Tattoo Man
 

Tattoo Man
In Memoriam

Gone the days of Polaroid April sunshine,
sacrosanct Memorial Day encounters;
Pinewood Derbies, Rotary potluck dinners,
dollar sign notebooks.

Now the taste of something unlike tomorrow.
Now a rage subliminal to the suburbs.
Promise made, an endless excuse delivered.
Enter a stranger

marked for life, thrown out of the Caldwell Diner,
pinched at Jack’s while squeezing the pomegranate.
Bounced from bars, a put-upon Queequeg doling
infinite cowboy.

“Holy Mack’rel, even the face, Paulina!”
Holy arms, a coloratura ocean.
Here be dragons. There a peculiar shade of
prodigal lodger.

You’ll recall. You called the police, remember?
Shielded children, shocked when you saw him coming?
Now your white Republican enclave shimmers.
Down in the summer

news comes slow: A lull in the Captain’s Tower.
Valerie and Vivian stack the tray for
tickets to the Teenage Patrolman’s Breakfast.
Aren’t we happy.

____
S6L2 stack was trick

New S4 added


S4L3 dragons was monsters


Initial epigraph named the man

.

Rick, I’m too far out of it for this poem. It makes me think that if I went back to the Midwestern suburb where I grew up, I wouldn’t understand a thing anybody is saying.

Hello, Rick,

Interesting to see a Sapphic here!

I’m with you through the first stanza and find Polaroid sunshine to be clever. I’m just vaguely familiar enough w Polaroids to have an idea of the hue of light this must reference.

I’m less sure about the second stanza. The first line feels really abstract. I guess the speaker is indicating that even as today is different than the past, the future will be different yet. At this point I’m wondering if the words are working for the meter or the other way around. The third line again has me a bit dubious. I can come up with referents, but is it compelling enough? In general I’m questioning the flow of this stanza.

I imagine squeezing the pomegranate refers to some sexual harassment. Do I know what it means for the Queequong to be both put-upon and doling infinite cowboy? Not for sure. I’m imagining some anti-women’s-lib sort of complainer possibly? But that wouldn’t make the Republicans wary in the next stanza. So I’m probably not nailing the meaning of that line. I did think earlier that the “show me a man” might be some sort of complaint about the lack of real grit in men today.

Whatever the case, the language is fresh and vibrant again now, which can be hard to achieve in Latin meters, it seems.

Stanza three works nicely.

I wouldn’t know what the captain’s tower is, maybe some sort of reference to Moby Dick. I also don’t know what it means to trick the tray but imagine it might have to do with cheating a raffle drawing. The final line does seem to fit the general tone of the poem.

Congratulations for modernizing the meter. I think there are often spots in good poems that will elude many readers in their incarnated particularities but which invite us to inhabit the world the speaker has conjured nonetheless. And in that case I’m more concerned that I believe the *poet* has a clear vision of what he or she is conveying than that I personally get everything. And if I’m convinced that the poet’s vision and reasoning is clear, I’m more likely to press in enough over time to get some of what I missed.. And so that’s where I’d recommend revising toward as more feedback rolls in.

Good to read you here,
Deborah

Hi, Rick—

This poem really challenges me. I get glimmers of light through the opacity of some of the language. It seems to me to be a lament for dying civility and the American sense of community, which is being replaced by a simmering sense of tribal grievance. The anti-social character whose behavior would have merited a 911 call a generation ago is now a typical MAGA Republican. I supposed that the reference to Queequeg, the Polynesian harpooner in Moby-Dick, is the tattooed man in the title. The last four lines baffled me. Tricking the tray is a kind of low-budget fundraiser, but the Captain’s Tower (another Melville reference?), Valerie, Vivian, and the Teenage Patrolmen stumped me. Help!

Glenn

Well, my Bob Dylan alarm started flashing at the Captain's Tower and Valerie and Vivian.

Overall, I get a mood here of loss of innocence in an American suburb that was never innocent to begin with. Something about racist attitudes shifting from open antagonism to something more quietly sinister. Literally whitewashed. I read Queequeg here to be how the residents saw some random black guy they were harassing for incredibly petty reasons, like squeezing a pomegranate (which I read literally) before deciding whether to buy it. I might be wrong about lots here. I probably got about half of the references but I really liked all of the poem. I think I got it emotionally. I might not know exactly what "Pinewood Derbies" and "Rotary potluck dinners" are but I can get what they signify.

I did wonder if the final adonic might be "Are we not happy" (for the metre) but then realised it's probably more of an ironically smug statement than a question.

Edit: I just googled "Pinewood Derbies" and "Rotary potluck dinners" and I was more or less right about both, though I thought the pinewood derby cars would be bigger and driveable, rather than models. A bit like Nemo's in his profile picture. :)

Ok, I’ve been given some clues and am back for another go.

I have a mental block on Sapphics—never recognize them until someone points it out. I do find them delightfully done here, and it immediately made me feel more at home in the poem.

I’m reassured that other readers floundered in the whirl of references almost as much as I did. Thanks to Mark for identifying Valerie and Vivian and especially the Captain’s Tower:

The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody’s shouting
“Which Side Are You On?”
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower

Yeah, that’s how I now understand the cannibal Queequeg. I like to think the older generation in my family, which felt so at home in the first stanza, would have jumped ship in the latter ones.

I’m enjoying the process of pressing in and, with help from the audience, getting a slightly sharper focus with each reading, but I’d never have had the patience outside the Sphere. Here—with the charm of the meter to compensate for what remains obscure—I’ll be back for more.

I take this to mean the prosperous tomorrow that was promised yesterday, hence the “endless excuse” for why it has failed to materialize and the subliminal rage at that failure.

Teen Trump vigilantes?

Hi Deborah,

I will start with responding to you and get to Carl lower.

First—welcome to Eratosphere. Yours would actually qualify as a ~~Deep End~~ critique, which is marvelous. Twice, I think, I risked permanent expulsion from Eratosphere by suggesting we shut the Deep End down because nobody was really digging in. I hope we can revive the spirit of the thread, despite its being established by a clique if not a cabal.


You’ve given me a lot to think about for possible revisions.

Regarding Saphhic stanzas, … I love the form. I’ve learned they are best deployed in poems that qualify as love or devotional poems. This one might be an example of the latter. The voice of the repeated hendecasyllabics also lends itself to a humorous haughtiness, and there may be a little of that in this poem. I don’t find it particularly difficult writing Sapphics in contemporary English—it’s a Greek form, isn’t it? There are many found hendecasyllabics in this world, for example this credit line at the end of an episode of the Sopranos: Special thanks to Hooters of Wayne, New Jersey.


I’m glad that “Polaroid April sunshine” brings up a misty image. Yes, the first stanza is fairly straight forward, though the adonic is a bit cryptic. Perhaps notebooks that amount to accounting ledgers.

I tend to be somewhat defensive in a first round here, so I’m likely to contest a few things as we go along. I also revise, sometimes drastically in subsequent rounds when they occur, so please stick with me despite whatever pushback.

At a high level (I do hate spelling out intent, but sometimes it’s necessary in responding to critique) this poem is about the banality of the American Dream and its equivalent elsewhere, and the outcome when a person of color (in this case a heavily tattooed individual) disrupts the banality. It’s interesting that Mark reads the hero as a person of color as in not white. That is a legitimate reading at some level.

I think the second stanza is navigable on an objective level. That first line is not really all that abstract following the premise of the first stanza and goes toward defining that first stanza as a promise unkept. You seem to actually get it given your reaction.

There are various cultural and literary references in the poem. The squeezing of the pomegranate is meant to be just that—the man is harassed (by police is the suggestion in stanza four) as he handles the merchandise. The sexual reference is unavoidable, however. I am referring primarily to a sensual experience. I’m sure I was thinking of Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” writing this line. The person who calls the police, of course, has misinterpreted the squeeze, so, yes, harassment. Above all, there is no metaphor intended. Tattoo Man is squeezing fruit.

[Note that I position the person who called the police as the reader or recipient of the poem….]

One problem with the poem stands may be ambiguity regarding the man being a heavily (entirely) tattooed person. I’m relying on the title and the mentionof Queequeg in defining things. I think of the introduction to Queequeg in Moby Dick: a frightening looking person walking into Ishmael’s room and getting in bed with him. He is heavily tattooed. “doling infinite cowboy” is a moment at which I am rolling with a kind of wannabeat® Sapphics. Doling infinite cowboy is kinda Kerouac—in keeping with currents that undercut the complacency of the perceived America decades back and boosting the Ginsberg [/i]possibility in the supermarket (Jack’s).

Most of this is heavily subjective and pertains to my reading of the stanza more than to my intent in writing it. But, again, I think there is enough objectivity in the “narrative” of the stanza to anchor a reader in all the subjective space alotted.

Tattoo man is meant to be seen as eliminated—run out of town, perhaps. The initial title of my poem is “Death of Tattoo Man”. But it’s not a poem about his death. Anyway, he is eliminated and the white Republican enclave is left in full effect. The colors of the heavy tattooing or the flesh itself resolve to white.

“I’m imagining some anti-women’s-lib sort of complainer possibly?” you say. This seems to me a stretch. All is fair, but I think this is brought to the poem rather than found and may destract. Yes, “Show me a man” means show me someone of extraordinary quality. A Byronic hero. Rooster Cogburn. Well, we had him, but his gone…. “or bring him back,…”

Mark, not surprisingly, nailed the Captain’s Tower reference! Bob Dylan’s “Desolation Row” has Ezra Pound and T S Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower. See the lyrics Carl posted below. BUT, I don’t think I need the reader to get that. I like the Moby Dickish interpretation you suggest. The captain’s tower, I think, generally suggest a hub of control. As for Valerie and Vivian, these are the names of Eliot’s two wives. His first, Vivian, a “disruptive” individual, is followed by Valerie, an ordering and orderly individual. As it turns out, Dylan’s “Too Much of Nothing” refers to V and V:

Say hello to Valerie
Say hello to Vivian
Give her all my salary
On the waters of oblivion.

(Peter Paul and Mary recorded a cover of the song and, likely not getting the reference, changed Vivian to Marion. Dylan was livid)

Again, I am hoping to limn a portrait of turmoil under the surface—good turmoil that, once it surfaces has got to be got by the status quo. Trick the tray may be familiar to some as “Tricky Tray”, an attempt to back off whatever racist slur is associated with the term “Chinese Auction”, that ubiquitous church basement stalwart. An ironic attempt! ~,:^) Anyway, a suggestion of the banal and the cracks in it. I’m hoping that the final line states exactly where the white Republican enclave stands as it puts out the lights that might save it. I do intend it to be a statement as opposed to a question, thus no question mark.

So much for my first round push-backiness and perhaps overly-detailed expression intent! I really appreciate you digging in. It got me thinking about how others are reading the poem, and certainly offers guidance in regard to digesting all the other input—and I’m glad to see what’s followed your critique.

Lastly, as far as the the poet’s clarity of vision and reasoning go, I refer to George Inness's edict that knowledge must bow to spirit, which is to say that vision trumps reason ~,:^) Nonetheless, I’m fairly convinced that I am coursing through something like a logical narrative with a volta (I usually do well avoiding words like “or” in nailing the difficult double trochees at the line ends in Sapphics—here I chose “or” with discrtion!) And I am intentionally leaving things open to interpretation and pleasurable confusion. There are a lot of good poets and critics here that never comment on my work ~,:^)

I get that you see qualities here, but that it’s not quite there for you. I anticipate a revision and I hope you’ll indulge me after all of this ^^ by going over that version as well.

Thank you, thank you.




Hi Glen

I live for glimmers of light! I really went over whole thing at length above. My intent is to show the destructive quality of what is considered a civil sense of community. I don’t pick up on what you see as simmering tribal grievance. I read something more like ennui suffered, perhaps inevitably, by people unfamiliar with the word.


This I don’t think is there: The anti-social character whose behavior would have merited a 911 call a generation ago is now a typical MAGA Republican. I’m intending to describe a person who challenges the status quo, thus causing a kind of fear response among the general pouplation. He’s set upon and ousted or somehow gone. I’m not commenting on contemporary politics and have no thought of Trump in writing or reading this.

Very glad to read that Queequeg registers as Tattoo Man. It’s kind of key to understanding the poem. That last stanza is admittedly cryptic, employing the literary/pop culture reference described above. Again, I don’t think that a reader needs to catch the obscure Dylan/Eliot hooks to get what is needed here. Things flatten out, all noise eliminated. “Aren’t we happy.” I hope what I’ve written in my response to Deborah will provide some help.


Mark,

First an important clarification. Nemo is operating a Soapbox Derby vehicle. Pinewood and Soapbox derby are the be all and end all of Cub Scout culture in the US. But remember: Scouting is a British import here. Perhaps we have taken too much to heart.

I really thought of you when I challenged myself assto whether the Captain’s Tower and Valerie and Vivian would be taken up by readers. How do you think bringing them in works here—is it a distraction? I can tell you that this started as an idea for a poem in which Valerie and Viv show up to characterize something wrong in suburbia. The prompt of Tattoo Man, who was real, followed later.

This is encouraging: Overall, I get a mood here of loss of innocence in an American suburb that was never innocent to begin with. Something about racist attitudes shifting from open antagonism to something more quietly sinister. Literally whitewashed.

Interesting that you are reading the man as a random black guy. Caldwell is real too, and in the Apartheid mid 20th century in northern New Jersey, it was very much the case that people were pulled over in Caldwell as a result of racial profiling. I think Dylan says something along these lines regarding Paterson. All to say, I’m OK with your seeing a random black guy here.


Not sure how much Google you gave to the Rotary club—it’s basically a conservative business owner’s franchise in every suburban town in America. They meet on Tuesday in a room at the Clover Leaf Tavern. That kind of thing.

Yes, the close is an ironically smug statement as opposed to the apparent question. As for meter, I think it works as I have it, if “aren’t” is, as it is colloquially in Caldwell, pronounced as a two-syllable word.


I’m glad that you in your reading, sometimes squeezing a pomegranate is squeezing a pomegranate. Of course I like that you got it emotionally.


Thanks for coming back Carl,


I love Sapphics. The incantational quality of a pile of hendecasyllabics resolving in an adonic that can be a kind of punchline can’t be beat in unrhymed poetry. I’m glad that “the charm of the meter” compensated for obscurity and may keep a reader at it.

Here’s what to look for in identifying the form—four longish lines followed by a shortish. Of course, writers take a lot of liberties. I think the longish/shortish criterion is the bottom line.

I kind of recoil from the imposed MAGA interpretation of the hoi polloi here, as noted to Glen. It’s not called for in the text, really, and tends to sidetrack both Tattoo Man and the suburbanites, really mischaracterizing the latter. MAGAs are extremists and loony. If anything they are cooler than the hoi polloi! I want to believe they don’t show up here at all, but perhaps their presence is inevitable (chills running down my spine).


I know what you mean saying that if this were not a poem posted at Eratosphere, you’d not take the time for it. A poem like this is asking a lot of the reader. I don’t think in terms of going for the broadest audience or keeping out the riff raff or any of that shit. I guess my philosophy regarding the poet is that the he or she finds his or her audience or doesn’t. I also find that I need to be much more patient when I am reading poetry than I am when I do anything generally. So…

As for the two points in you last comment:

A) Yes!
B) No!


The teenage patrolmen are meant to harken back a bit to Pinewood Derbies, I guess. Bringing ‘em into the system young. I want the world to take a break from Trump by reading this poem. ~,:^)



Folks! Thanks so much for digging in, as appropriate in ~~The Deep End~~. I enjoyed making a deep response, characteristically defensive and gabbily explanatory at this point. There will be blood (rewrite?) in the second round if I am graced with one.

RM

Hey Rick,

To be clear, I got the reference to the Moby Dick character. But yes, I pictured an ordinary person. What I was saying is that the locals see him in the the way that Ishmael might initially view Queequeg: frightening, exotic, threatening. In the world of the poem is he someone actually covered in tattoos? Interesting.

Hi Mark,

Yes. Covered, including his entire face.


Sorry about the italics, folks. I can't get the edit function to work on my laptop.

RM

Huge thanks for being so “gabbily explanatory,” Rick. Poets and artists rarely offer so wide and welcoming a window into their work.

Aw, c’mon. Does that really happen? Michael Burch claims he was banned for life for pointing out that “Erato was the abstract personification of love poetry.” Is there some fascist poetry site that goes by the same name?

I have trouble seeing the man described in S3 as heroic. Larger than life, yes—bellicose, contemptuous of rules, a sexual predator—and now being called back in response to the rage of those who feel their future has been hijacked. Yes, he’s summoned by the N, but I felt sure it was the bitterly ironic “we” of the last line.

All I’m saying is that if you “recoil” from this interpretation, your rewrite should somehow discourage it. It all seemed so clear …

Rick,

I just wanted to say--and this I do think is my own failing--your explanation of S2L1 never once occurred to me even though you feel satisfied that I must have read it back into S1. I was seeing "tomorrow" as still being in the future and so thought it a very odd construction. S2 really mostly left me floundering with where dissatisfaction was pointing. I still wonder if you have clarity about who made the promise, what the promise was, and who made the excuses. I say this because helping us see those elements of your vision more clearly is probably what could make this click.

I've only written one Sapphic myself, and I published it in THINK journal last year. I'm fairly new to any extended metrical forays. I've also written a hendecasyllabic that I do like, but when I read in these meters, I feel like they are hard ones for a natural and lively voice. Even when I look back at the Sapphic I published, which had so much compressed emotion in the writing of it, it feels elegant but far more emotionally distanced in the reading (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that!).

I'm impressed by a lot that you've done here. I did note the "or" and thought it might be a weakness but then decided otherwise.

One of the things that drives me crazy with these Latin meters is how frequently folks writing in them expect us to pick it up even though they are opening lines on forced accents instead of what anyone would naturally assume is a trochee. So I really appreciate that your meter is intrinsic to the words (in general I do not like it when meter forces promotions of a syllable that would naturally be demoted next to the other syllable in a foot; this has a long history of acceptance but is a pet peeve for me; I don't mind a pyrrhic in iambic meter AT ALL, but an inversion of natural accent can be a hard sell for me in iambic or trochaic meters).

As for how I interpreted the Queequeg line, I was trying to come up with how someone could simultaneously feel "put-upon" while also feeling in the vein of "infinite cowboy," and that was the only possibility that occurred to me. Additionally, Glen's interpretation is in fact the main overall interpretation I was toying with... except the connections didn't QUITE seem to work (for that or for any interpretation that I could come up with). But just so you know, that was the closest I came to figuring out a way to thread the puzzle.

I did think initially that the speaker was trying to paint this man as a positive to be looked up to, and I still wondered if that was the case by the end (but this would make the speaker a fairly icky person according to my reading of the tattooed an). But no interpretation I came up with quite seemed to hold together in all your connections.

I still don't know how to see the tattooed man as some sort of ideal. But again, I couldn't come up with one line of thought that did not seem dubious or contradicted by other lines of yours.

How is someone bounced from bars and the diner a manly ideal? It's not clear enough that this could be merely on account of a prejudice over his tattoos. This is an action that usually is tied to some poor behavioral regulation or character issues. It would be so very hard NOT to read this man as inhabiting some form of "toxic masculinity." As for the pomegranate, I doubt any of us know what Jack's is, which might be part of the problem. If it was a recognizable grocery store name, and if he wasn't already seeming to be a troublemaker, then maybe we would have been able to come up with an explanation other than sexual harassment.

Due to health effecting memory, you can generally expect me not to get most references. I never did know Dylan lyrics, and I only picked up on Mellville after googling. I would never have known those wives, although I once skimmed an article about them. Queequeg did seem like a name I should know, but I (and this is really just my health/memory problem) couldn't place him at all even after google tried to situate me and explained his character a bit. So the information I'm bringing to the poem could be part of the problem. But I really don't know how to read your intent into that description I'm afraid.

I'm glad you appreciated my effort. It really is quite an effort with me for health reasons, so please understand if I do or do not manage to come back for revisions. I'm not really sure if I'll be managing any sort of regularity here (or contributing my own work) or not. I'm just trying to test the possibility.

Even though your closing line seems like a good one, lines 1-3 of last stanza seems to add enough confusion and (for me) no payoff, that I wonder if it really wants to be there. But no doubt you will figure this out as you try to address all of the feedback we've given.

Deborah

Hi Carl and Deborah,


Whew. I'm definitely not looking to develop Tattoo Man as anything close to malevolent. I describe him as shown the door at a diner in the same poem in which I describe people shielding their children from him at the mere sight of him walking down the street. He's edgy, he's different. He's put upon. He's done nothing wrong. There are perfectly innocent people thrown out of places... I mean for the malevolence to appear in the upstanding citizenry.

I am thinking about how I might make it clear that he's having the cops called on him because his entire face is covered in colorful tattoos.

I guess I'm OK with the promise part. In fact, I think I have some clarity there. I'm referring to the promise inherent in the American Dream. You might be pushing too hard to find meaning Deborah...? I'd hate to think I ever wrote a poem that has a puzzle in it. I hate puzzle-bee more than I hate Lite Verse, and I avoid reading it. Ambiguity is different. That I like.

And I like contradiction. The ideal of the cowboy includes cowboy outsider. Thus put-upon. But even a tougher-to-reconcile contradiction is usually kind of interesting to me. Carl, I just don't think I have him as a bellicose sexual predator. The ideal (infinite) cowboy is far from those things. And Queequeg is a guy you wanted on your side, as soon as you stop being afraid of him. He's kind of quiet and leaves when he's not wanted....

As for reading Sapphics aloud, Deborah, I find that you need to set table with line integrity, so that you get the bum-de-bum-de-bumbidy-bum-de-bum-de (sounds like a lonesome cowboy on riding on the range, no?) over and over with each line more or less telling part of the poem. The poet John J. Trause insists on reading Sapphics as if he were Sappho, which is to say blubbering heartbroken through the whole poem! He can pull it off. He also raps Chaucer.

I am thinking about whether I need to flesh out Tattoo Man, whom I think N is sticking up for as a kind of archetype--the ugly duckling.

Sorry about the health concerns, Deborah. You've put me to work on this more than it might seem, given my responses.

Thanks again,
RM

Hmmm…. I guess I was reading this as the tattoo man feeling like he had been put-upon. So I sought to come up with a reason why he’d feel that way rather than reading that as straight reportage.

I think you’ll need to establish him in his doing of good deeds or somesuch before establishing him through his tendency to suffer prejudiced or his tendency to brawl (as I’m still assuming from being bounced). Otherwise I can’t imagine folks latching on to the reading you intend.

Also, “show me a man” way too easily triggers a “Oh, the speaker is macho and longs for the good old days when men could behave roughly and weren’t held responsible” sort of response. That doesn’t make it a bad phrase, but it does make it a phrase that especially requires clarification in its context.

So you might need a stanza before the one about the prejudice that somehow develops this character. I don’t really think we need to see the tattoos more as much as we need to see why he’s a gem. I can’t really imagine that someone would be highlighted in the title as being tattooed if they weren’t heavily tattooed that face tattoos are included is indeed, a vibrant picture, but it doesn’t clarify what we need to know about him in order to get on the right track. Presently, I think we are supposed to get the fact that he’s a gem from that one phrase “put-upon,” which is both insufficient next to all the rest of the space devoted to his experiences and can easily be read as his conception of himself rather than as a true evaluation.

D

Yeah, that’s how I understood “cowboy” too—a pretty common pejorative these days.

I don’t think changing it to Kroger is going to help. Rick says the sexual implication of squeezing the pomegranates “is unavoidable” (influenced by Ginsberg’s sexually charged supermarket, no less!), but it’s all in the mind of an alert citizen who has “misinterpreted the squeeze”: “Hello, police? Get over to Jack’s right away! There’s a man suggestively fondling the pomegranates!” Sure, he’s literally squeezing the fruit, but the focus on such a trivial action and the exoticism of the fruit cry out for a double meaning. (According to some readings of Moby-Dick, Queequeg should really be with Ginsberg’s Whitman, “poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys”!)

Hi Deborah and Carl,

Thanks for keeping at me. I will start by rewriting this stretch:

Show me a man/
or bring him back

is now

Enter a stranger/
Marked for life

Also I changed "for squeezing" to "while squeezing". Not so sure about this second change.

Let me know what you think,
RM

I added a new stanza (4) that really explains things, which is against my nature.

Rick, I regret making you explain things against your nature, but the changes you’ve made really do help me see Tattoo Man as a victim of prejudice. (I once saw a man with a huge erect penis tattooed on his face, and I’d rather not have to look at him while I’m eating, but I wouldn’t call the police.) You need a “c” in “Mack’rel,” which I rather like, though I can’t make much of “prodigal lodger.”

That may be enough, but if greater clarity is needed, you could borrow space from “doling infinite cowboy,” which you explained as “rolling with a kind of wannabeat® Sapphics.” I’m not sure what the phrase or the explanation means, but it sounds as though the specific words aren’t as important as the rhythm. For some reason, I hear S3L4 ending with the word “outsider.” Too straightforward, I suppose.

Anyway, I love these imitation classical meters, and I seriously admire your hip treatment of Sapphics. If I ever attempt it, this poem will be a big influence on me.

Rick, it’s hard to say how someone unfamiliar with the poem would respond now, but you’ve definitely highlighted the prejudice more and eliminated a confusing pointer. Marked for life is helpful. If you do want this to be a poem of devotion to this person, and that more than a secret reality to the writer, you may want to include a stanza that fleshes the character out.

Carl, I agree that Kroger wouldn’t help, though I was assuming Jack’s was a hang-out and pomegranates a euphemism. I was more trying to point out some of the reasons why we’d never get the intent as is. We’d need rooting in his actual character to come up with the possibility of reading it otherwise.

Rick, I agree with Carl that I admire how you’ve made the sapphic hip and vibrant. It feels more cohesive now.

Hi Carl and Deborah,

I'm glad that you like the changes.

Another problem along the lines of clarity has been the lack of an indication that Tattoo Man has left the scene and how he left it. I added the epigraph.

I appreciate you help, folks.

Rick

I first thought you had dedicated it to Bobby Seale, the Black Panther, and misspelled it. Then I found out it was dedicated to a Jersey punk rocker. I confess an ignorance of punk rock. I had turned to jazz before punk took off and mostly missed it.

I assume he's the tattoo man? Has someone else mentioned this? I didn't read all the comments. Are the events things that happened around him? But that leaves out the black man. I didn't mean to be caught up in clue-hunting but it felt necessary to start appreciating the poem.

I'm still reading.

Ugh. Bobby Steele, this one, was not a punk rocker. He was a man who showed up in my town tattooed from head to foot. I see there is another Bobby Steele. Maybe the epigraph is a bad move. My initial title was Death of Tattoo Man... I didn't like it, because it's not about his death per se.

I kind of hate when the Googling gets in the way of experiencing the poem. I think the simple answer is to change the epigraph to In Memoriam, which I have done.

Given my record on spelling, your initial thought was not a bad one, John ~,:^)

Rick, I think “In Memoriam” is brilliant, inviting us to sympathize with Tattoo Man right from the start. There’s still plenty I don’t get in the poem, but the titular character and how he was mistreated have come into focus for me.

Hi Rick,

Yes, we have the Rotary Club. Like the Mason's. It was the potluck dinner I wasn't 100% on.

The new stanza makes it clear (of course) that the man is actually covered in tattoos. Despite the title, I wasn't getting that the first time around. I thought the title referred to Melville's character and that the guy in the poem was a kind of metaphorical Queequeg, but not necessarily literally tattooed. I pictured a black guy, first because of the harassment he was getting and also because the hint at a contrast in the subsequent line "Now your white Republican enclave shimmers" seemed to suggest it. And for what it's worth, I never saw him as anything but put-upon. Sometimes a pomegranate etc...

I like the new stanza and the simple epigraph. It brings it together for me. The added clarity isn't spelling things out, it's all still a pretty wild ride. And I like the new S2 adonic. A stage direction. Like Enter Patty Valentine (him again!)

I like the poem a lot, Rick.

(And now I've seen Tattoo Man, of course. Safe passage, fella.)

Since this is the Deep End, I’ll spell out what I still don’t get—without expecting you to clarify anything in the poem or even explain it here—just so you’ll know:

dollar sign notebooks—These, you say, are “perhaps notebooks that amount to accounting ledgers.” You seem almost as unsure as I am.

doling infinite cowboy—You’ve explained “infinite cowboy,” but what does it mean to “dole” (measure out portions of) cowboy? You also call this “a moment at which I am rolling with a kind of wannabeat® Sapphics.” It sounds as if you had a space to fill and took the first metrical words that came to your head. That’s backed up by the reference to Kerouac, who is known (exaggeratedly, I’ve heard) for his stream-of-thought spontaneity.

a peculiar shade of prodigal lodger—The tattoos show that their lodger (the man who wears them) has been rashly extravagant (by getting the tattoos?). Farfetched, but it’s the best I’ve come up with.

stack the tray for tickets to the Teenage Patrolman’s Breakfast—You explained “trick the tray” as a reference to “Tricky Tray,” something I unsurprisingly haven’t heard of, so that didn’t get me very far, and with “stack the tray” I’m back to square one. The teenage patrolmen, you say, “are meant to harken back a bit to Pinewood Derbies, I guess.” Again, you seem unsure, and I see little connection between patrolmen and Cub Scout miniature car racing. Do they race cars over breakfast?

The impression I get from some of your explanations is that you write quickly and spontaneously, trusting your unconscious to take care of the details. I suspect that great work has been done that way, but it’s so alien to my fussy, plodding approach that you’ll forgive me if I’m sometimes uncomprehending.

BTW, you might consider making “the pomegranate” either indefinite or plural. “The pomegranate” seems to be either one we’ve already heard of (but haven’t) or an abstract pomegranate, asking for metaphorical readings.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for checking back. Yes, I was letting the title carry too much weight. I'm glad the extra stanza and rewritten lines work for you.

As I mentioned, I didn't really mind our original reading. I like a suggestion of racial bigotry here, though I may have eradicated it with the rewrite... Glad you like the poem.

Hi Carl,

Thanks for all your input and feedback. I don't want to keep explaining things or giving "my reading." It would be impossible to know what you would think of this poem seeing for the first time it in its revised state, but I get that you're OK with the residual elements of uncertainty that I think are the bare minimum necessary. I am assuming at this point that I will not be clawing this back to its original. Thanks again for all your help.

Rick

I never thought I'd see jazzy Sapphics. Amazing.
For me, the last line:
Aren’t we happy.
is the emotional heart of the poem. I like it with the period and not a question mark.

Thanks Mary,

I hadn't thought jazzy. More Beat [doling infinite cowboy]. But I guess Beat is jazzy. In either case, not my intent, but I like the effect. Glad you do.

I guess that last line solidifies the tone of the narrator's "J'accuse", which is spelled out at the beginning of stanza V: "You’ll recall. You called the police, remember?" I must say that I like the chirality of that line.

Thanks again,
Rick

Although I still wouldn't know what is happening in the final stanza and do find dollar sign notebooks odd and unclear, as Carl does, I feel like I'm very much along for the ride now that you've made your changes, Rick. As someone who's an unlikely candidate for ever being called edgy or hip and who tends to work with lyrical subtleties, I'm envious that you've pulled off this voice in sapphics.

Hi Rick,

There is so much here beyond my ken, polarised well past the Polaroid. Technicall ept as expected but I can offer nothing of help America now surpasses my understanding.