Um Português
 

Um Português

      (for Paulo)


That phone line is so old I rarely answer.
Retrieving messages is just routine:
my credit score, pitched sales, the march for cancer,
cheap satellite tv—a general theme.
I’ve been away. Press play, m-hmm, delete...
I’m caught off-guard—and smiling, raise my head.
I recognize your accent instantly
and yet it isn’t you. It says: you’re dead.

The winter fog that rolled in from the coast
would swallow up that old stone house, and hold me
for days on end, alone. That haunts me most.
“You’ve such respect for silence—” you once told me,
“—you leave the room, and gently close the door.”
The ghost in my machine says nothing more.



Comments:

I don’t know how else to say this: in this quite good poem there is a better poem trying to get out. Nothing is easier than to revise the life out of a poem, but in this case revising might help, though I would not presume to suggest what revisions to make.

Um Português

In the tempered and subdued language of the first five lines of “Um Português”, the poet lulls us into a rather commonplace scene: a person returns from an extended trip, checks voice mail messages, and deletes most of them as unimportant. With words such as old, rarely, routine, general theme and m-hmm, the reader gets a vivid sense of N’s ennui.

Line 6 changes all that. In the space of three lines, N and the reader are “caught off-guard” and experience first, intense pleasure, then heartbreaking sorrow. I don’t know about others, but often when someone I love dies, regardless of the huge store of memories I may have of that person, there is always one event or one phrase that takes over my mind almost to the exclusion of every other. The sestet, which takes place in the hushed atmosphere of N’s remembrances, is a fine evocation of such an idée fixe, all the more moving because, in order to honor Paulo’s memory, N (though perhaps wishing to cry out in anguish) must respect silence, “leave the room, and gently close the door.”

I believe the most significant line in the sonnet is L14. I’m not sure whether the poet had Ryle’s “ghost in the machine” criticism of mind-body dualism in mind when writing it, or whether the line simply refers to the disembodied voice on N’s answering machine; but the poet has put the metaphysical flea in our ear; and whether or not we believe that only the physical and measurable is real, or whether the mental ghosts in our corporeal “machines” (hearts) are philosophical myths, the fact remains that Paulo was beloved, and that he will never be forgotten.

A memorable and powerfully understated love sonnet.

Although the poet handles the lead-in skilfully, eight lines of a fourteen-line poem to set up the premise make me go m-hmm.

The dead-person's-voice-on-the-answering-machine is not a new device.

As drafted, I think it would be better if it ended on L13. The poet doesn't need to spell out "the ghost in the machine!" Anyway, for a poem with a dedication to a deceased loved one, L14 seems to end on a tech sidetrack, not a personal closing thought.

John

The fact that this poem has remained with me since I first read it is either an indication of quality, or that it touched me on a personal level or, most likely, both.

There is so much I like about it, so very much, but most incisive I think is the concept of the "ghost in the machine" with its categorical mistake(s). That turns my thoughts to Koestler (whom I am better acquainted with than Ryle or Descartes, though it was many years ago that I read Koestler's books so I had best not be too big-mouthed here).

The concluding line tells me (though it may not be the author's intent) that N has learned from a stranger of the death of a former lover, and I further read into it that it was N who severed the relationship. It doesn't matter if this is true or not, it is the impression I take away from the poem.

For me the strongest part of the poem is the image of the door being quietly closed as the lover leaves the site of the rendezvous; it imparts a solemnity to the closure.

The opening expresses ennui, but the sestet has a diction that is full of feeling, of mourning; the traditional image of the haunted house (symbolizing the mind in Ns body) which uses winter fog (deliberate forgetfulness) rolling in from the coast around the old stone house (stoicism), locking N in introspection. The words "haunt", "silence", "gently" are esp. poignant.

The closure is two-edged and its ambiguity informs us that the statment is not true, that the "mind in the body" is not silent and the ghost in Ns machine will continue to mourn the former lover's "ghost" in the answering machine and in their shared past.

That is my take on it.

I agree with all Janice has said - (well said, Janice!).

My favourites of this Bake-off have been the three about dead people. But this one is the only one that has made me cry.

Cally

I love this poem.
The voice of the dead on the answering machine.
Winter fog.
Wonderful.
Janet

Like Janet, I adore this poem. In fact I adore a great deal of this man's work. Reading him at his best, I feel like I'm eighteen and falling in love with Kavafy all over again. My favorite of our whole batch.

It seems to clear to me too that it isn't Paolo's voice on the machine but rather one with an identical accent, a sibling of Paolo's perhaps or a friend from the same country.

Quite stunning here the way a Huge Truth breaks in on the quotidian. The top content is engaging and poignant but the poem also reminds us of what broils below the surface of things, always.

Turner Cassity recommends revision but won't say what needs doing. Well, this is my favorite too so far, & it probably won't end up being revised, but if it were--the assonantal rhymes in the octave feel like a cop-out-- "Routine/theme," "delete/instantly"--though the author wants to show us it was on purpose, by putting them in the A position in each quatrain. "A general theme" feels like a pretty weak phrase to me. Catherine says that the first quatrain or so serves to lull us with its banality, so that we, like the speaker, are caught "off-guard" by the dead man's voice on the recording. I believe it, but could wish those lines accomplished more on a thematic level while still fulfilling their primary purpose. At least, these were my initial reservations, though on re-reading, I'm beginning to discard them.

Keep the last line. The "machine" is both the recording and the network of neurons and synapses we call the mind. The remembered words of the dead man are also very well-chosen.

Chris

This is very good. The first five lines came just a hair from lulling me to sleep, but the next three not only woke me up, but elevated the previous lines. The sestet is simply beautiful. To write beautifully about the idea of silence is not easy at all, and here it is accomplished.

David R.

This poem is the one that had the most powerful effect on me the first time I read it. I love that it starts with an ordinary routine and shows how quickly the deepest feelings can break in on it. The moment in which the joy at recognition of the loved accent turns to grief on realizing that it is a stranger's voice and the real loved one is dead has a huge impact. I immediately assented to the idea that silence would be important to the poet ("Only in silence, the word," as Ursula Le Guin writes), so the image of the door closing gently perfectly captures both the relationship and the moment of hearing about the death. The stone house in the fog was a very evocative image for me, which is doing double duty because it is clearly also a statement of fact. Wow.

Susan

Each time I read this I like it more. My favorite so far. Graceful, evocative, unusual.

This sonnet needs revising. I don't know why, or what kind of revisions are needed, but even though I can't be at all helpful, I'd be remiss if I didn't say something deflating.

Just kidding. I think it's excellent.

On seeing the very positive comments on this, I took another look at it. I do like the effective handling of the silence near the end.

My first reaction was tainted by having seen the device used before, by Linda Pastan (found here http://www.poetryfoundation.org/arch....html?id=30148 and discussed here http://www.pd.org/Perforations/perf29/mk1.pdf with one subheading called "The Ghost In The Answering Machine"), and I think in a poem posted here a while back related to Anthony Hecht. However, if we can't appreciate poems on subjects that have already been written about, we wouldn't enjoy any new poems.

John

This is another one I like more with each reading. I loved the octet right off the bat. I initially stumbled a bit metrically in the sestet (on the use of "hold me" and "told me" as feminine rhymes in lines 10 and 12), but didn't have that problem the second time through.

After several readings I gather, like Janice, that the narrator severed the relationship. The sestet remains somewhat mysterious and elusive to me. (I think intentionally, and effectively, so.) But I'm thinking N's time "alone" at that old stone house in the fog, so haunting now (lines 9-11), occurred after the break-up, and that N wanted to initiate a reconciliation but said nothing. If that's so, then there's extra sting to N's recollection of the lover's comment that N always closed doors quietly when leaving (lines 11-12). It refers not just to the lover's original meaning, but also to N's failure to reach out after sending him away--something that can't be remedied now. My take, anyway.

A lovely, moving poem, and one of my favorites here.

I also had that sense of déjà vu and question of true originality, but couldn't quite place it until I saw your link and remembered. I believe I've also seen another sonnet on a similar note, unless it's this same one.

Cheers,
...Alex

This may be my favorite so far, as well, though I thought the opening was a tad weak, both because it went on a bit too long, and because it seems to be a bit out of date (that sort of barrage of junk phone calls, all leaving messages, is more or less a thing of the past with the advent of do-not-call lists). Anyway, the list risked boredom, all to set up the "surprise" voice and news. I'd have preferred a different list of mundane messages to set up the surprising news, perhaps a wrong number and a hang-up. But all in all, much enjoyed and admired.

I agree with some of the comments on the octave. I understand the reason for the mundane content, but it’s a tad too mundane. The sestet, on the other hand, is excellent. It’s very arresting, evocative, and well written.
I admire this sonnet very much, and it would be unfair to say I have a problem with it. In fact, it’s not really a problem I have but more a subjective reaction. This sonnet namely feels a bit “private”. I don’t think it’s due to the dedication, since it’s not the only sonnet here that has one. Instead, it might be due to these lines:
“You’ve such respect for silence—” you once told me,
“—you leave the room, and gently close the door.”
Those lines are somewhat enigmatic but nevertheless quite good, and I don’t think they should be changed. But I do think they’re the reason I find myself more on the periphery of this sonnet than inside it. It’s like looking at the sonnet through glass; I admire the scene I see, but it feels too personal for me to be allowed into it.

I like the sestet very much--the fog, and hold me/ told me. The octave, though, seems too deliberately a "set-up" for the sestet to foil--it feels like it is marking time a bit to me, and the device, as has been pointed out, has been used before (though admittedly cliches come about because they actually happen, I suppose, to more than one person...) I would like the octave to be doing more work, to reward rereading--to come up to par with the close. But a solid sonnet nonetheless.

Good memory. I did write a poem about Helen Hecht having Tony's voice on the recorder five years later. I think it might have started as a sonnet, but we cut it to eight lines. That in no way prejudices me for or against this poem.

The sestet feels like a different, better poem than the octave. I am not a huge fan of lists such as we get in the first few lines. The speaker's attitude toward these messages: mm-hmm, sums up my feelings about the octet.

But the close is gorgeous.

I agree there is a better poem in this, but it has great power. Everything about it is good except for two areas:

1. "a general theme" seems to be there for the rhyme only. It doesn't add anything, and the preceding list hardly constitutes a single theme. Marketing? Harassment? Robocalls?

2. The final line could be more original.

Thanks, all.

I must say that the comment which struck me most personally was Petra's, who mentioned that the poem felt so intensely private to her that she was looking in at it through a glass of some sort. This is certainly one of the most private poems that I've ever written, written out of and in the midst of a grief that is not feigned in any literary way. Which is why it was never work-shopped on the Sphere (though it was published in 14 by 14 soon after it was written).

As such it was also written far more quickly than I usually write, and it was not revised much at all. So as to whether there is a more polished poem lurking inside it, well, there may well be--but we will never know, because my heart won't let me touch it. I'll confess that for me it's immediacy keeps alive a grief that I wish to preserve those first quietly wrenching moments of. The somewhat numbing list of the octet isn't, to my mind, something the poem could lose: I can think of no better way to have a huge truth burst in upon the quotidian (as Kate put it) than to allow that quotidian its visceral hold for long enough to lull the text into numbed somnolence. I had originally thought to replace a general theme with a shallow stream, but in the end opted for a lack of metaphor in favor of dull reportage.

The lines about the respect for silence are, by the way, almost verbatim. And as for the perhaps 'unoriginal' trope of the ghost in the machine it is one of my favorite phrases, one that casts such a net of echoes in my mind, that I am powerless to resist it.

If anything, I feel that the word alone in the sestet may be, for me, the sonnet's only misstep--well, not misstep exactly--but misleading step. The arc of the relationship underlying the poem was thereby laid open to a wide number of interpretations. Yet in the end I think that's fine: and thus we are brought back to the innate privacy of the poem. For the grief to become real, it must in the end be made real by each individual reader, and so the relationship must be personalized each time all over again. In that way I am content with the poem: that it might be able to keep alive a deep grief, even independent of me, is my gift to Paulo.

Nemo