I remember in 2008, this poem by Linnea Ogden. “Contact.” Written like it was the poetry that lies beneath legal documentation. Like it was sounding out legalese, writing a poetic consideration of legal discourse. Maybe the “contact” of the title directs readers to think what happens when two kinds of language are put into contact with one another. In Ogden’s poem, the stanza begins with a piece of language that feels like it’s been lifted from a legal agreement or official correspondence between lawyers. For instance, these italicized stanza openings mention “appeal” or “the party who,” before, then, shifting to the poetry. The poem perhaps proposing where the legal statement was headed. Like there’s a point to the legalese, but when you can only hear a portion of it, it feels more like one of those sentences that will carry a reader’s attention, piling on qualifications, and digressions, leading you somewhere, but you have no idea when you’ll get there. Enter the poem. The genre that is all too happy to drift along with language. A poetic mind is adept at the drift, like it can openly embrace the ambiguity of a statement like: “The rule is to keep quiet if possible, / tempered if not.” (a quote from Ogden’s poem) In this situation, I wonder which is better at navigating the dense garden of indeterminacy. The poem? The legal document?
Maybe I propose a strange correlation between Ogden’s piece and Sarah Wolfson’s poem, “Let Us Mark This Day.” (from Oversound 9). I read both poems for the hint at and embrace of overt rhetorical purpose. Like the poems are a way to wonder about situating a poem by reading it rhetorically. In Wolfson’s case, it aligns with the poem’s title. “Let Us Mark This Day.” Let us commemorate it. Let us build a verbal monument to honour the day, and to honor honour with its elevated u. It makes a difference!
Especially in a poem that would like to poetically appreciate as much of the world as it possibly can. I’m reading Jorie Graham’s Overlord right now, which feels more like a poet reaching to read the world for all its details at once, and recognizing there are limits to the details that can finally assemble together into a poem. Wolfson’s “Let Us Mark This Day” marks a similar limitation. Yes, you can honour the nuthatch that you’ve seen in the yard. And you can honour the sensation of “too many songbirds” in the yard. You can even honour more abstract sensibilities, like the millions of years ago when lust was born.
Maybe you’re catching on to Wolfson’s intent. The spirit of honouring is an accelerating spirit. A quickening. There may be an initial speed that captures the single detail (like the nuthatch) and expresses what it’s worth. But it’s hard to keep with just that initial speed. Because honouring anything can feel like crescendo and a river’s current accelerating past certain parts of the river bank. Honouring is pleasant. Happy and reverent. It’s grave, but also eager to look at reality and love reality.
And in Wolfson’s poem it starts to get out of hand. Yes, giving honour to lust, from millions of years ago is one sign. But there are other signs that Wolfson’s honouring has started losing its fixed of rhetorical purpose.
We engage the work of the rototiller, honest in
its churnings and we acknowledge that power, like manure
does not spread evenly. We don’t condone. We’re done.
We drown in our thoughts. Please, which thought is right?
Wolfson, get ahold of your poem! It’s like when you try using a rototiller, and however “honest” its machinery, it feels like it has its own “honest” mind. And that’s what a poem about honouring can feel like. A rhetoric or honoring that keeps loving its own intention. Adoring its own intention. Totally explosiving the intention and making the language, in its closure, feel like falling debris.