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{ Friday, April 4, 2003 }

Purpose

From the first
abstraction,

loss
is edible.

To think
is to filter

passers-by through your
semi-permeable membrane;

keep yourself
in circulation.

What if appetite
is a by-product?

If you pass through
zero,

you may see someone
you love.

Here's your mother
with her anxious grasp,

her clock-watching.

-- by Rae Armantrout

This is what I love about this poem:

From the first/ abstraction,/ loss is/ edible.

From the first your mind snags on "edible" -- its ghost-word, "inevitable" hovering expectantly, "evitable" also ghosting by. Both dismissed. Edible snaps into place, less like a jigsaw puzzle piece than like a Master lock. loss is edible. Odd and fascinating idea. Vaguely bulimic.

To think/ is to filter

A process a lot like much like digestion, actually, and quite a bit like abstraction filtering out essences and specifics. I love the humble mumble of "semi-permeable membrane" through which something -- nutrition? oxygen? is absorbed, into the blood? (circulation) "Keeping yourself in circulation" has a very self-help or How to Get Ahead in Business tone -- in a "commodification of the self" kind of way.

What if appetite/ is a by-product

What if indeed! The word "by-product" is the cousin of "passers-by" -- it is what is bypassed as being non-nutritive, but produced. But the by-product is appetite -- appetite generally being understood as the desire to eat, but here what is edible is loss.

If you pass through/ zero

Sounds a bit like going beyond the chrystanthemum or into the eye of the lotus, but here we are passing through rather than passing by (or by-producing), and entering the quintessence of abstraction: math.

The whole poem moves from abstraction -- something dissociated from a specific instance-- to the grasping and clock-watching specific. What could be more singular than one's own mother? The first instance of "you" (your) is non-specific -- in the sense of "one's"/semi-permeable" etc. moving toward

you may see someone/ you love

And crowning the whole word-pillar -- tenuously balancing on those one-word lines of "loss" and "zero" -- is the title: "Purpose". How terrifying, brilliant, lovely! And what a poem.

I could go on for pages, but it's 3 AM and even I need to sleep sometimes.

There used to be a column in the Globe and Mail Sunday book section called "How to Read a Poem", which I just loved, but it seems to have been discontinued, much to my dismay. This is my little contribution in that direction. I post a lot of poems here, but rarely comment on why I like them. I will try to do so when I have the time.

LINK | 3:20 AM | TB

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{ COMMENTS }

I am so glad I read your weblog first! It has set such a lovely tone for the rest of my day.

Loliinspired | April 4, 2003 8:35 AM

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Reading that poem was somehow calming. Let me also recommend Jane Hirschfield to you. She has a similar style which I really love and I believe she describes as "zen poetry."

francesa | April 4, 2003 9:19 AM

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I enjoyed your comments on the poem. I look forward to reading more in the future. :)

david | April 4, 2003 11:19 AM

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Yeah, that is a tragedy that the Globe doesn't have that How Poems Work column. Some of the columns were just terrible! however at least Canadian poetry had some space in the national newspaper. Poetry occupies less of a space in the national consciousness than in America I think -- at least the New Yorker -- even if it is a pseudo-intellectual rag -- has its' token poems.

Susan MacRae | April 4, 2003 6:01 PM

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Thank you so much, Caterina! Much of what you wrote made sense to me, especially your paragraph on "edible." Please do break down poems in the future when you can.

emily | April 4, 2003 9:45 PM

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Being simple of mind, my interpretation is necessarily more simplistic. I interpret the poem as a beautifully apt metaphor concerning the importance of eliminating the negative aspects of grief over lose of a lover while retaining its positive qualities. What better metaphor than eating? The first abstraction is the removal, or separation, of the specific grief from its entanglement with other emotions. The grief is found edible, eaten and subjected to the process of digestion, which separates the positive qualities of grief from the negative, the second abstraction. Through the process of osmosis the third abstracion occurs, the positive qualities are absorbed as nutrients for the mind, passers-by through the mind's semi-permeable membrane, and the negative are eliminated from the system as waste.

Cleansed of the negative aspects of grief, the capacity to love is once again as strong, viable and elastic as it was the moment before birth (zero), illuminated in the poem as a repassage through this moment, the realization of child-mother love and the mother's clock-watching, symbolizing a child's future sexual love interests and a mother's anxiety in this regard.

Once the capacity for love is freshened, the appetite for love is renewed and the poem's subject can again circulate around cupid's promenade, appraising each approaching candidate who passes by and allowing only those characterized as probable to pass the filter of the mind's semi-permeable membrane, marking the forth abstraction. The fifth and final abstraction occurs when the pores of the mind's filter are reduced in size and all of the probables are sifted, allowing only "the someone you love" to pass through.

And what better PURPOSE can be served by life than to love?

Jack

Jack | April 4, 2003 10:29 PM

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Thank you for your amazing commentary. I agree with the others - feel free to post more poetry/reaction.

JEFF | April 6, 2003 5:39 AM

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Jack, nice interpretation. I quite like much of what you wrote, but I think that, well, it's not quite that simple. The "someone you love" that appears is your mother, your very nervous, clock-watching and grasping mother -- which ungirds the "love" which you see as a strong purpose, and I see as very very tenuous.

I feel the poem is a lot shakier than you do I guess, and not as tidy. But you already said that your interpretation was more simplistic. So we understand each other. :-)

Caterina | April 6, 2003 9:49 PM

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How lovely to stumble [via languagehat] on a weblog analysing a poem!

Goes quite well with what I imagine the Mushroom House might be like [though it is probably not like that at all].

mark | April 7, 2003 5:46 AM

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And loss is often indelible, too.

I wonder if pass through zero isn't graphic, as well, a play not just on the abstract, but also on the passage, through open lips, from contemplated to eaten. If you swallow your loss -- do not let it pass by -- you may find someone you love again.

It is a beautiful poem, Caterina.

matt | April 7, 2003 3:39 PM

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Thank you very much for sharing this poem. I liked it so much I had to copy it down.

And your analyses/comments are very insightful, but I recall the lines:

To think
is to filter

passers-by through your
semi-permeable membrane;

and don't you find it a bit of an irony that by thinking about and
analyzing the poem, you have filtered it, even reduced it? Just my
initial impression. I liken it to purists who want the art to experience
it themselves, and then those who are at a museum and immediately read
the little card next to the painting to get an explanation of it.

Your comments are very cool, and I'm not at all saying you should stop.
But the poem did have an entirely different meaning to me, especially the
part about thinking and filtering. I thought "Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance" by Pirsig, where Quality is lost the moment it's
processed by our intellect.

Anyway, thanks again for your cool posts and blog.

Dennis | April 10, 2003 11:46 AM

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