The New Yorker – Oct 30, 17

I read and reread the first poem in this issue, Sophie Klahr’s “From ‘Like Nebraska.'” It starts, “He drinks like the faithful, / the way they fold their hands… like two owls roosting in an elm.” The poem is full of subversive metaphors like that, fun, a bit puzzling, quite original. When the narrator and her man leave the bar, they run into a stranger who rails at them about the environment. “…the bees going damn drunk / with hunger.” There is a backfiring truck, an opossum that “practices its death,” and their desire for each other. So, a poem about how fragile life is, how we find our fun while on the edge of disaster? I guess so. It’s hard to get inside this poem, and maybe that’s on purpose. Or maybe there is no interior, only the yearning to find a meaning the poet withholds. We’re left with all these little sensual shocks, and a moment captured in time, and a reason to reread once more.

“La Mediterranee,” by Nick Laird begins, “In the midst of our lifelike life / I come to this fork in your hand…” Such sly amusement runs through this poem. “I fully understand its pronginess, / the bent of want.” The narrator, his partner and the children are out at a restaurant. “…the waiter brought // your sea bass… its seared arrangement of chain mail.” But there is a sense that we are considering more than the surface life. “If we did continue further in — // into an atom of the flesh.” The poem unfolds, but only in a sly, noncommittal way, to discuss: “emptiness — as at the heart of any restaurant.” So are we talking of their relationship? On the surface, as you see, it’s about dining out. And that darn sea bass, giving the narrator the fish eye (not an explicit metaphor, but lingering just beneath the surface). So we go back to that first line. A lifelike life. Not a true life, then? And each observation in the poem can certainly relate to a space between the couple, a coldness, a formality as found in restaurants. Note the chain mail. The bent of want… away?

And most of all, there are the children, watching this. We wonder how they are affected. If they even know what is going on. We wonder if this is simply a momentary glitch between the couple, or perhaps we misunderstand, and the moment being described is about something else entirely. A little in-joke, perhaps. We hope for the couple, we worry for them, we accept that things are going on we will never learn about. Their moment is private, though they are out in a public space. The humor is a shield, not an invitation inside. A very good poem, though tinged with sadness.

Peace in poetry,

P M F Johnson

My eBook of poems, Against The Night, a sweet, rueful look at love in a long marriage, is available on Amazon, and at other fine e-retailers.

Related blog posts:

The New Yorker – Aug 21 17

The New Yorker – July 31 2017

Rattle Magazine – Fall 17