A poem from KINGDOM ANIMALIA by ARACELIS GIRMAY

JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN Reviews

“Kingdom Animalia” from Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay

(BOA Editions, Ltd., Rochester, 2011)

Kingdom Animalia

When I got the call about my brother,

I’m on a stopped train leaving town

& the news packs into me – freight –

though it’s him on the other end

now, saying finefine –

Forfeit my eyes, I want to turn away

from the hair on the floor of his house

& how it got there Monday,

but my one heart falls

like a sad, fat persimmon

dropped by the hand of Turczyn’s old tree.

I want to sleep. I do not want to sleep. See,

one day, not today, not now, we will be gone

from this earth, where we know the gladiolas.

My brother, this noise,

some love [you] I loved

with all my brain, & breath,

will be gone; I’ve been told, today, to consider this

as I ride the long tracks out & dream so good

I see a plant in the window of the house

my brother shares with his love, their shoes. & there

he is, asleep in bed

with this same woman whose long skin

covers all her bones, in a city called Oakland,

& their dreams hang above them

a little like a chandelier, & their teeth

flash in the night, oh, body.

Oh, body, be held now by whom you love.

Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars,

when dirt’s the only animal who will sleep with you

& touch you with

its mouth.

*

“Kingdom Animalia” is an ars vivendi, which places it in one of the oldest poetic traditions there is. The ars vivendi is often tied to a memento mori, as for example, in Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress.” There is at least one echo here of that poem, especially at the end, which I will get to in its place.

This particular addition to the tradition is suggested by a crisis in the family. Something has happened to the author and/or narrator’s brother:

When I got the call about my brother,

I’m on a stopped train leaving town

& the news packs into me – freight –

though it’s him on the other end

now, saying finefine –

We don’t yet know the significance of the train, or if there is any. But we all know exactly where we were when we got certain phone calls, when we heard certain bits of news. But we do know that his brother is likely in the hospital, and that though someone else called, his brother is able to get on the phone and make reassuring noises.

Because of my own family history, I suppose, my first thought is: mild heart attack. But I begin to suspect that reading when I get to the second stanza:

Forfeit my eyes, I want to turn away

from the hair on the floor of his house

& how it got there Monday,

but my one heart falls

like a sad, fat persimmon

dropped by the hand of Turczyn’s old tree.

The hair on the floor of the house suggests a shaving of the head, and that it’s cancer, not a heart attack. But this doesn’t explain the emergency nature of the phone call. The reader will probably never know quite what prompted the phone call. Is this a problem? Some readers lament the opacity of reference often found in contemporary poetry. I don’t. I don’t need to know exactly what’s going on, just that the author and/or narrator is freaked out and worried. At this point he drops another opaque reference, to “Turczyn’s old tree”. Google tells me that Turczyn is Old Polish for Turk. Which indicates a complex family history, perhaps. But I will bet anything that the brother knows exactly what this means. I think private references, if that’s what this is, are perfectly ok, as long as the reader gets the gist, so to speak, as long as the reader can feel the weight.

It’s in the third, fourth and beginning of the fifth stanzas that the poem reveals its tradition:

I want to sleep. I do not want to sleep. See,

one day, not today, not now, we will be gone

from this earth, where we know the gladiolas.

My brother, this noise,

some love [you] I loved

with all my brain, & breath,

will be gone; I’ve been told, today, to consider this

as I ride the long tracks

I want to concentrate on one phrase, “where we know the gladiolas”. I really want to concentrate on the repeated long o. The long o in know and gladiolas lends a sense of inevitability to our knowledge. Of course we know the surface of the earth and what goes on here. We were made for this place. Additionally, the long o is the sound of “Oh!”, the sound of recognition … One might also hear the sound of “woe” In here … I think this phrase, this music, tends to lend its power to the otherwise somewhat commonplace memento mori / ars vivendi.

I don’t mean commonplace as an insult; rhetorically this is a locus communis and has been for thousands of years. I’m just trying to say that it’s hard to bring off a commonplace, and “where we know the gladiolas” is where the poet does it.

I’ve been told, today, to consider this

as I ride the long tracks out & dream so good

Next, we are brought back to the train. We now discover its function in the poem. It’s the enabler of his reverie. Though his ride provides a metaphor, “as I ride the long tracks out”, which can easily stand for life itself, I don’t think that’s the main thing. I think it’s the privacy-in-public, and the rhythm.

I see a plant in the window of the house

my brother shares with his love, their shoes. & there

he is, asleep in bed

with this same woman whose long skin

covers all her bones, in a city called Oakland,

& their dreams hang above them

a little like a chandelier, & their teeth

flash in the night, oh, body.

Now we are entering Marvell country. “To His Coy Mistress” is of course a seduction poem. It is attempt to play on the brevity of life in order to get the coy mistress into the sack:

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.

The narrator and/or author of “Kingdom Animalia” sees that his brother has realized the dream of the narrator of Marvell’s poem and then some. He and his beloved have tolled up all their strength and have created a warm and loving home. I believe that the mention of Oakland serves as more than verisimilitude. It recalls the long o sound above, and reinforces the importance of what his brother has found.

So the last stanza then, who is that directed to? “Oh, body.” But whose? Almost certainly his own. We do not know whether the train is taking him towards or away from s/he whom the author and/or narrator loves, nor whether she is any such person. We do know that he wants his own equivalent of what his brother has.

Oh, body, be held now by whom you love.

Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars,

when dirt’s the only animal who will sleep with you

& touch you with

its mouth.

The last few lines directly reference the Marvell poem’s most famous lines:

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

It’s hard to know how seriously to take “Kingdom Animalia”’s twist on this. Marvell thinks that none embrace in the grave. Our author and/or narrator notes that that’s not quite true:

… dirt’s the only animal who will sleep with you

& touch you with

its mouth.

Is this a reference to bodily decomposition due to the animal life in the earth? Is this a nod to the Gaia theory? I’m not sure it really matters here; what we do know is this is NOT the embrace the author and/or narrator is looking for.

I don’t begrudge the existence of this poem. I think, in certain circumstances, originality is highly overrated. After all, how much is there to say in the face of death or near-death? Even the most conceptual poet probably doesn’t type out the phone book and hand it to someone at a funeral.

*****

[Editor’s Note: This is one of 50 reviews written, mas o menos, in 50 days.  While each engagement can be read on a stand-alone basis, there’s a layer of watching the critic’s subjectivity arise in a fulsome manner if the reviews are read one after another.  So if you have insomnia and/or are curious about this layer, I suggest you read the 50 reviews right after each other and, to facilitate this type of reading, I will put at the bottom of each review a “NEXT” button that will take you to the next review.  To wit: NEXT.  And an Afterword on John's reading process is also available HERE!]

 

John Bloomberg-Rissman is somewhere towards middle of In the House of the Hangman, the third section of his maybe life project called Zeitgeist Spam (picture Hannah Hoch painting over the Sistine Chapel) The first two volumes have been published: No Sounds of My Own Making, and Flux, Clot & Froth. In addition to his Zeitgeist Spam project, he has edited or co-edited two anthologies, 1000 Views of 'Girl Singing' and The Chained Hay(na)ku Project, and is at work on a third, which he is editing with Jerome Rothenberg. He is also deep into two important collaborations, one with Richard Lopez, one with Anne Gorrick. By important he means "important to him". Anyone else want to collaborate? He blogs at Zeitgeist Spam.