[Catherine Tufariello]

The Senator Tries on a Burka

I like this cloistered shroud; the narrow view,
the slit and mesh which let in dappled light,
but also serve to block out that which might
not quite agree with me. Convenient, too,
for I can move my head most readily
and thus adjust the outside world to fit
to mine. The air is sometimes fetid,
yes, fresh breezes cannot enter easily,

But, see, the fabric flows down to my feet,
completely cloaks whatever lies inside
so, if I wish to veil my eyes, I hide
all from all sight - including mine - complete
the circle, mind and body circumscribed,
tumescent in my righteousness and pride.

[Catherine Tufariello]

This was the only overtly political poem in the batch. It’s timely, as the Belgian lower parliament passed Europe’s first ban on the wearing of the burka in public just a few days ago. I seem to remember conservative Republican senators calling for a similar ban in Iraq at one point, so perhaps that’s the context here. This sonnet attracted me because of the way in which its central conceit reverses the usual Western view of the burka. Here the garment, viewed from within rather than without, is designed not to shut in the wearer but to shut out the world, and the speaker (presumably male) associates it with male sexual power (“tumescence”) and pride, rather than with female chastity and subservience. In his willed narrow-mindedness, he is more effectively cloistered than a nun, walking around in a shroud and breathing his own stale, recycled air. I imagine the senator as someone who previous to this has been hostile to the burka, but who tries it on one day and discovers that he can see the garment’s appeal.

The first quatrain is the strongest, I think. The rhymes in the second are weaker—fetid is a good word choice but fetid and fit don’t rhyme, really, and the first quatrain has led the reader to expect exact rhymes—and metrically the “yes” should be moved up to the end of l.7. I might play with rhyming l. 6 with “yes”—“Forcing the outside world to coalesce/with mine…” or something of that kind.

I’ll be interested to see what others make of the syntax and logic of the sestet. Because it covers the senator completely, the burka hides his body as well as his face, not only from the outside world but also from himself. I don’t entirely follow the import of this, although I take “complete the circle” to mean that with both mind and body covered he is entirely shut in, impervious to the “fresh breezes” of any outside influence.

Poems like this may be one-trick ponies, but there’s a place in poetry for political satire, and one doesn’t often come across contemporary sonnets that engage in it.

[Dmitri Semenov]

It starts like a good sonnet, but then tapers off.

Politics and religious prescriptions aside
(those are not strongly present in the sonnet),
I like the idea of it and wish that it were developed a bit stronger.
I disagree with Catherine --- there is no indicators of the senator's gender.
and this ambiguity is a good feature of this sonnet.

[Rick Mullin]

I think this is an example of the difficulty faced in mixing overt politics and poetry. I think, on the other hand, if you took out the idea of the senator, the poem would be glaringly politically incorrect! So, we are kind of ironically blinded by the politics here.

I agree, there is no indication that the Senator is male.

[Petra Norr]

A senator plus a burka does not equal a political poem. It needs far more than that, and above all it needs to convey the point it's trying to make. This poem is too enigmatic or subtle to get across a point, so if it's intended as a political poem it's a flop.
However, I can make up my own political meaning, just for fun, and say it’s a senator who puts on a burka and in the process simply ends up describing his own narrow-minded, bloated, righteous and pompous self, someone who is disconnected from the real world or who changes the world to fit his own views. That description would fit a number of conservative Washington senators.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Well, it's an ambitious conceit, but I don't think the potential political irony is very well handled here. It is significant that the question of the sex of the senator is kind glossed over--more attention needs to be paid to the gender complexities. The tone of voice itself (with fusty constructions like: "for I can move my head most readily") does not create enough of a dramatic persona to identify him or her. The first person here is too writerly, and never merges with the character in question--and this is crucial if the poem is going to work.

The language itself does limp too often--as Catherine points out the closing lines of the sestet seem to screw with the meter for the sake of a rhyme that doesn't work anyway. And the close of the sestet seems delivered with an attempted verve that the content of the lines doesn't justify. The word tumescent seems an odd word choice for a mind and body circumscribed...it's too physical, too weighted toward the circumscribed body.

I do think the idea is a good one. But the execution needs a lot of work.

Nemo

[Chris Childers]

Petra, why do you think you're making that up? It's obviously what the poem means. The irony of the concept lies in a presumably nationalistic (anti-Islam) senator demonstrating the affinities between his world view & the one which in public he so rails against. Mark Allinson would like this one because it shows the proximity between extremes, & would give him the chance to talk about how socialists and Nazis are all the same deep down, how left wing academics are just like Hitler, how horrible education is in Australia, etc..

I wonder if the idea at the end of the octave is to suggest that it doesn't matter how hard the senator works to adjust the facts of the world to his pre-set view of it, he will finally fail, just as the sonnet form, awkwardly adjusted, breaks down there. If my reading is right, I still don't really think it works, because I am too annoyed at the rhyme of fetid and fit; but it is an interesting attempt all the same. Maybe if "fit" were changed as per Catherine's suggestion, but the lineation remained the same, with "yes" on the wrong line, it could achieve the same effect, less gratingly.

No one has mentioned the pun on "lies" in line 10--which effectively equates political equivocation with sexual aggression, since what the burka covers is his "tumescence." (& yes, I do believe the senator to be male. "Tumescent" rather loses point if we imagine this as a female senator.) Anyway, at the end we see the senator's willful ignorance, & willingness to disappear behind his image, & even worse, his self-congratulation for his ability to do so. Righteousness effectively completes the identification between the Christian right and the Islamic extremists.

This is an interesting poem, and it *is* political, though vague enough not to be tied down to our particular moment; surely in any age there are enough blinkered characters for it to be basically decipherable. The concept here is both the poem's greatest strength and weakness, since the whole idea, stripped of the sonnet's layers of meaning, is rather implausible--Christian conservative senator tries on a burka (why?) and likes it (huh?). At a basic level, it's hard to believe. Further, the senator here is ultimately a caricature, not a sympathetically imagined human being, despite the pretense of ventriloquism in the use of the first person. That's another strike against the poem's basic plausibility, since nobody *really* afflicted with this sort of righteousness and pride would vocalize it to himself so baldly; the self-justification and self-delusion that must needs be present in such a character are absent here. For these reasons, it seems to me, the poem fails; but the failure is ambitious and interesting, more so than in many less problematic poems.

Chris

[Kevin Cutrer]

I agree with Nemo--it's a good idea that needs work on its execution. I would suggest that the second quatrain be opened up to explore, say, the inherent gender issues, as well as to fix the rhyme issue. I like the final image of the senator becoming swallowed up by the garment, but the final line doesn't do it for me... the fact that he (I assume the speaker's male) acknowledges his own righteousness and pride is a bit much, doesn't come across as real speech. Fitting the burka to the world view of the senator (excuse my pun) is impressively achieved.

[Kate Benedict]

I feel I need more context to understand the conceit here. Why would a male senator don a burka? My immediate (and apparently incorrect) assumption was that a female senator from the U.S. went to an Islamic country on some kind of mission and walked around in a burka in order to experience the culture in a spirit of solidarity with the women there. Surprisingly, she (so in the public eye, always) enjoyed the anonymity provided by the garment.

The octet supports that reading, the sestet goes somewhere else. I admit that my original misreading is the poem I'd prefer to read!--but I'd willing to go along with the poem's premises if I had a better handle on them. Perhaps an epigraph would provide the necessary context?

[David Rosenthal]

I read the senator as a woman, too -- frankly I'm not sure why people are assuming the senator is a man. My reaction is in line with Nemo, Kevin, and Kate. A great conceit that doesn't quite come off. The final line is a little heavy-handed IMO, and really the whole sestet is a little hard to believe as inner monologue from any senator I can think of.

David R.