Men's Bodies Explored By Men

The golden ending set in media res ...

Andrew McMillan physical "urination"

you wake to the sound of stream into bowl
and go to hug the naked body
stood with its back to you     and kiss the neck
and taste the whole of the night on there
and smell the morning's pale yellow loss
and take the whole of him in your hand
and feel the water moving through him
and knowing that this is love     the prone flesh
what we expel from the body and what we let inside

prone flesh -- "likely or liable to suffer from, do, or experience something unpleasant or regrettable" rather than "lying flat"

I am prone to like the version that ends as above; the truncation of some thoughts about breath causes a slight pang and yet is welcome     the mind pauses and it is the form that speaks

in the longer version the tautness is gone    

I had forgotten that loving could feel so calming
telling you that your body was beautiful     sighing out
the brittle disappointments from the bones     having no judgement
of what the body may want to be doing     where the breath may fall

imagine all that freight of philosophy is carried by the one word "expel"     and cast is the spell     we know where the breath may fall     neck     kiss

French has the beautifully suggestive verb humer     long vowels     most appropriate to mark morning encounters

And so for day 2312
12.04.2013

Pregnant Pause

Andrew McMillan
"Jocasta"
playtime

the ending...

and so I've learnt to trust only what I have
in this one small room     this square of light
this handful of neck     this noose     this table
this one short step

It's the combination of line breaks, spacing and the unbedecked nouns: neck, noose, table, step that contribute to an almost cinematic set of closeups and sharp cutting. High affect through a poverty of means — no small skill.

And so for day 2310
10.04.2013

All Around Us

I cannot celebrate enough Jane Byers impeccable justesse in the endings to the poems in the Keen sequence in Acquired Community. Look at how poignant and yet defiant the ending of the last poem in the sequence, "Elegy", is

But I don't want to keen,
I want to live.

So did we.
If you want immortality, write a book.

Your book falls apart in my hands.

Read others, including elegies.

Damn the elegy.
It took decades for all of us to plainly say
I love you to someone who is alive.

Eventually you will love
more of the dead than the living.

Of course, those who recall Laurie Anderson's lyrics to Speak My Language ("Now that the living outnumber the dead") would have a different take on finitude and the love of the dead. And by the way Byers is spot on, Michael Lynch's book in its perfect binding falls apart in your hands. The glue dries and crumbles. There is no immortality through the book. There is also no guarantee that one will live to the point of loving more of the dead than the living. Destiny can claim the young before they age. There is some bad faith being peddled here. And if we back up to the strophes that link to this exchange we find a plurality of activities that are necessary to sustain community — and thus the poem itself betrays the privileged position of the wisdom of the ending. The end is not the end.

I love the gay community.
Our community.

What have you done to help our community?
We forged our own families of choice,
created bonds of affection not blood,
celebrated sex, helped each other die.

But I don't want to keen,
I want to live.

And so on until the end. I am not fine with that exclusionary "we" — it cannot be recuperated by a half-hearted intimation of mortality. Read others is the imperative embedded earlier. And so I will turn to Lorna Crozier The Garden Going on Without Us, "Even the Dead"

Even the dead reach for you
as you walk, so beautiful,
across the earth.

[...]

The bouquets in your room
are the hands of the dead,
transmuted. Roses.

[...]

Even the dead bless you.
Their blossoms glow
like muted lanterns

lighting your way
as you walk
green paths of sleep.

Quite a different sensibility than the Protestant-tinged guilt tripping of the ghost in Jane Byers (in an earlier poem in the sequence the ghost admits that "Religion gave me stories / and a place to put my rage"). But Crozier's transmuted dead are in keeping with that very same raging ghost's notions about transfiguration. Just needs a return to a more expansive notion of dancefloor. The end is not the end. On this I am quite keen. And a duet is not a dialogue.

And so for day 2289
20.03.2013

Own Your Reaction

Elizabeth Hoover has a chapbook Love in the Wild in which the aestheticization of violence leaves the reader in trembling cognitive dissonance. Here is the end of "War Games" which tells the story of a rescue attempt that butts up against the ravages of body and mind that can no longer be endured.

When I wake to shouting I run to the edge
of the minefield we ringed in barbed wire

[...]

Bigs holds me back and she turns and looks
at all of us, tucks her chin down and rips
the dress slowly from the collar to the hem—bones,
bruises, a bandage black with blood—
all the while singing a little song quietly,
so quietly we hear the click.

And there it ends. The imagination lies suspended before the detonation. A sound offering a freeze frame. And you admire the poet's skill and shudder at the beauty and begin to register the horror. All condensed in that one click.

In "A Celebration: Maude Oklahoma", a poem about a lynching and burning in honour of Palmer Sampson (1881-1898) and Lincoln McGeisey (1882-1898), Hoover again manages to convey eerie haunting on a pivotal word. We are invited into a mind we find repulsive. Again the tension turns on positioning of a small detail shattering any pleasure offered up by easy voyeurism. The reader is forced to resist complicity and the final statement turns into a question and sets the mind a spinning.

In the dovegray morning, a slice of yellow appeared
along the horizon. it was winter and the frost
tinged the tips of the grass white. The crowd was quiet,
sifting through the greasy ashes looking for souvenirs:
the soot-speckled link of the chain, a vertebrae twisted
from the spine, or even just a hunk of the burnt stump,
anything to hold up to the light, saying Remember,
remember when we burned those two boys
how lovely they were, bright under the dark oak,
how lovely, what a celebration.

The weight of irony is not light. "Celebration" is leached of its joy.

And so for day 2148
30.10.2012

A Tool in the Sky

To fully appreciate the bravura of the ending to this poem, you need to recall the beginning. "a brief history of time" concludes "the mezzaluna rocking" section of Heartland by Michele Leggott.

the book slips past my ears
on the flight over      three hours
following the sun folding up corporeal
reality and I'm not finished as we begin
the descent into      earlier      tray tables
secured seats in the upright position     not
a molecule lighter or less perturbed
than the cold air under our wings      we step
back in the same day and forget an hour
the spooling voice entered and can't leave
or leaves many times without us      going on
split or spilt from departures arrivals terminals
the book slips by and I am not done

[…]

[…]      the mezzaluna
rocking out along the bay or through the fine crust
pulled from the hot oven      the mezzaluna of doubt
of two hands of cutting it fine      as the doors close
the bell clangs and the drunk begins his hyena call
to the black universe then charms a small boy in a paper hat
it's my birthday too very same as yours same as you      I am
going to see my friends all my friends tonight      seven days
of crossings going off like steel drums      again and again
we say goodbye and walk into Hill of Content where the book
opens itself to the very page I was on      real or imagined
starting over on the way back against the turn of the earth

We are not done. We are undone.

The half moon in the heavens. The half moon in the hand.

Rocking.

And so for day 2069
12.08.2012

Agreeing to Perpetual Commotion

Inscribed under the sign of fado, Michele Leggott's conclusion to milk & honey is an expansive poem called "wild light" whose ending opens the mind onto wide vistas

[…]

travelling light
because our hearts
those crazy old caloyers
have gone on ahead
with all the stories on a string
all the stories in the world
waiting to happen
again
light swings between us
luminous and dispersive
anguish no anguish
I won't be back this way again
but the world of light
throws its salts into the sky
one more time
foam dew clouds lightning
and on this arm
of the harbouring planet
we look up and agree to live
in perpetual commotion
a new moon and just below it
the evening star

OMAPERE, 25 JANUARY 2004

Anchored in place and on a thread raising to source of light.

And so for day 2068
11.08.2012

Finding Ideal Grace: Resisting the End to the Ends of Being

The tension builds and resolves itself into a theory of becoming the genius of the place — our matter returning to scatter throughout the niches of the ecosystem.

How will they view us, the receiving angels
Who perhaps find it easier when the dead are shipped in smoothly
Headfirst, arms across the breastbone, smiling
As if all along this is where they had wanted to be
How will the angels receive our kind
Who will be dragged in feet first, face down, hands
Far outstretched, the broken nails
Black with the dirt of some local habitation?

"How will they view us, the receiving angels…?" by David Constantine collected in Elder

And so for day 1956
21.04.2012

Sounds of the House

Kaushalya Bannerji ~~ A New Remembrance ~~ "My Dida's House"

The poem ends with a stark image of a gender divide.

My world was always one of communicative women, harsh-voiced or sweet, and silent men appearing like fullstops at the end of hurried sentences.

Strategically locating this at the end of the poem ties the telling to the told in a memorable fashion.

And so for day 1914
10.03.2012

I could have danced all night…

Saw My Fair Lady the other evening. My viewing companion hated it but sat through it. He loved the hats. Nothing else.

I was intrigued by how Cukor makes the ensemble numbers into depictions of a vibrant social space.

Of course given some Movie Club discussions I was keen on observing the ending.

Does Eliza truly come back to Higgins?

In the final scene we see Higgins listening to a recording of Eliza when she first came to him seeking lessons. Eliza shut off the playback and intones in her own voice her reply to Higgins that is she washed her face and hands before she came. This is delivered in her voice as a flower girl and not in the lady-like strains that she acquired by training. In a sense, she is reclaiming an authentic voice — a voice that connected her to her father and her social circle. Do recall the ensemble numbers of street scenes: those with Eliza and those with her father. Also worth noting is that Eliza doesn't cross the threshold to enter the room where Higgins is listening to a recording (doing exactly what Eliza had earlier suggested he do if he had need to recall her presence). She is a liminal creature. It is important to note that although she is in the house, she has not traversed fully into his space.

Higgins's final line asking about his slippers is wondrously ambiguous. "Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?" He quickly hides behind his hat as if to mask a grin. The last time his slippers appeared in the film they were being hurled at his head. It was Eliza doing the hurling. The rapprochement between the characters is in delicate balance.

I discovered doing a little research that the question of endings also plagued productions of the play, Pygmalion. See http://www.syaross.org/writings/nonfiction/pygmalion.html

And so for day 1890
15.02.2012

Explosive Ending Expanding

A simple poem about the encounter with gentle beasts, gorgeous ponies, ends with amazing bravura…

She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

conclusion to "A Blessing" by James Wright
from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/46481

So much depends on those line endings that break... those line breaks that prolong the ending...

And so for day 1737
15.09.2011

Really? Only once?

It was James Longenbach's The Art of the Poetic Line that brought me to Louise Glück's "Nostos" and its ending that speaks of or to a kind of ironic enlargement.

As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.

The sentence fragment about expectations about lyric poets could be a comment on all the description that precedes or it could be announcing the procedure of observation-rememoration, a conniving between the reader and the writer — that "we" that is all grown up.

And so for day 1616
17.05.2011

Special Spoiler

Sometimes one reads the after-word or the note before completing the parts that come first. Sometimes what we read afterward reverberates. For example, the simple statement:

Some sources contend that the war ended differently.

Once you've read the book, this sounds like exquisite understatement. The war in question being the Trojan; the story that of Pyrrhus as told by Mark Merlis in An Arrow's Flight [Pyrrhus in the U.K.] And the strife between life ways is caught in that verb — to contend — always attentive to the alternative.

And so for day 796
16.02.2009

Chain ditty

Frank Zappa "Packard Goose" has a segment sung by the character, Mary from the bus.

Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is the best.

Hits the right note!

And so for day 391
08.01.2008