I understand where VZ was coming from when he said we would hate the language poets we’re focusing on this week. I don’t necessarily hate the writing style, but it is very disjointed and frustrating to follow compared to the structures that make up formalist poetry. However, the more I read this week the more I appreciated the scattered representations of ideas as well as the indirect way of telling stories and themes.
The “poetry” structured in paragraphs like “My Life” by Hejinian and “All those Words” by Palmer are not real to me, partially because they read like a run-on sentence with several commas separating ideas that don’t really connect. So I decided to focus on a poem that reads as more formal (no pun intended). I liked “Tone” by Rae Armantrout because it was both a general and intimate look into suburban life. Though I do not live a monotonous suburban life such as that alluded to in these poems, I can see a relatable underlying theme of “is this it?”.
Split into 6 parts of varying lengths, the parts that make up “Tone” reveal the inner thoughts of a woman who has lived with someone (presumed husband) for a good length of time. The first section shows the narrator “smiling languidly”, faking enjoyment for the sake of her partner. It recalls what first attracted the lovers to one another, where they “loved because they startled one another”. This was an interesting intro to me because it set the scene as the woman faking emotions and intimate reactions for the sake of feelings of the past. The next section read as very “language poet”, listing miscellaneous objects like tin foil and pens, an image of the narrator’s husband giving her a bouquet made of doorknobs and nails. This read as the gift of a house – so much of the American Dream revolves around a house with a white picket fence, and the bouquet of doorknobs made me picture this as him giving or building her a house, presenting this to her as if it were a gift. The third ties into this idea, too, because she questions if she should even be lamenting over her situation. The narrator questions if it is “bourgeois to dwell on nuance” and seems to be telling herself these are very first world problems she is dwelling upon.
For the 4th section, I wasn’t as sure what to make of this, and I’m hoping someone else can weigh in on it. Especially because the title “tone” is in this section, but I didn’t really find it to be saying anything significant. This may be the point, though – “kindly but sad”, the descriptions of doorsteps on their block can be referring to the mundane simplicity of the cookie-cutter houses that surround them. The fifth section draws up images of butterflies and nature, a nice change from the everyday objects characterizing the rest of the passages. Armantrout says, “In the suburbs butterflies / still spiral up the breeze”, and we are left thinking of a butterfly floating on the wind freely. But the narrator is observing this within her own closed-off world, admiring the butterfly and wishing she could “enter into this spirit!”. The reality is this freedom is not attainable, and the narrator is pulled back to reality speaking of her mother who is described as having been in ill health. It is unfortunate but very realistic that a suburban wife would want a life that is different or overall better, but that her duties as a wife, mother, and daughter pull her from that and ground her back into her actuality.
The last section is short and alludes to a resentment towards the narrator’s spouse. She characterizes herself as “slavish”, waiting up for her husband who is getting home late, though she is stuck in the house. When he returns, this also represents “the end of lack”, which we can assume means she waits for him because she misses him or is not complete without his presence. The absence of a period at the end of this also created a sense of longing for something more. Overall, I liked this poem because of the layers of feeling and everyday life that are packed into such small words. Creating different sections to make up the whole poem isolate each feeling and scene to paint the picture of a larger problem, one large enough to span a person’s entire life, and that is no small feat!
I really like this reading, and you made me re-think a few of these stanzas. I like what you do with the doorknob bouquet stanza in particular–framing it as a sort of “gift” of domesticity, trying to make beauty out of the everyday and instrumental. In a way, the poem is trying to do that to, and we catch a glimpse of it in that butterfly.
In the end, though, the poem seems to be a critique of a life lived in response to a “lack”–an absence, the gnawing sense of something missing and never to be found. The poem doesn’t really offer a different vision from that–what would a life be like defined by abundance and adventure rather than lack and routine? We don’t really get that “tone” here…
Thanks for sharing this reading!