because I was footloose and fancy free back then — just wanted to stretch my wings and see some country — and that has made all the difference. Why and how? Because I met my future wife when I spent the night in that little lodge on Lake Pottawatomie. If I hadn’t made that flippant decision to go one way and not another, I wouldn’t bask in the love of that good woman today.

Now imagine the road taken.

(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved