There are no pictures of me and him
smiling and laughing at parties.
We go and come home again after,
undocumented. If someone were to
ask where we went or what happened
we could say nothing at all and keep
the secret to ourselves.
I’ve found so many pictures
of you and me: me with my tongue
stuck out, you mid-chuckle. Both holding
brightly colored drinks and gazing at the other.
Maybe it was the pictures that did us in.
Observation forced order into chaos
because you can’t live up to the face you’re
making.
What could you have said to prompt my tongue?
What could have possibly been that funny?
© meredith c. jones
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
that message on my phone saturday morning was all I needed to finish this, thanks.
I don't usually post drafts this drafty. Literally, this is the first draft of this, written in the span of a Metro ride and culled from my moleskine. It's taken me a year (give or take a couple weeks) to get anything down on paper about all of this. Every time I would write about him it seemed too emotional still. This might still be that but it's down on paper and since I need to get more things down on paper, I will take it for the time being. I played with my form somewhat and it doesn't quite translate here. All of the lines preceded by an em dash should be indented. Please pretend that the are because I suck at coding . It also doesn't have a title yet. I've been toying with this title: Everything I Meant to Tell You Earlier, in a Series of Poorly Formed Haiku but I don't think it works here. I'll come up with something when I revise this. Let me know what you think of this:
The spaghetti’s still in the sink.
The noodles don’t give way
anymore to water or sauce—
but break when forked
from the collinder into the trash.
—not so much of a change from the night before.
“It’s undercooked,” you said not at me
but at the strands, spooled
uncomfortably around tines,
setting down the fork and carrying
everything back to the kitchen.
This is the call and response part of you and me.
—everything dries out eventually.
—it was dry all along.
Were I to write this scene—
you and me and the pasta,
half in the trash, half in the sink—
the clean lines of the room and us
would give way
to the palsied scrawl
of leaving well enough alone
and the argument we never had
because we never have.
—have we?
Were I to write you
it would be all dead letters and brown
paper-wrapped pornography.
The address isn’t right, the postman
can’t make it out and it sits in a room
with the others. Sits waiting for someone
to make out your concussive Rs and Ks—
to deliver you.
—for thine is the something and the something (I forgot the words to this part. forgive me.)
The Teutonic was always lost on you.
Too hard-edged for your hands
or the hair at the nape of your neck
that curled in on itself when you needed a haircut.
Then again, you never could get your legs that high.
—you make a terrible German. I guess it’s good I never wanted to call you Daddy.
Were I to write you it would be just this—
your back to me, scraping pasta into an empty
trash can and turning
to set the dish, unwashed, in the sink.
—leave the rest to me.
10/18/2009. meredith jones ©
The spaghetti’s still in the sink.
The noodles don’t give way
anymore to water or sauce—
but break when forked
from the collinder into the trash.
—not so much of a change from the night before.
“It’s undercooked,” you said not at me
but at the strands, spooled
uncomfortably around tines,
setting down the fork and carrying
everything back to the kitchen.
This is the call and response part of you and me.
—everything dries out eventually.
—it was dry all along.
Were I to write this scene—
you and me and the pasta,
half in the trash, half in the sink—
the clean lines of the room and us
would give way
to the palsied scrawl
of leaving well enough alone
and the argument we never had
because we never have.
—have we?
Were I to write you
it would be all dead letters and brown
paper-wrapped pornography.
The address isn’t right, the postman
can’t make it out and it sits in a room
with the others. Sits waiting for someone
to make out your concussive Rs and Ks—
to deliver you.
—for thine is the something and the something (I forgot the words to this part. forgive me.)
The Teutonic was always lost on you.
Too hard-edged for your hands
or the hair at the nape of your neck
that curled in on itself when you needed a haircut.
Then again, you never could get your legs that high.
—you make a terrible German. I guess it’s good I never wanted to call you Daddy.
Were I to write you it would be just this—
your back to me, scraping pasta into an empty
trash can and turning
to set the dish, unwashed, in the sink.
—leave the rest to me.
10/18/2009. meredith jones ©
Friday, September 11, 2009
Things I learned in Cultural Studies...
No one seems to be able to define what "cultural studies" is. Really, this isn't a major problem unless every exploration of culture in its myriad modes of interpretation becomes a defense of an academic field that has yet to be clearly defined. This happens a lot when scholars write on video games or comics books. They feel the need to spend so much time defending the act of analyzing the work that the analysis becomes secondary.
Speaking of defensive, apparently the only way to critique something is to shit upon it and then remark that you are surprised at your own ability to remain even-handed and neutral when discussing something so clearly abhorrent. It's a good thing I don't ding when my bullshit meter goes off. I don't think the class noticed my involuntary twitching.
The problem I am running into with this class is that the class (the people in the room, not the subject being taught..though perhaps this class is indicative of the larger field) isn't willing to participate in the critique. They don't want to make note of their own vested (economic and otherwise) interest in elevating a particular definition of culture and the means by which we perpetuate it. Who better than English masters' candidates to determine merit in a work (ok, perhaps the tenured PhD.s who have assigned us to read what they determine has merit...) It's asinine to assume that our interest is all "sweetness and light" to quote tonight's reading. Of course we think that reading is paramount and that reading poetry has benefits beyond paltry, utilitarian enterprises like making money or watching TV. We want to make money reading poetry and then telling why its paramount and beneficial to do so. It doesn't demean our purpose to admit it either.
I fundamentally disagree with the pursuit of perfection. Maybe that worked for Matthew Arnold. Maybe that's how he got around to writing "Dover Beach." Me, I like total fuckin' chaos. Perfection breeds a falsified sense of the sacredNo one seems to be able to define what "cultural studies" is. Really, this isn't a major problem unless every exploration of culture in its myriad modes of interpretation becomes a defense of an academic field that has yet to be clearly defined. This happens a lot when scholars write on video games or comics books. They feel the need to spend so much time defending the act of analyzing the work that the analysis becomes secondary.
Also, "historicismality" is not a word. It's not going to be a word because it sounds like shit and means nothing. And you said signifier when you meant signified. The utterance means nothing.
I don't want anything I do to be so sacrosanct I can't deconstruct it. I don't want to sit in a classroom completely unaware (more to the point unwilling to consider) that I am actively engaged in the activity I deride.
(on a semi-related note, if I think of nothing else I might write my course paper on whether Raymond Williams would tweet.)
Speaking of defensive, apparently the only way to critique something is to shit upon it and then remark that you are surprised at your own ability to remain even-handed and neutral when discussing something so clearly abhorrent. It's a good thing I don't ding when my bullshit meter goes off. I don't think the class noticed my involuntary twitching.
The problem I am running into with this class is that the class (the people in the room, not the subject being taught..though perhaps this class is indicative of the larger field) isn't willing to participate in the critique. They don't want to make note of their own vested (economic and otherwise) interest in elevating a particular definition of culture and the means by which we perpetuate it. Who better than English masters' candidates to determine merit in a work (ok, perhaps the tenured PhD.s who have assigned us to read what they determine has merit...) It's asinine to assume that our interest is all "sweetness and light" to quote tonight's reading. Of course we think that reading is paramount and that reading poetry has benefits beyond paltry, utilitarian enterprises like making money or watching TV. We want to make money reading poetry and then telling why its paramount and beneficial to do so. It doesn't demean our purpose to admit it either.
I fundamentally disagree with the pursuit of perfection. Maybe that worked for Matthew Arnold. Maybe that's how he got around to writing "Dover Beach." Me, I like total fuckin' chaos. Perfection breeds a falsified sense of the sacredNo one seems to be able to define what "cultural studies" is. Really, this isn't a major problem unless every exploration of culture in its myriad modes of interpretation becomes a defense of an academic field that has yet to be clearly defined. This happens a lot when scholars write on video games or comics books. They feel the need to spend so much time defending the act of analyzing the work that the analysis becomes secondary.
Also, "historicismality" is not a word. It's not going to be a word because it sounds like shit and means nothing. And you said signifier when you meant signified. The utterance means nothing.
I don't want anything I do to be so sacrosanct I can't deconstruct it. I don't want to sit in a classroom completely unaware (more to the point unwilling to consider) that I am actively engaged in the activity I deride.
(on a semi-related note, if I think of nothing else I might write my course paper on whether Raymond Williams would tweet.)
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Nerd-Girl Triumphs!
While I am woefully behind on the paper, I found something today that may help my case (or suggest that I have put far more effort into this than I actually have...and did not also just change my mind enough to require extensive additional work. balls.) F.O. Matthiessen wrote the definitive study of the five major writers of the American Renaissance in 1941. He shaped how we look at Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman for a great many years. Even though he was gay, he could not discuss the strong homoerotic veins running though either Herman Melville or Walt Whitman's works. When I was researching Melville, I found a passage that belied his silence:
Matthiessen cannot discuss how Melville manipulates and deconstructs heterosexual language (matrimonial signifiers mostly) because there is no language of egalitarian male relationships. In the 1850s, we don't have a word for homosexual, all we have is sodomy--an act of power. So he takes from a traditional male-female bond to describe how Ishmael and Queequeg relate. Because he had as yet no [other] vocabulary to express it. Is that what Matthiessen coded into his reading? I have no idea--it's just what I read.
When opening his discussion of Whitman he says another curious thing: "Whitman's excitement carries weight because he realized that man cannot use words so unless he has experienced the facts they express, unless he has grasped them with his senses" (518). So Whitman, we can assume Matthiessen is suggesting, knew exactly how it was to receive oral sex in the woods(25). To sing no songs today but those of manly attachments (92). To "wander hand in hand" with another man (99).
No wonder a woman had to wait for him...
A curious mixture resulted from Melville’s effort to formulate his thoughts, since they were still so new to him that he had as yet no vocabulary to express them that was not at second-hand” (123)
Matthiessen cannot discuss how Melville manipulates and deconstructs heterosexual language (matrimonial signifiers mostly) because there is no language of egalitarian male relationships. In the 1850s, we don't have a word for homosexual, all we have is sodomy--an act of power. So he takes from a traditional male-female bond to describe how Ishmael and Queequeg relate. Because he had as yet no [other] vocabulary to express it. Is that what Matthiessen coded into his reading? I have no idea--it's just what I read.
When opening his discussion of Whitman he says another curious thing: "Whitman's excitement carries weight because he realized that man cannot use words so unless he has experienced the facts they express, unless he has grasped them with his senses" (518). So Whitman, we can assume Matthiessen is suggesting, knew exactly how it was to receive oral sex in the woods(25). To sing no songs today but those of manly attachments (92). To "wander hand in hand" with another man (99).
No wonder a woman had to wait for him...
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Mistakes were made
I should be frantically putting together a presentation on Critical Theory and Literary Criticism but am clearly not. Really, the biggest challenge with an assignment like this is editing the thing down to the time limit. One time, I gave a presentation on Charles Stewart Parnell that was supposed to be 20 minutes and lasted for 55. There's a stopwatch this time.
Earlier today, on the way to the store I was listening to the end ofThis American Life. The show this week riffed off the phrase "mistakes were made" and focused on people who, after fucking up royally, made performative apologies without actually saying "I'm sorry." An e-mail I got from Walt early this year and subsequently deleted (but not before drafting a response I never got around to sending) comes to mind.
At the very end, Ira Glass talked about discussing the show's topic with a colleague at NPR (one of the writers for Market Place whose name escapes me) and the writer mentioned a poem by William Carlos Williams. When he read it on air, I mouthed along because I've had this poem quasi-memorized for a couple years now. He noted that when he first read it in grade school his teacher told him it was an actual note Williams left his wife one day. Lou taught us that Williams had affairs and the plums in the icebox aren't plums at all. But he isn't sorry either way...
THIS IS JUST TO SAY
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
-William Carlos Williams
The writer, after all these years, is still infuriated by the line "you were probably/saving/for breakfast". He knew they were being saved. He knew her. And to him the "Forgive me" isn't so much mea culpa as it is a demand. I love this poem. I loved it when Lou first read it, the way he read every poem, slow and lingering. Lou, I think, had experience with plums. It's devious and beautiful in how it much it asks and how little is has to say. After the poem, a series of regular AL contributors read their own. Some were better than others. Some more in keeping with Williams winking simplicity. Others, well just one really, were too malicious to be really good.
Lately, this poem reminds me of Jason. That might not be fair because I do feel bad about how things ended. They again, look at that last sentence. How things ended? Mistakes were made. Maybe I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Lord knows I haven't given anyone much lately. I guess in watching other people wind up with someone just because they couldn't stand to be alone, I decided the opposite of that is probably better. I can't always stand to be alone either. When things start going inexplicably down the tube it's nice to able to just call someone whose job it is to help make it better. That's nice. But at what cost? I don't have time to really care about someone else. I don't even have time not to find unforgivable fault in them. I can't find fault in the plums though. The plums are always sweet. It's what comes after plums or the things you have to do to get to plums that seems to be most problematic lately. I don't know if I want the plums that badly. However sweet they taste.
Earlier today, on the way to the store I was listening to the end ofThis American Life. The show this week riffed off the phrase "mistakes were made" and focused on people who, after fucking up royally, made performative apologies without actually saying "I'm sorry." An e-mail I got from Walt early this year and subsequently deleted (but not before drafting a response I never got around to sending) comes to mind.
At the very end, Ira Glass talked about discussing the show's topic with a colleague at NPR (one of the writers for Market Place whose name escapes me) and the writer mentioned a poem by William Carlos Williams. When he read it on air, I mouthed along because I've had this poem quasi-memorized for a couple years now. He noted that when he first read it in grade school his teacher told him it was an actual note Williams left his wife one day. Lou taught us that Williams had affairs and the plums in the icebox aren't plums at all. But he isn't sorry either way...
THIS IS JUST TO SAY
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
-William Carlos Williams
The writer, after all these years, is still infuriated by the line "you were probably/saving/for breakfast". He knew they were being saved. He knew her. And to him the "Forgive me" isn't so much mea culpa as it is a demand. I love this poem. I loved it when Lou first read it, the way he read every poem, slow and lingering. Lou, I think, had experience with plums. It's devious and beautiful in how it much it asks and how little is has to say. After the poem, a series of regular AL contributors read their own. Some were better than others. Some more in keeping with Williams winking simplicity. Others, well just one really, were too malicious to be really good.
Lately, this poem reminds me of Jason. That might not be fair because I do feel bad about how things ended. They again, look at that last sentence. How things ended? Mistakes were made. Maybe I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Lord knows I haven't given anyone much lately. I guess in watching other people wind up with someone just because they couldn't stand to be alone, I decided the opposite of that is probably better. I can't always stand to be alone either. When things start going inexplicably down the tube it's nice to able to just call someone whose job it is to help make it better. That's nice. But at what cost? I don't have time to really care about someone else. I don't even have time not to find unforgivable fault in them. I can't find fault in the plums though. The plums are always sweet. It's what comes after plums or the things you have to do to get to plums that seems to be most problematic lately. I don't know if I want the plums that badly. However sweet they taste.
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