04-05-2014, 03:17 PM
Leanne,
The title lets me know what’s going to be happening. There are going to be things that are passed over, and there will be religious ideas. The last line, R. / evolution has both concepts, but adds (at least to my ear) a notion of a skipping record.
Why is Jesus on the front page
of today's paper, wearing clown shoes
and holding a sign protesting
against the overuse of onions
in roadside cafes?
So, who’s the speaker and who’s the addressee? Who’s Jesus, what are onions, what/why are clown shoes, and what/where are roadside cafes? The stanza seems like something from Lewis Carroll, but I’m doubtful this is mere farce. Jesus could be an immigrant laborer protesting the wasteful consumption of ag products? He could also be a Catholic official in funny shoes. I’m going to settle on onions/crying–clown/laughing as orienting features and press on.
Where is his dignity, and where
are his sandals? Someone broke his heart
and sent it to the Antiques Roadshow,
complete with provenance, for gilding and
breakfast on live broadcast. His mother,
meaning well, pulled the splinters from his
palms and left them on her bedside table.
It feels more like Don Quixote than Jesus here. More questions: the speaker and addressee are still open. “Someone” would ordinarily be “every person on earth” when deciding who did a bad thing to Jesus, but here it might be just some idiot, and it might still be open. Because “his” and “mother” aren’t capitalized, I’m thinking “Jesus” is a proxy for “guy who once had dignity.” I’m thrown off by there being splinters in his palms, as it was nails that held him to the cross--so are the splinters from the protest sign?
NOW, if I take a step back and just read the dern thing, I like it. It reminds me of Ginsberg. It’s grandiose and subversive, suggestive and playful. And the mystery of its components heightens my sense of connection to it—it pulls me into the moment and act of reading. The idea that the AR is going to eat his heart works well for me, as does the neglectful mother. And I like the near-incoherence of it all.
Nobody uses toothpicks anymore. Whatever
is stuck there, stays
rotting for days, until colonisation is complete.
Jesus watches Big Brother as the next
reject talks about things and stuff[,?] and
the world keeps going into itself, folding,
abysmal. Trivia is a greasy spoon, an
onion Golgotha[,?] and something that once
started with R.
evolution
So, now the narrator feels like a grandmother—“look at that Jesus, oh, just look at Jesus. Used to be, Jesus had sandals, and dignity, and young people used toothpicks!” I like the contrast of diction registers: stuck, rotting vs. colonisation, complete; things and stuff vs abysmal; greasy spoon vs. Golgotha. The “onion” is now a burial cave . . . I find on etymonline that onion and union are related words . . . Also that trivia was a place where three roads meet.
Two quick checks: abysmal and not abyssal? Also, would “the world keeps folding into itself” work? I’m asking because “going into itself” and “folding” seem redundant, and if they’re not, then I have a hard time imagining the world going into itself and then folding . . . .
As usual, I’m not a heavyweight enough on form, style, or . . . everything else, really . . . to feel confident any response I make will do much good. That said, my macro response is that I really like this Jesus with his focus on a non-problem that no one cares about, who needs his mother to tweezer out his splinters, who’s watching Big Brother distractedly. It reads like a comic strip. I wouldn’t mind if the poem stretched on quite a bit longer. It has gravity and silliness in equal measure, and it was fun to think about!
The title lets me know what’s going to be happening. There are going to be things that are passed over, and there will be religious ideas. The last line, R. / evolution has both concepts, but adds (at least to my ear) a notion of a skipping record.
Why is Jesus on the front page
of today's paper, wearing clown shoes
and holding a sign protesting
against the overuse of onions
in roadside cafes?
So, who’s the speaker and who’s the addressee? Who’s Jesus, what are onions, what/why are clown shoes, and what/where are roadside cafes? The stanza seems like something from Lewis Carroll, but I’m doubtful this is mere farce. Jesus could be an immigrant laborer protesting the wasteful consumption of ag products? He could also be a Catholic official in funny shoes. I’m going to settle on onions/crying–clown/laughing as orienting features and press on.
Where is his dignity, and where
are his sandals? Someone broke his heart
and sent it to the Antiques Roadshow,
complete with provenance, for gilding and
breakfast on live broadcast. His mother,
meaning well, pulled the splinters from his
palms and left them on her bedside table.
It feels more like Don Quixote than Jesus here. More questions: the speaker and addressee are still open. “Someone” would ordinarily be “every person on earth” when deciding who did a bad thing to Jesus, but here it might be just some idiot, and it might still be open. Because “his” and “mother” aren’t capitalized, I’m thinking “Jesus” is a proxy for “guy who once had dignity.” I’m thrown off by there being splinters in his palms, as it was nails that held him to the cross--so are the splinters from the protest sign?
NOW, if I take a step back and just read the dern thing, I like it. It reminds me of Ginsberg. It’s grandiose and subversive, suggestive and playful. And the mystery of its components heightens my sense of connection to it—it pulls me into the moment and act of reading. The idea that the AR is going to eat his heart works well for me, as does the neglectful mother. And I like the near-incoherence of it all.
Nobody uses toothpicks anymore. Whatever
is stuck there, stays
rotting for days, until colonisation is complete.
Jesus watches Big Brother as the next
reject talks about things and stuff[,?] and
the world keeps going into itself, folding,
abysmal. Trivia is a greasy spoon, an
onion Golgotha[,?] and something that once
started with R.
evolution
So, now the narrator feels like a grandmother—“look at that Jesus, oh, just look at Jesus. Used to be, Jesus had sandals, and dignity, and young people used toothpicks!” I like the contrast of diction registers: stuck, rotting vs. colonisation, complete; things and stuff vs abysmal; greasy spoon vs. Golgotha. The “onion” is now a burial cave . . . I find on etymonline that onion and union are related words . . . Also that trivia was a place where three roads meet.
Two quick checks: abysmal and not abyssal? Also, would “the world keeps folding into itself” work? I’m asking because “going into itself” and “folding” seem redundant, and if they’re not, then I have a hard time imagining the world going into itself and then folding . . . .
As usual, I’m not a heavyweight enough on form, style, or . . . everything else, really . . . to feel confident any response I make will do much good. That said, my macro response is that I really like this Jesus with his focus on a non-problem that no one cares about, who needs his mother to tweezer out his splinters, who’s watching Big Brother distractedly. It reads like a comic strip. I wouldn’t mind if the poem stretched on quite a bit longer. It has gravity and silliness in equal measure, and it was fun to think about!