Week Four: Speeding Home in Reverse
or: the controlling metaphor.
What She Wanted
by Ronald Koertge
was my bones. As I gave them
to her one at a time she put
them in a bag from Saks.
As long as I didn’t hesitate
she collected scapula and
vertebrae with a smile.
If I grew reluctant she pouted.
Then I would come across with
rib cage or pelvis.
Eventually I lay in a puddle
at her feet, only the boneless
penis waving like an anemone.
“Look at yourself,” she said.
“You’re disgusting.”
We’ve all known people whose expectations we could never
satisfy—to whom, no matter how deferential, sacrificing,
generous, and solicitous we were, it was never enough.
Sometimes it’s a parent whom we can never sufficiently please.
Young women often find that the young men they date have a
desperate need to dominate and make them feel small and
foolish. And, of course, there are women who manage to do the
same thing to the men they are with.
Koertge has found a pointed and funny way of describing such a
relationship. It is not that there are metaphors within Koertge’s
poem about a domineering and emasculating woman: rather, the
entire poem IS a metaphor, much the same way a fable or parable
can be said to function metaphorically—the story expressing
some greater truth about our loves or the world around us.
In ordinary conversation, on could imagine someone saying: “She
wanted everything I had, my money, my dignity, my pride…she
would have yanked my bones right out of my flesh if she could
have gotten them!” It is an extension of that sort of metaphoric
discourse that Koertge’s poem functions.
Recall when we read “I Went to the Movies Hoping Just Once
the Monster Got the Girl,” which was written by the same poet.
This poem also uses the device of a controlling metaphor, that is
to say, a symbolic story. The young man rooting for the ungainly
monster is of course rooting for that other awkward bumbler—
himself.
Here’s another poem that works on the same principle, creating a
little dreamlike fantasy in order to explore human relationships—
in this case the relationship between husbands and their
abandoned wives:
The Divorcing Men
by Suzanne Lummis
Their wives are these heart-shaped
metallic balloons that got loose
and bobbed up high over
the jammed intersection where
the divorcing men sit and the wheel
with a bumper at either end.
The hearts glint like a second prize,
are seamed at the sides, with deep
creases of vexation and a string
for holding, except who
has arms that long anymore?
How dreamlike these images are—or, rather, how much like a
disquieting nightmare: the wives transformed into heart-shaped
balloons over the jammed intersection, anchored only by strings
that their errant husbands cannot—or will not—reach up to hold.
The image of the husbands in their cars “with a bumper at either
end” is emblematic of people stuck in a word of spiritual
gridlock. And the anguish of that final image, those arms of the
husbands not being long enough, represents perfectly the anxiety
of relationships in which strong commitment is chronically
wanting.
Although there are metaphors within the poem—wives as heartshaped balloons, for example—it can be argued that the entire
poem functions as a complex metaphor, exploring, through this
little fantasy, the psychologically complex dynamics of
contemporary relationships.
Here’s another poem that functions as a metaphor, a poem about
a character with a penchant for savagery and destructiveness, the
sort of person who might be called a she-wolf or a man-eater. In
the poet’s hands, it becomes a grimly humorous horror story:
Untitled
by Wanda Coleman
she was the perfect woman
until he discovered she had a mania for flesh
he’d come in late at night. she’d be gnawing away at it
under the covers
she kept jars of it in the medicine cabinet
and when she kept telling him she had a headache
he would lay there looking at the ceiling, knowing what
she was really doing
sometimes she’s snatch a bite in public
one day they were visiting mutual friends
she dropped her purse and it fell open
all the red bloody black flesh on the carpet. it was
embarrassing
so that night he decided to tell her that it was no good,
over, finished
and as he mounted the dark stairwell leading to her living
quarters
he hesitated. but no, he thought. she loves me
she had crouched behind the door, and as he walked past,
she sprang
she stored some of the fresh meat in the drawer by her
typewriter
she put some chucks of it in the bowl by the bed stand so
she could munch on it while she watched tv
she wrapped the rest of it carefully in tin foil and stuck it in
the freezer
looking into the mirror she let out something like a bark.
well, she thought, i never lie to them. i always tell them
what i am.
They never believe me.
And here is a poem whose protagonist suffers not from savagery
but from innocence and trust. It illuminates a kind of personality
pattern that is difficult to describe by which most of us will be
able to recognize at once:
The Farewell
by Edward Field
They say the ice will hold
so there I go,
forced to believe them by my act of trusting people,
stepping out on it,
and naturally it gaps open
and I, forced to carry on coolly
by my act of being imperturbable,
slide erectly into the water wearing my captain’s helmet,
waving to the shore with a sad smile,
“Goodbye my darlings, goodbye dear one,”
as the ice meets again over my head with a click.
Surely at one time or another we have all been shamed, goaded,
or cajoled into doing something that we dreaded doing, putting
on a brave smile and agreeing—simply because we were too
trusting or because it would have been socially awkward to have
refused. What trouble we have all gotten into at one time or
another by our “act of being imperturbable.” Edward Field has
managed to embody that ticklish situation in a story at once
funny and touching. That sad smile, the absurd captain’s helmet,
and the audible click at the end are perfect details and bring the
scene and situation vividly to life.
If you have ever wished that some even in your life had never
happened, you will understand at once the clever metaphoric use
the author of the following poem has made of the amusing
spectacle of a film running backwards:
Retreat
By Charles Harper Webb
Before she can deliver
the cruncher,
I stride away backwards.
My car door opens,
I fall in
as the engine fires.
I speed home in reverse,
unshave, unshower,
plop down in my easy chair
where, picturing what a good
night it’s going to be,
I slowly spit up
a manhattan—dry—
just the way
I like it.
All the poems we have exhibited thus far in this chapter have
been fantasies. But of course incidents in one’s actual life can also
be seen as metaphors that illuminate some situation that would
be otherwise difficult to describe. The following poem is a
straightforward description of an actual event—a child’s first solo
bicycle-ride. But the title of the poem tells us that the incident
stands for an event currently troubling the narrator’s life:
To a Daughter Leaving Home
by Linda Pastan
When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.
Only that final simile, the child’s hair “flapping behind you like a
handkerchief waving goodbye,” and the poem’s title, signal that
the incident described in the poem is emblematic of the more
painful and complex experience of a daughter leaving home.
Here, too, the narrator finds her daughter growing smaller and
“more breakable with distance.” Thus the poet has managed to
describe her current anxiety through an ostensible simple
memory of her daughter joyfully outdistancing her on a bicycle
years before.
Here’s a poem that manages, through a brilliantly conceived
simile, to describe how the narrator bears the burden of an
intolerably heavy grief—the death of his beloved:
Michiko Dead
by Jack Gilbert
He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.
Week Four Exercises
1. Reanimating Dead Metaphors
Think of some common figures of speech and how, if taken
literally, they might turn into little fantasies. Perhaps the pool in
which you are swimming is beginning to boil—a literal
embodiment of the figure of speech “to be in hot water.” A
poem about finding your tongue tied in knots can become a
statement about being—you guessed it—“tongued-tied.” A poem
about parts of your body cracking off can be used to indicate a
sense of your life “falling apart” or “coming unglued.” A poem in
which a mask keeps slipping off your face might indicate you
unsuccessful attempt to keep up a “false front” or “put on a good
face” about some unpleasant situation. Similarly, you could write
a poem about giving someone “the axe” or “the finger,” about
being literally torn it two directions, having your heart broken,
skating on thin ice, sticking your foot in your mouth, or walking
on cloud nine. What would the literal story be of some awkward
person who has two left feet, or some woman who has her
boyfriend wrapped around her little finger, or some poor dreamer
who’s always building castles in the air? Use one of these
examples—or one of your own—and, after dreaming up an
appropriate story, begin writing a short poem about that person
or situation. Be careful not to rely on the comic equation between
your story and the maxim to do all the work. The poem will have
to be interesting in its own right. Part of the trick of such a poem
is to make the symbolic or metaphoric intention perfectly clear
without ever having to explicitly tell the reader what you’re trying
to say.
2. The Dream Metaphor