Back to the future? December 2012
For some reason, I can’t get this 2003 poem out of my head.
My previous attempts to make sense of it seem inadequate,
partly because the time frame doesn’t completely line up, and I have made
assumptions that may not be valid.
I may be reading things into the poem based on what I think
it says rather than what it actually says, and I need to take a step back and evaluate
the poem as a poem as opposed to an something autobiographical.
In this case, she has created a poem as allusive as Joyce, deliberately
using metaphors that help obfuscate the message as if she wants to say it but
is afraid to come out and say it plainly.
But the opening line – which repeats the title – clearly says
that what happened in 2003 was a dramatic life changing event, possibly meaning
her marriage, or her taking off on a musical career, or some other internal
change of perception.
In my previous attempts to interpret this poem, I assumed
the sailing and yacht references referred to her new career as a musician,
which may in fact not be the case, and the events she depict may have happened
just prior to and may well explain her new career with the band.
For this reason, I’m going back to the poem and interpreting
it as a poem, rather than attempting to fit it into any time line or make any
assumption about what it might mean to her personal history.
Essentially, the poem seems to point to a certain envy
towards other people’s ability to use their sexuality to advance themselves,
and her initial distaste for people who get ahead in life that way.
But then on a cruise, she met an old woman who talked her
into doing it, a teacher of a kind who “taught you about it.”
The poem suggests that she was already dissatisfied with her
current situation (romantically and sexually) in which she received little attention
and affection, and when she did it was too brief.
The poem suggests that she was never averse to what the old
woman was suggesting,
“I knew all along in an early way seemingly indifferent,”
she writes.
But it appears this new approach to life became a ritual as
she wore out her daily planner with appointments, ultimately having it take
over her life, when she assumed she was the one in control.
The poem is structured in three verses – the first of which –
opens with an extremely sensual description of what should have been
insignificant “poised lips,” that “dangle like the fruit, delicate, red,
sincere and demanding.”
This could allude to pouting seductive lips or female
genitalia.
But these lips are somehow key to opening of a lock to which
she has not previously had the combination, open to those who already know how,
having learned the secret language created for people already ahead in the
game.
The first stanza suggests that sexuality is a tool for
advancement, a way of getting in with the in crowd she has previously always
seen from outside.
As The Eagles pointed out, “Pretty girls find out early how
to open doors with just a smile,” or as her poem suggests getting shuffled
through “while others have to feel it out.”
Those who don’t use their sexuality are likely to get left
out or left behind.
But the poem suggests all this changed in 2003 – “We’re all
int eh same yacht now,” meaning possibly that she got the door open and has
managed to find a way to be with the in-crowd, making her like the people she
used to envy.
An old woman she met on a cruise talked her into it and “taught
you about it.”
“A strange little thing that liked to gorge on brothers and
sister,” she writes.
The third stanza opens with a particularly obfuscated
passage about her calling on brevity, but he was at a meeting, insulting. This
implies that she was sexually or romantically unsatisfied with him, and that
she was not particularly opposed to what the old woman on the cruise ship recommended.
She apparently knew from an early age that she was indifferent to the use of sex.
The poem suggests that she went on to wear out her appointment book filled with
vague “figures of destiny,” and implies that she became entrapped in a life in
when she assumed she was in control.
“They enclosed you while you thought to wait in ambush,” she
writes concluding the poem.
This is an odd poem because it was written at a time when
she assumed she still had a bright future ahead of her, and yet hints of how
she became trapped in her own life.
There are several caveats, changes of point of view in the
poem such as when she reverts to the “I” perspective when the old woman talked
her into the new life style, to the “you,” when she said “taught you about it, hinting
that the old woman has done this before, a guide of sorts.
The poem switches again at the end from “I” to “you” when
implying the figures of destiny enclose you, while “You thought to wait in
ambush,” suggesting that she went from assuming she was the aggressor to becoming
a victim.
As I wondered in previous journal entries, why she posted
this now, almost a decade later, is a mystery, perhaps because she is once more
in a place where she has to make choices and is looking back at what may be the
most significant choice of her life.
Of course, I don’t know how accurate my interpretation of
the poem is but is a poem that stunned me more than the worst of her attack
poems she wrote last summer. She is saying something to someone here that
scares the hell out of me.
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