Poetry Month
X. DANCE OF THE WESTERN UNION ENVELOPE HOW THE HEART LEAPS UP MORE EAGER THAN PLANT OR BEAST
"Devil's share" is the portion of one's goods that cannot be usefully spent
and so gets sacrificed.
But what if the devil is not so stupid.
What if a devil long after sacrifice
starts coming and going on the borderland--
just a crease in daylight.
Disappearance was a game to him,
my mother
unsurprised
when he did not appear for the wedding
and she was careful of my feelings-- care
like a prong.
The wedding cake (stored in the pantry) I ate myself
piece by piece
all of it
in the months that follower, sitting
in the living room late at night, chewing.
His telegram (day after) said
But please don't cry--
that's all.
Five words for a dollar.
-Anne Carson from The Beauty of the Husband
It'd be tempting to overemphasize the situation of the poem (being abandoned at the altar) by making it the subject. But the subject here is the relationship, not the event. The emotionally distant perspective of the narrator separates her from the situation and pulls the poem away from melodrama. She was stood up, it happened, and that's that. We assume her emotions; we fill in the emotional blanks because they are left open and because she gives us enough situational detail to feel the emotion for ourselves (eating the wedding cake, hearing the mother's poor consolations, receiving the telegram-- all things that are easily imagined).
Craft-wise, it'd be tempting to say that this is a simple poem. The lines are jagged in length. The music is muted; the song of it consists of the subtlest variations on common speech. But she's doing a lot to add weight to everyday words. She interrupts herself twice with comments in parentheses. In the first instance, the thought of eating the cake is grammatically broken to add emphasis to "I ate myself" which makes the following lines even more chilling as we imagine the narrator devouring herself, her spirit, piece by piece. In the second, she builds tension as we're forced to wait for the contents of the telegram.
The repetition of "sacrifice" is also important to note, as the word doesn't mean "to lose" but instead, "to make sacred". Culturally, we regard marriage as one of our few socially shared ceremonies (although it is beginning to turn into a ritual instead of a ceremony). There's a strange reverence running through this poem for loss; where there should be anger, love, anything-- where there should be emotion, the reader is given a beautifully communicative emptiness.
"Devil's share" is the portion of one's goods that cannot be usefully spent
and so gets sacrificed.
But what if the devil is not so stupid.
What if a devil long after sacrifice
starts coming and going on the borderland--
just a crease in daylight.
Disappearance was a game to him,
my mother
unsurprised
when he did not appear for the wedding
and she was careful of my feelings-- care
like a prong.
The wedding cake (stored in the pantry) I ate myself
piece by piece
all of it
in the months that follower, sitting
in the living room late at night, chewing.
His telegram (day after) said
But please don't cry--
that's all.
Five words for a dollar.
-Anne Carson from The Beauty of the Husband
It'd be tempting to overemphasize the situation of the poem (being abandoned at the altar) by making it the subject. But the subject here is the relationship, not the event. The emotionally distant perspective of the narrator separates her from the situation and pulls the poem away from melodrama. She was stood up, it happened, and that's that. We assume her emotions; we fill in the emotional blanks because they are left open and because she gives us enough situational detail to feel the emotion for ourselves (eating the wedding cake, hearing the mother's poor consolations, receiving the telegram-- all things that are easily imagined).
Craft-wise, it'd be tempting to say that this is a simple poem. The lines are jagged in length. The music is muted; the song of it consists of the subtlest variations on common speech. But she's doing a lot to add weight to everyday words. She interrupts herself twice with comments in parentheses. In the first instance, the thought of eating the cake is grammatically broken to add emphasis to "I ate myself" which makes the following lines even more chilling as we imagine the narrator devouring herself, her spirit, piece by piece. In the second, she builds tension as we're forced to wait for the contents of the telegram.
The repetition of "sacrifice" is also important to note, as the word doesn't mean "to lose" but instead, "to make sacred". Culturally, we regard marriage as one of our few socially shared ceremonies (although it is beginning to turn into a ritual instead of a ceremony). There's a strange reverence running through this poem for loss; where there should be anger, love, anything-- where there should be emotion, the reader is given a beautifully communicative emptiness.