Sunday, June 19, 2005

In Praise of Eccentricity

Mathematically speaking, eccentric means "not having the same center."

It's one thing to be "drawn over to the Dark Side." Eccentricity is a little different. Most, I think, would agree with me that it is not precisely the same thing as evil.

My ECE topic is a poet who has let me know one of her two main "teachers" when she began writing poetry was Leonard Cohen. Some of you younger bloggers may not have heard of him or know his music --- others may not realize he wrote/writes poetry. But at the moment the quote I would like to post here is not from a poem, but from a song, probably Cohen's best-known song. I bought a book of his poetry and songs to try to figure out how my poet was influenced,
so I've got the lyrics in front of me. This is the third verse:

Now Suzanne takes your hand
and she leads you to the river
she is wearing rags and feathers
from Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
on our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
there are children in the morning
they are leaning out for love
they will lean that way forever
while Suzanne holds the mirror

This Suzanne is perhaps not your archetype of a well-dressed career/soccer mom. I certainly don't mean to knock the latter, my own mom is one (though I played ice hockey) and our society would collapse without them. But what about this strange woman in her rags and feathers pointing at garbage and flowers? Certainly Cohen paints a romantic picture of her (which began in the first verse, then there's a verse about Jesus). Suzanne is no desperado suicide bomber,
there is no suggestion that she is breaking any law at all.

The line about the garbage and flowers is my favorite. I think we all have to look at both, as human beings, and it is my contention that it is more honest to look at both as poets as well.
Some would argue that as poets we don't have to be honest, that art is not about honesty. Yes, flowers smell better, look prettier. Of course we keep the kitchen trash can covered, sometimes hidden away under the sink for a good reason. I would not suggest to anyone that they do otherwise. It goes into the big plastic city garbage can, out to the curb, and off to the landfill.
One of the reasons we Americans sometimes feel superior to other cultures is that we keep our garbage pretty much out of sight.

Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were two poets who made poems out of their garbage and published them. Non-suicidal poets like Sharon Olds have done the same thing. Olds I'm sure has won many awards; most recently I saw her listed as the recipient of the "Golden Rose" award from the New England Poetry Society --- a flower!!! This is the poet who wrote poems about a jar of mucus on her dying father's bedside table, about her dying father lifting his hospital gown to show her his naked body.

I happen to find these two poems by Olds, much of Sexton and Plath quite unpleasant. Do I wish they hadn't written the poems? No. Each of these poets writes about stuff that is a part of all our lives. Speaking of literal garbage, my uncle spent two or three years ingeniously making art out of it --- not that garbage art was by any means his invention, but he gained some notoriety, had some shows, and my aunt and uncle had a very colorful living room, until he finished with this phase and trashed it all, moved on to something else.

In a world of divorce and war we have to consider our options. We can ignore what's going on around us and write about the "flowers" exclusively, that's one option. Will this keep us happy, balanced, healthy and in some way contribute to the greater good? There's a new movie out, my dad just told me about it, called "Turtles Can Fly." It's an Iranian/Iraqi collaboration, about the situation near the borders of the two countries, and the Kurdish refugees. My dad said it's "in some ways grim, but has a sense of humor to it." It's about realities like land mines and women who had been raped by Saddam's army.

As Americans, we don't often have such "grim" things to deal with in our everyday lives --- we are still blessed. But what about those of us who have grim or frightening or just whacky things to deal with --- not in the world out there, but inside ourselves??? The Leonard Cohen song is not grim, it does romanticize this rather eccentric woman. I'm sure I don't understand everything the song is about.

I'm probably a little whacky today because I didn't get enough sleep. Whacky enough that I want to share a poem that is written from an "eccentric" point of view. I would welcome feedback as to whether this poem has a right to exist.

Haloperidol

In a mental interview with herself, the psychiatric patient
asks: have you ever been
scared of yourself?

There was a time I saw white.
From the bottom of the screen of my awareness to the top
there was nothing but
white.

I was in a little room, then, wanting nothing more
than to smoke a cigarette. I found
a pack in my pocket, somehow
they hadn’t taken it, and I put one in my mouth,
tried to will it lit.

On the white screen was a figure:
a dark man. He was dragging
a garbage bag full of liquor bottles.
He was my roommate’s boyfriend, a drunk.

Another frame: my roommate, dressed in white
showing a white house
to potential buyers who are not
visible. She stares up at the white walls
which extend so high she cannot see the top.

Yes, I’ve been scared of myself because I’ve seen
stories that did not have happy
endings, and I’ve not been able
to smoke.

Then when they took me upstairs I thought
someone would come rescue me ---
I always think that.

--- Harriet

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Harriet,

I think that dark poems certainly have a right to exist, and I've written lots of them myself and I respond deeply to many dark poems. I also have lots of eccentric friends and relatives. I've had my share of family tragedies, too. I certainly don't think that we should all be writing just insipid, happy poems. And I think that we can all write whatever we want about our own (emphasize "own") minds, feelings, experiences. We can all write about the darkest situations in the news right now or in history.

My main concern is about when I am writing about someone else -- what are my obligations then? If I write about someone I know whose personal situation is painful, and then publish the poem or read it at an open mic, is that fair to him or her? I'm not sure yet. Maybe it's perfectly fair -- like journalists recording what they see. Or maybe I'm somehow being a voyeur.

I'd really like to hear the opinions of others, too, on this topic.

Thanks for your blog post!

Gwen

3:08 PM  
Blogger HL said...

Gwen, someone published a poem about me once that was in places true, in places exaggerated, in places downright insulting, and I felt weird about it for a very long time, but eventually I had to just laugh about it. I'm a poet, though, and I understand why poets need to write such poems. I have
resisted submitting or reading certain poems at open mics. I think we have the power to hurt people and should avoid it.

4:19 PM  
Blogger Jae Newman said...

To hurt or not. That ain't the question old Bill asked.

Wasn't it, "To be or not to be?"

Hundreds of years later, I still think its a better question to ask.

When considering to write poems that put people we know and (possible love) in adverse or compromised positions, I say write it.

You don't have to share the poem with anyone else, but writing these things down, as only a poet can, is a way of processing and in the process, we understand things deeper than our wildest desires for the depth of our own imaginations and senses of justice and harmony.

Write. It is the key part of writer.

I don't believe that a writer is above anyone else, and being reckless can cause disharmony and strife. What is the alternative though?

What relationship can not survive a poem is not a relationship of substance.

9:25 AM  

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