Wrote the name of a pill on my hand. Wrote one
because that was all I took. I spent a long time making the bed.
It wasn’t because you weren’t home, so much as it wasn’t home
without you there. I didn’t want to make any mistakes.
Took the trash out early, and washed the bottles in the sink.
I wasn’t sad. I was occupied.
The cat was in heat and every advisement involved a Bic pen.
The television broke, the toaster inflamed. Around three there was nothing
in the air but the air, and I wasn’t asleep. Wrote the name of the pill,
wrote my name, wrote yours. Wrote a couple of things I’d been meaning to do.
Wrote married and wondered.
Even in good dreams, I take a piss in the wrong place. I wake up
with sweat between my legs, my hands numb, and thinking
you’re down there at the end of the bed setting up nets
and all kinds of measures.
Danielle Pafunda
What is the difference between this poetry and the insufferable Arda? The syntax and tone are the same, almost rote. It’s the same torpid anxious self-aggrandizing self-hating self-obsessed narrator. What is the difference? Is it that Pafunda’s not afraid to like, talk about piss and cats in heat and catching a man and Collins is so much more…sterile? Conventional? Pretty? Pianos and soups?
Huh.
unreliable narrator said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Can you link to an Arda C. poem so we can get the full-on ghastly comparison? I haven’t read her book yet. But it makes sense to me that Glück is going to pick the tamer and more domesticated of the sharp edges, because that is where she likes to coast herself–
anatomyofadress said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Garden Apartments by Arda Collins
It was raining a little.
I wondered if I were outside
if I would get wet.
I was in the car.
I passed a school.
I didn’t really know where I was.
I had lived near here for a while.
It was a quiet, residential neighborhood,
garden apartments in the back of the town.
I parked near a driveway and turned the car off.
They were basically ugly.
It’s no one’s fault though.
I wondered what I would do the rest of the day.
People were running their lives from here.
They had a coffee table and mugs with writing on them.
They had the rest of their lives. It was just like the other day.
The weather was warm for the first time.
I was out walking.
A young couple came out of a house.
She had just taken a shower,
blow-dried her hair and put make up on,
and put on light-colored pants and a t-shirt.
I smelled her shampoo
when they passed, and I felt afraid of the day.
The rest of the walk was better.
It smelled like rain in the car. There was no one around.
I heard my jacket when I moved.
I thought how god loves this place;
the grass was coming in, and the crocuses.
What if someone died, or got fired,
or vomited alone in the middle of the night?
The apartments were wood on the outside.
They were stained red like the color of a picnic table.
I was so ugly, I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to drive.
anatomyofadress said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:30 pm
UGH UGH OMG I HATE IT
unreliable narrator said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Oh you are KIDDING me. THIS gets you a Yale Younger these days? Wystan must be revolving in his grave. Like a turkey on a SPIT.
So she has some antipoetic of declarative, “artlessly” end-stopped lines. So what, Louise. So farking WHAT. I guess the last line is supposed to redeem/reverse that flatness. And I do rather like the last line. Especially if it were the last line to a WHOLE OTHER POEM—
Okay, I need to step away for a moment and breathe—
anatomyofadress said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:46 pm
O IKR? I was just standing in front of the sink finishing the MOUNTAIN of dishes I’ve accumulated this week and thinking about that poem like I HOPE SHE DOESN’T FALL ASLEEP WHILE SHE’S READING IT HEY HEY J-LOWE WAKE UP
unreliable narrator said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:52 pm
OMFG I nearly did. I woke up briefly at “shampoo” and then again for (of course) “vomiting.”
anatomyofadress said,
November 5, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Yep, EXACTLY
unreliable narrator said,
November 5, 2009 at 7:03 pm
So now, Pafunda—even the sentences start out with something a little different, clipped off in that pronoun-eliding Bridget-Jones style, unlike like Arda’s deliberately prosy (I hope) SVO declaratives (but how far they fall from the terrifying antipoetic of The Cow!).
Then too, Pafunda works with a quiet but reasonably effective line length and line break; there aren’t really sounds working in the poem in terms of vowels and consonants, but there is a definite metrical pulse pulling along through/under the line. And some fairly engaging rhetorical reversals = logopoeia (“so much as it wasn’t home / without you there”) (“nothing / in the air but the air”); plus just the bald content of writing a pill name on your hand, so you don’t do a Heath Ledger, is creepy and interesting. More so than “I was in the car. / I passed a school.” I passed a STONE, now you’re talking—
And finally, even though predictable poems about dream-logic are in everyone’s thesis/first book, she’s still managed to make it fresh and unfamiliar when we encounter “you’re down there at the end of the bed setting up nets / and all kinds of measures.” I like it.
Danielle, B+ for your revision. Arda should drop the class. And change her major to communications.
unreliable narrator said,
November 5, 2009 at 7:08 pm
The ONLY thing I can praise in Arda’s…thing, besides the last line, would be that earlier line “It was just like the other day” instead of the expected “It was just like any other day.” That was subtle and reasonably classy.
But was it really worth “I thought how god loves this place”? Rhetorical question. Then I look around at the students, all staring blindly at the worksheet, and flip my pen back and forth between my fingers waiting and trying to be patient.
A. said,
November 6, 2009 at 5:36 am
I have nothing of substance to contribute, except that if I haven’t mentioned it lately, y’all are wonderful. Hokay.