I’m guessing you think there’s a typo in my heading. I know! The use of repetition in “The Renaissance,” a poem by Trey Moody (Poetry, May 2024), was a hook for me. The thirteen-line poem starts here:
I said hello. Then you said you said
hello. In this way, we were touching touching
clouds. […]
The doing of an act turns into a report of its doing or having been done — sort of. Actions are limned through an after-thoughtful lens — sort of. (I call this the “sort of” technique for understanding a poem.) A self-referential quality in the saying of saying partakes of mannerism in a winning way.
“Touching clouds” touches me. The thing I most wanted to paint as a kid on the hot flat Gulf of Mexi-Coast was clouds. The shrimp boats were picturesque, the curvaceous dunes aroused me, but the clouds drew me — so suffused with ineffable light I despaired of brushing them.
Rhetorically, note the canny enjambment of the repetitions in the poem. It lends the device both latency — postponing the complement — and the call-to-attention that comes with end of line. The maneuver is carried through to the very end:
[…] Usual, you map the passing time
in the shape of a cumulonimbus. I say how quiet quiet
can be when your face is this close to the painting.
“I say how quiet quiet can be” prepares a delicious reveal: The speaker and spoken-to are in intercourse with painting! That adjective “Usual” is inscrutable to me. What does it modify?
Perversely, I’ve quoted the beginning and the end of the poem. There’s enough going on in the middle to make your head spin. The poem makes enigmatic statements that are striking, abrupt and sort of intelligible, as poetry does.
[…clouds.] Such mannerisms endured throughout
the sixteenth century, when bread was scarce, words
for clouds scarcer. Of course we were younger
then, when all the lakes we wanted belonged
to the aristocracy, so we swam in nothing
but our suffering. As they do, centuries passed.
We kept thinking there were only so many ways
to light a fire. Now, it’s just as likely you’ll call
after a Sunday dip. [Usual …]
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
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A Carton of French Fries Walks Into a Bar
This is the latest specimen in The New Yorker’s cartoon caption contest that has run for centuries. I’ve never come close to inventing a caption for an entry in this feature, but it fascinates me for what it often shows of how much of a good cartoon’s payload is packed into the drawing itself. Adding words can feel like gilding the lily. Not that I discourage the contest. The winning caption is always witty and apt. I often wonder if the cartoonist has a caption in mind in the course of drawing?
I’ve looked at the above cartoon multiple times and have kept laughing. What I see is a cranky French fry carton laden with cargo — a working stiff — who has ducked into his neighborhood watering hole to be poured a pick-me-up shot of Heinz ketchup in a condiment cup by the barkeep. Hitting the sauce is a common failing in his line of work. He’s on his way to… well, being emptied out unceremoniously and discarded. That’s the job. Even though I’m someone who tries to put diffuse, anomalous things into words, I haven’t the foggiest idea for a good caption.
(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved