I have such a funny relationship with this poem. I love it about as much as I have loved any poem, and it also carries with it memories of all sorts of failures; failures of communication, of relationships, of love.
"We keep circling around the failure of language," I wrote to a friend last fall. And yet we keep trying -
because sometimes the tool must be bent to work.
because there are no right words,
if by right we mean perfect.
because language honors what is vanishing, and slows the leaving, and deepens everything - our sense of loss, our sense of wonder, our awareness of life.
"I wrap it in newspaper and add it to the box marked Kitchen."
"We keep circling around the failure of language," I wrote to a friend last fall. And yet we keep trying -
because sometimes the tool must be bent to work.
because there are no right words,
if by right we mean perfect.
because language honors what is vanishing, and slows the leaving, and deepens everything - our sense of loss, our sense of wonder, our awareness of life.
-
"I wrap it in newspaper and add it to the box marked Kitchen."
That line contains the whole thrust of the poem; taking the real object, the solid weight of the glass, and obscuring it with print, tucking it away in a box labeled with a word.
A failure, certainly. An action (both packing up the kitchen and writing about it) that won't save her friend, or do much to push against the uncontrollability of life; the description can't even give a good image of what the glass looked like.
And yet. It (packing up the kitchen, writing about it) says I love you even better than the phrase "I love you," the phrase the poet worries has lost all meaning, being asked to stand for so many unspoken particulars.
Everything is going to be fine. What she means, as language fails her, is I love you.
The whole poem is shouting it.
I've had the tab to this blob entry up on my phone for six months now. I memorized the poem last year.
ReplyDeleteIn an English class last semester, I wanted to talk about the poem, wanted to take my imperfect shot at explaining it, and when I googled it on my phone, I found this first.
I want to explain to you what this means to me. That someone else in the world read this poem, because I don't know any in person. That someone else thought it was important.
And this post is years old, and it's been longer since I found it, and the poem is even older, and every day I feel like someone walking into an immense ballroom far too late, long after the dresses and food have gone, where there is nothing left but the great space.
But there are still things left on the floor, proving that there was once something here. I delight in every bright scrap.