A poem from THE MYSTERY OF THE HIDDEN DRIVEWAY by JENNIFER L KNOX

JOHN BLOOMBERG-RISSMAN Reviews

“The Earth Is Flat and So’s My Ass” from The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway by Jennifer L Knox

(Bloof Books, NJ, 2010)

The Earth Is Flat and So’s My Ass

These days, not so much regret. Brute will’s broke

as a petting zoo pony. Funny how it keeps us entranced

by difficult piffle that passed as the whole enchilada.

Bruises always fresh as hothouse violets – they dared

not darken to the ochre that signaled surrender and

whatever came next. We called it not “Death” – more

like “Man Gnaws Off Limb in Tractor Accident.”

[Gavel pounds] But gentlemen, we believe something

has [big time] shifted, that you won’t catch us again

marching stiff and shatterable as stale candy canes

into a taco stand to demand our just potato kugel.

We accept all [llllllll] the limitations. We understand

the work will be [deep sigh] arduous – the toads to be

swallowed [burp], numerous, and [hoo!] it’s gonna get

ugly [er].

*

This reading is double. First, I read the poem, and wrote the following (what you will find between the double asterisks. Then I had the rest of my day. Then I went to sleep. Then the poem got its second reading, because the moment I woke up I got this poem, and all my confusions fell away. How did this happen? I wish I knew. I settle for calling it magic.

This second reading will follow the second set of double asterisks.

**

How could I not want to read a poem with such a great title? I want to think about that title. “The Earth Is Flat”: I parse that as a comment on a past; “And So’s My Ass”: I parse that as a comment on the present, and that the author’s not “of a certain age” as they say. So somehow, past and present are both still present. Or something like that. And it’s funny, too, like a joke I don’t have to quite get to get.

“These days, not so much regret. Brute will’s broke / as a petting zoo pony.” Hmm. The only cure for regret is a broken will, eh? But it’s not just a broken will, it’s a “brute will.” So maybe it’s a good thing We don’t know yet, except that the author / narrator compares the broken will to a petting zoo pony, which is not usually seen as an image of empowerment, to put it mildly, but rather it’s opposite. So, I think there’s a little ambivalence about the lessening regret.

Which fits well with the flat ass thing. Women I know, even those with image problems, seem to see their flattening asses as a sign of aging, which doesn’t please much, especially in this culture of “forever young.” Though this is of course, a massive overstatement. I also know many women who have accepted quite happily their changing bodies, and social statuses; one, to whom I am particularly close, delights in calling herself a crone.

But, of course, I don’t know whether the narrator of this poem is a woman. I just assume it because of the flat ass, which isn’t something guys seem to mention, tho there’s nothing bonier than an old man’s ass.

“Funny how it keeps us entranced / by difficult piffle that passed as the whole enchilada.” To what does the “it” refer? To the brute will, I think, though it could also refer to regret. The two do seem tied together; as the intensity of one diminishes, so does the intensity of the other. At this point I am beginning to think that the author / narrator’s feelings are mixed: I may be broken like a petting zoo pony, but at least I don’t confuse the difficult piffle with anything seriously serious anymore.  More than just mixed feelings are going on her. By leading off with the “Funny how …” I sense that the author narrator sees the self that was so easily entranced almost as another now, an intimate other, perhaps, dearly remembered, perhaps, but no less an other former self.

“Bruises always fresh as hothouse violets – they dared / not darken to the ochre that signaled surrender and / whatever came next.” These lines are complex, and I’m not sure that I can untangle them; but the make me ask questions: was the author narrator abused? Are the bruises metaphorical? I’m guessing metaphorical, since “they dared / not darken to the ochre that signaled surrender and / whatever came next” – which is what I’d imagine an abuser to want, in fact. But if metaphorical, why did the bruises dare not darken? I can’t untangle that. The best I can come up with is: because of the strength of the brute will, perhaps …

“We called it not “Death” – more / like “Man Gnaws Off Limb in Tractor Accident.”” Here, the “it” refers to the “whatever came next.” Like the previous lines, though, I’m not sure I can untangle exactly what’s going on here. On the one hand, these are clearly going to get a laugh in a comedy club. On the other, I would hazard to say that if I’m right about the referent of the it, then “Man Gnaws Off Limb in Tractor Accident” would seem to signify the precise opposite of what follows surrender. Since I’m enjoying the poem to this point, and since I do laugh the comedy club laugh, I’m willing to let this go, to see what comes next.

            [Gavel pounds] But gentlemen, we believe something

has [big time] shifted, that you won’t catch us again

marching stiff and shatterable as stale candy canes

into a taco stand to demand our just potato kugel.

The recognition that something has shifted goes back to the first lines, so I can ignore my conundrum with the previous lines and continue forward. The breaking of the brute will, which is signaled by the lessening of regret, is reiterated, though more vaguely this time, leading me to believe that the author / narrator doesn’t really know what has changed, just that something has.

The author / narrator has realized that this world will never be just. That the potato kugel we all deserve may well never be ours. These lines too are funny, at the same time they are sad. I’m not sure that the sadness is in the poem, though; it may simply be in my head. I mean, they go against my own sense of political activism, which, simply put, is that one does struggle, especially when all is lost.

I’ll give an example, Eileen, the editor here, is passionate about adoption. She repeats the number of unadopted children frequently and publicly, as a kind of admonition to us all. Now, she knows damn well that not all these kids will get adopted. Some, many of them, will indeed be lost. But she doesn’t stop struggling against that fact.

So I’m bothered by these lines. But again, that isn’t the poem’s problem. There’s no reason that it must share my politics.

            We accept all [llllllll] the limitations. We understand

the work will be [deep sigh] arduous – the toads to be

swallowed [burp], numerous, and [hoo!] it’s gonna get

ugly [er].

[I love the varied use of brackets, by the way]

This, the end of the poem, seems to justify my interpretation of the lines above. But if we have finally surrendered, if we have decide to live in the world as-is, rather than to gnaw our legs off, what’s the work, then? To learn to live in unlivable conditions?

At this point in my reading I recall the way the title begins: “The Earth Is Flat”. And I think: accepting the limitations = accepting that the earth is flat. And I begin to wonder if I might just be missing some sarcasm. Perhaps this is more a dramatic monologue than anything. Perhaps the monologist’s position is one we’re not supposed to entirely accept. I’m not saying that we’re supposed to believe the opposite. Just that we may be led to think that just because my ass is flat I don’t ***have*** to believe that the earth is, too. Perhaps we’re left with a choice to make. We can take our newfound maturity and settle for the status quo, or we can “[march] stiff and shatterable as stale candy canes into [the] taco stand …”

I think one of the interesting aspects of this poem is that Knox may not have made this choice for us.

**

Second reading.

Revelation upon waking: this is a dramatic monologue, like many of the other poems in Knox’s book. But it’s not your normal monologue, it’s what I will call a second-order monologue, it’s meta. It’s the covert message of someone who says, “I’m mature now. I put all that ‘be not content with the way things are’ utopian nonsense behind me, and I accept my grownup lot.” It’s the opposite of Olaf glad and big’s “There is some shit I will not eat.”

These days, not so much regret. Brute will’s broke

as a petting zoo pony. Funny how it keeps us entranced

by difficult piffle that passed as the whole enchilada.

Now someone might actually say the first and third lines. Under certain conditions, they are the actual wisdom of maturity. But no one ever justifies themselves by comparing their mature self to a broke down petting zoo pony. Can you imagine David Horowitz justifying his turning into a petty little fascist that way? 

Bruises always fresh as hothouse violets – they dared

not darken to the ochre that signaled surrender and

whatever came next.

Here I read the bruises as the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The kind of shit Olaf refuses to eat (no not the specific shit:Olaf is a conscientious objector. This is the general shit that comes with living on one of the 99%-er rungs of society). The bruises dare not darken because they’d give my petting pony status away.

As with the first lines, these are mixed, between first and second order. Someone might say “Bruises always fresh as hothouse violets”, but no one would say, “they dare not darken …” because that gives away that face that “surrender and whatever came  next” is exactly that to which I’m mad myself subject.

We called it not “Death” – more

like “Man Gnaws Off Limb in Tractor Accident.”

These lines confused me first time round. But reading them as second order, what they say is “We called it “Man Gnaws Off Limb in Tractor Accident” because we didn’t want to call it “Death” – which in fact it was. In other words, we quit, and we lied about it.

[Gavel pounds]

The first time round I downplayed this line, simply saying that I loved the varied use of brackets. This time, I believe that this particular bracketed bit truly signifies. It shows the narrator taking up her/his place in the given social order, which is bureaucratic, juridical, and all those wonderful things in which it’s all been decided and one’s place in the food chain is always-already.

But gentlemen, we believe something

has [big time] shifted, that you won’t catch us again

marching stiff and shatterable as stale candy canes

into a taco stand to demand our just potato kugel.

We accept all [llllllll] the limitations.

This is the formal announcement that we will be good little men and women from now on. I don’t think it’s any accident that we are announcing this to a meeting of gentlemen. How many women were present at that recent House of Representatives hearing to discuss women’s reproductive rights? For those who can’t remember, zero. Women weren’t allowed to speak. Whatever else we’ve agreed to, we’ve agreed to the patriarchy.

 … We understand

the work will be [deep sigh] arduous – the toads to be

swallowed [burp], numerous, and [hoo!] it’s gonna get

ugly [er].

“We understand the work will be [deep sigh] arduous”, can almost be read as first-order, as something a “maturing” person might actually say. Yes, life is hard, my lot is hard, but I accept it. The only possible problem with a first-order reading is the deep sigh. I don’t know whether broken petting ponies sigh, or whether that sigh’s been knocked out of them as part of the breaking process. I think the latter. When someone in power sighs and says, “We need to make tough choices” he/she always means, “You’re screwed, I’m fine.”

It’s with what comes after the dash that we know we are in second-order territory. No one admits that their giving up the just potato kugel means it’s toads, toads, toads from now one. Toads for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even the cakes are toads, really. “Let them eat toads!” “OK, glad to, fine!”

And what they (I go back and forth between they and we, doin’t I?) certainly never admit to is that surrender equals acquiescence in an ugly-heading-uglier life. Its kind of like that old ActUp! Silence = Death slogan stood on it’s head. But not quite. Have we gone third-order here, at the very end. Is our meta meta? Maybe. 

I ended my first reading with, “I think one of the interesting aspects of this poem is that Knox may not have made this choice for us.” I end this reading with “Given my own politics, I think one of the wonderful aspects of this poem is that she has.”

*****

[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.