This year, i'm making very big plans-
I plan to buy a large hat,
scramble up into the arms of
the oblivion tree,
I will get a little pistol
to protect the leaves from the caterpillars
and a bigger pistol to protect
the caterpillars from the hawks.
I won't be looking through any more windows.
I won't look out
I won't look in,
I will quit smoking, etc.
Instead, I will write poems
on matches. I will fill so many books of matches
with poems in rows, in ribs.
If I remember to bring paper,
I will first ignite the upper corner.
I will write across the paper while it's burning.
I think I've always been racing.
Or no,
I have always been running.
I have run all the way to this island
off the Florida coast.
I saw the finish line,
the doors of a retirement home,
and burst through, breaking the tape,
and I said "triumph."
The word just came out of my mouth like a grunt.
I had a cramp in my side.
This place,
what a perfect place for an exile.
I will drink more orange juice,
I will quit coffee,
although I never really cared for it
or poetry,
or smoking, etc.,
but I will keep on striking matches.
Friday, June 27, 2008
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1 comment:
This poem walks a line I am happy to say you negotiate with great (ahem) aplomb. I think you can lose "very" in the first line, as the word tends to add little, and you've already got a nice thing going with "This year, I'm making big plans."
The poem draws us in close from its onset; in this sense, it's narrative. Our speaker seems to say, come listen. It is this quality that makes "I will buy a large hat" so lovely, as it is neither groundbreaking news, nor is it a "big plan" in anything other than the largeness of the hat. To me, this creates a rather playful tone, though never so playful as to become a joke. We sense the poem's frivolity belies some anxiety, as heard in "I won't look out / I won't look in / I will quit smoking, etc." I love that "etc" (which is odd, cause I'd usually say, oh boffo, just write it out). But what the "etc" does is enhance the speaker; it draws out the frivolity and the anxiety in tandem.
There is something amiss in the third stanza. I think it may be that "Instead." Since "I will write poems" continues with the second stanza's refrain, that "Instead" hangs there without anything to negate. Also, it seems to me you can do better than rows and ribs for the image of the matchbook. Maybe.
The stanza that follows is a knockout. It's paced well, it off-rhymes, and "I will write across the paper while it's burning" is just a great line.
The fifth stanza is the most dynamic and strange in the poem, as it is here the speaker muses rather than exclaims. The image of the retirement home and its broken tape is a powerful one, but I don't know that you need the aside about the cramp. "The word came out of my mouth like a grunt" (no "just") would sew together the stanza rather well.
The sixth stanza returns us to the speaker we've come to love. I think it is here we realize we've come to root for her. That might sound odd, but this stanza has a humor to it, as well as a stripe of sass, that charms us in a way the second stanza does not.
I would only say you should snip that "but" in the final line. If there is any realization in the poem, it seems to occur at the moment when the speaker resigns to "write across the paper while it's burning." This last image, "I will keep striking matches," not only resonates with that, but reminds us of the poem's biggest, million-dollar project. No, it's not a large hat, not a gun, it's the dang poem.
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