My twenty-sixth poem for you is I SEE YOU WILD. I like this passionate, bitter, complicated little piece, written when I was extremely upset at being rejected - but how on earth do I introduce it? I have a number of times watched various poems of mine being taken apart by university English classes and their professors. It is interesting to be operated on without anaesthetic. They certainly have always found organs I had no idea were in me – and I have felt that one or two of these had been smuggled into the operating theatre and inserted into my unzipped self by sleight of hand. All critics have inescapable, personal polemics, and, where their subject does not easily provoke these special interests, they will squeeze them in by intellectual crookery – consciously or unconsciously. Yes, we can often tell more about the critic than about his/her subject. This fact is salutary for the writer. Enjoyable and flattering as it is to find myself in goal while students fire interpretations of my work at me, ever since the first time I have been suspicious of definitive critical statements by scholars: “Of course Shakespeare’s Juliet is a wilful child...”; “In this poem by Sylvia Plath she is obviously expiating her guilt at being an inadequate mother...” However, let’s not get too fancy about this. We poets must give ourselves away a bit, if we are honest. To the extent that confessional writing is cathartic, perhaps we need the critics as counsellors, though it’s an uncomfortable idea. I guess there might be fluorescent buoys bobbing around above the undercurrents in our work, flagging information we’d rather stayed hidden, or which perhaps we sometimes can’t see ourselves. So, to be as useful as I dare, the petulant, hurt thrust of I SEE YOU WILD is: OK leave me then. You’ll be sorry. You won’t get another chance like this, or ever again be loved this much. I should prefer to leave it to the reader to crawl about in my head and unpick the poem further. As a coda, I can tell you that the story had the happiest ending possible! Perhaps the poem served a purpose! Perhaps it wasn’t just cathartic! Perhaps poetry was the last weapon left to me in an emergency! Perhaps only the reader knows? I SEE YOU WILD I see you wild, alone and hurting, Strung from corners, strapped in pain, The scream, the disgrace of deserting Ringing, stinging you again. Bend, baby, haul Strings that truss, that pull (Jump!); Echoes want your wall, Lined with baby wool. I see you jump and break for cover; Battered baby, find the bush, Ignore the nurse, the bandaged lover Spinning empty from your push. Crouch, baby, hide, Drape yourself in tears (Sleep); Rise, baby, stride Towards the lonely years.
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 08:39:19 +0000
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