Do you ever consider what your clothing says about you? How much time do we spend fussing over how we look? I know I’m pretty laid back because I’m a blue jeans girl. My husband teases me that you can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl.
I was reading poetry. Guilty, I know I do it all the time. I came across a poem by David Ignatow called Coupling. In the poem, he remarks on the importance we place on clothing. I chuckled thinking life would be a lot easier if we did all wear the same thing. In my childhood, we wore uniforms. At the time I hated it but thinking back it removed all stigmas about incomes because we all looked the same. There weren’t the obvious signs that you see in today’s world between the endowed and less endowed.
Life would be a heck of a lot easier without the stress of the perfect outward appearance, don’t you agree?
Against The Evidence, Selected Poems 1934-94
Wherever he looks, standing still in the city,
are people born of coupling, walking in gray suits
and ties, in long dresses and coiffed hair,
speaking elegantly, of themselves and of each other,
forgetting for the moment their origin,
perhaps wishing not to know or to remember.
They dress as if having been born in a clothing store.
They were born of men and women naked
and gyrating from the hips
and with movements up and down
and with climactic yells,
as if losing their lives
in the pleasure and so glad,
so wildly glad.
From this rises the child
from between the wet crotch, blood and mucus,
He stands upright and pronounces himself
humankind and steps from bed and clothes himself
in a gray suit and from the next room of birth
steps a woman in a long dress. They meet
in the corridor and arm in arm walk its length
in search of one room, empty of inhabitants
but prepared for them.
I remember talking my grandmother ‘s poor ear off. Her typical responses to my endless questions were proverbs. I didn’t understand the complexity of a proverb until I was much older. They appear, on the surface, to be gems of wisdom which have been passed down through the ages. I don’t know how many times I have nodded my head and accepted without further discussion. I still remember the day someone pointed out to the that most proverbs have an exact opposite. I felt foolish because it seemed so obvious to me. Why didn’t I note the contradictions? Do you catch yourself responding to a younger person with a proverb?
I’m fascinated with creating poetry whether it be from a quote or an excerpt from another poet that inspired me or simply a blank page compelling me to write. If you think about it are our pages blank. We have ghosts of other poems, songs, catchphrases, even those silly tv jingles cast shadows on our blank page.
W.S.Merwin says it the best, “I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry now that one really wants, hopelessly, to save the world. One is trying to say everything that can be said for the things that one loves while there’s still time. I think that’s a social role, don’t you? …We keep expressing our anger and our love, and we hope, hopelessly perhaps, that it will have some effect.”
lyncrain 