I’m not sure how familiar people are with that Stephen Crane poem (In the Desert) where the poet meets this creature in the desert. And it’s holding its heart “in his hands.” And it’s eating it. “It’s bitter.” The creature tells the poet. But bitterness isn’t the tone Crane is going for. This moment is tragic. And very real. And life is assuredly filled with bitterness. And it’s possible to register a poem’s complexity via that bitterness. But what Crane does is amplify what it feels like living a bitter existence, by showing the poet and the “creature” he’s come across as self-aware of what bitterness does.
And I know that’s not the exact setting or situation Rushing Pittman operates from in his poem, “When is the comet coming…?“. But it’s the poet’s heart jumping into his mouth at first. And it’s the poet spitting that heart out “into the dirt” that makes me think of Stephen Crane.
Though there are other ways I could let Crane accompany my reading of this poem. The matter-of-fact story both poems take account of. “Once I saw a field of sleeping horses.” Says Pittman. And later, “Once I wanted to become a thin line.” Or later still, “Once I kept the iron on.” Pittman’s gesture to the storyteller, that distanced self curating the events from a life that might help make sense of the wily facts life is full of, even as those events never had any intention of coming together to make sense. But, as the story pieces them together, they’re not nonsense. And it’s something in the storyteller’s personality, his certainty, that gathers the poem into this very pleasurable authority. “See how I’m doing this?” The storyteller assures us.
And with Pittman, he is actively balancing between chaos and cohesive narrative. It might not always be easy to see one statement leading to the next. But, at the same time, every line is its own statement. And something there is that doesn’t love a single sentence occupying a single line. All that authority patted right into place. And set beside the next line that will occupy its own sentence. Though I don’t think this sequence of lineated sentences are telling a story. Or they’re about a story contingent on the reader’s faith that all these statements must have something in common. Or they’re in this similar circumstance. What I read as a failed romance. And the poet is so trapped in it. He’s not happy he trapped himself. And yet, there is no choice but for him to be trapped.
It’s OK. He supposes, to live an unhappy life, trapped. Because it’s part of life, the situation. As the poem moves towards its conclusion, it arranges a litany of entrapments. Look at that mussel, trapped. Look at that moth, trapped and dying. The poet is in all those places with them. He prefers reminding himself of his own position by purposefully prompting his partner to scold him. Or inform him (the iron’s still on!). It’s not entirely clear the differences in entrapment. And whether the poet even feels he sabotages himself by trapping himself. Maybe that’s the subtitle of the poem: “Entrapment: How to double down on feelings about your life.” I would totally reread the poem if that was the title. Then I would go back to this version of the poem with its title and read it. And maybe I would feel trapped between the two. DELICIOUS!
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