After the Play

Vacating your seat, you too

can make language move:

so, elbowing to the exit
is the camaraderie of culture,
your carriage waits in the stack,
concrete pillars are Corinthian columns,
and driving up the greasy ramp,
an exhilarating surge of metaphor.

In the side-streets of reality,
you devastatingly refute Eliot:
it’s all architectured down to size;
the sky’s a renaissance ceiling
you could easily paint on your back,
to one of Mozart’s greatest hits.

Oh, the puddled swish of driving home
in the rain, beside yourself with optimism,
finding all these original thoughts
weaving through the slums,
like beauty in rained-on mascara!

And reaching home, how can you not
admire the castle of your own routine
that is better than no slippers and
no cooking-for-one-smells in the right place
with the photographs at your bedside,
to remind you you won’t be alone
in the bed you’ve made properly
for your fierce contentment?

Clearly, you’ve left Uncle Vanya sobbing
back at the theatre, and quite understandably,

you’ve forgotten why he was.

.

Reviews

[Eilis]

The voice in this made me think of a Chekov character. Someone stepping into the street as their story begins. The fresh mind of discovery--or the mind pre-discovery when things are what they are and they are fine as such. It also reminded me of the energy that comes with inspiration. Like, for example, seeing a great play and feeling like you can now go home and duplicate that creative energy/inspiration in some way.

Some of my easiest poems come after being inspired by the work of someone else. There is an effortlessness to responding to that internal call that makes the spark seem tangible-- it makes over the world momentarily. For me.

And that's kind of how I was picturing the action in the poem. The play watcher feeling inspired and filled with a kind of energy of a past where so many details that have passed away were momentarily significant again. A good piece of writing will make us hungry for those spaces and places--make it feel like something we can will ourselves into. But, then there's more than that.

Your end brings us back down to earth-- but we're somewhere in the future-- faced with the reality of the likes of Uncle Vanyas and similar moments in time. The beauty, the precision, and the dissolution all gathering in one place.

That's where the reading took me, at least. I loved the almost manic energy of the beginning followed by the hint of the coming let down (or maybe the coming understanding) as the poem closes. Great poetry, as ever.

[Gerald Parker]

Thanks, Eilis, for your interpretation of this poem. I often have to explain it to myself. I think it ran away from me and entered questionable, even unethical, territory.

This poem comes from a time about 20 years ago when metaphor and imagery came more easily. The idea for the piece came as a result of attending poetry groups. I wasn't very impressed by what people were writing and the Internet was beginning to turn everybody into poets. So, the 'you" in the poem feels the urge to get something down on paper. All sorts of fanciful imagery floods into his/her mind as he/she is driving home.

As the poem progresses, it isn't totally obvious that I might be sneering at this would-be poet, so in the penultimate stanza, I paint "you" as a sad, lonely individual who just wants to use his/her imagination to add some colour and excitement to his/her dreary life. The end of Uncle Vanya is distressing - does "you' forget it deliberately or because he/she doesn't properly understand. it?

I've always had a problem with this poem. Firstly because I've used the second person - does that mean I'm writing to the reader and therefore could be seen to be mocking them? Secondly because the character is a lonely, possibly depressed individual, is it acceptable to mock their artistic aspirations when I should be showing compassion? Then again, it could be said that "you" is me, and I am mocking my own endeavours.

[Eilis]

Perhaps the ‘you’ evolves or shifts with time. That is a challenging place to be in with a poem. I have some I keep to myself because I feel the same kind of dilemma. Maybe some poems are just destined to remain unfinished.

I did sense those things you say, the manic feeling I mentioned is a particular hint and your ending feels like the larger question “do you understand or care to understand, or are you just too fascinated with ‘you’?” The tone is there.

I suppose it all hinges on what you want it to express. Maybe time will make it clearer.