[Gail White]

For Two Lindens Newly Planted on Avenue D


Surrender now, you haven’t got a chance—
between the flood of piss from every cur
that cocks a leg, the daily whipped offense
of bike chain lacerations, the errant car
that jumps the curb to gall a tender strip
from you; and box-cutter boys who deface
your trunks, the burning road-salt I.V. drip
of winter, the corner cuchifrito place
dumping its fry-pot grease by night, your spread
festooned with deli-bags, and groping shorn-
off limbs where trucks backed in to unload beer.
Should you survive the year, you anguished pair,
then prove us snags all wrong—the standing dead—
fly pale green flags, this desperate April morn!

[Gail White]

COMMENT BY CATHY CHANDLER: This is the sonnet that arrived in our emailbox at exactly 11:59 p.m. Quelle chance! A hybrid sonnet as far as form goes, using a mix of perfect and slant rhyme, the poem begins with a despairing command, “Surrender now”, followed by a detailed list of vivid images and metaphors pointing to the linden trees’ sure demise. However, by the time we reach line 14, the narrator wishes to be proven wrong, and thus the “pale green flags” of hope. The only word I had a little trouble swallowing was “morn” — it is so “poetical” — but its undertone of possible and indeed probable, mourning came through to me. I also found line 6 quite bumpy. The enjambment between lines 9 and 10 is inspired.

[Gail White]

COMMENT BY GAIL: I once attempted to plant a sidewalk tree in front of my house in New Orleans. Talk about dumb ideas! Let's just say ours was not a tree-friendly neighborhood. So this sonnet had my sympathy all the way through. My only question is about the very end. I love the phrase "desperate April", but I wonder if "this…morn" is the proper usage for a day some distance in the future.

[Maryann Corbett]

I love the first thirteen lines of this, with their city gritty detail and crunchy mouthfeel, so much that I'm sad to get tripped by the last line, where I was confused by the same phrase that bothers Gail.

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

Great imagery here -- I'd revise these line for accuracy and meter's sake though ...
your trunks, the burning road-salt I.V. drip
of winter, the corner cuchifrito place

Common medical abbreviation is IV -- but I think any abbreviation jars a bit...the burning salt (saline solution) line is great though...how about

your trunks, the road-salt intravenous drip
that burns, the corner cuchifrito place

[Paul Connolly]

Great till I got snagged at the end, beginning with the dashes setting off "the standing dead", and the expectation that these unfortunate two can raise and fly their flags this April morn, if they're not already doing so--"come...April," "next...April" is a more reasonable demand.

But on further reflection, the very unreasonableness of the demand may be the point. "Surrender now", says the city (or its collective snags). Why shouldn't the city demand the impossible of nature?

I retract my city-as-speaker reading in light of Maryann's post below on the definition of snag.

[Don Jones]

A tableau from NYC's Alphabet City. Having lived in America's greatest town, I feel the poem's imagery quite sharply. It paints a perfect picture in my head. On the other hand, there is surely more than one city with an "Avenue D," so this doesn't have to be NYC but the poem's craft succeed in carving an image in my mind and in light of my experience, it might as well be the Big Apple.

As others have noted, "morn" spills the milk all over this lovely tableau. Why not "dawn"? Which of course means a new rhyme word for "shorn." No problem, though, for the person who submitted this one.

Don

Added in: In light of Paul's comment, which I read after posting my first,

then prove us snags all wrong—the standing dead—.

My first take was that "standing dead" went with "us," the readers and the world in general that witnesses these two lindens. I'm not sure that the context helps. If the trees are the "standing dead," well, they aren't dead yet! Or, maybe that's meant to reflect what humans, "us," are supposed to think of the two threatened trees, that they stand in mortal danger?

On the other hand, are we, the readers and witnesses, the "standing dead"? That seems unlikely as such a judgment is not warranted by the poem. This line isn't clear enough. I wonder if the syntax could be improved to clearly mark the referent. Or rewrite entirely.

[Chris Childers]

I have a guess about the author of this one! I agree that it cracks along very nicely up until line 13. (Sharon seems to have a point, but I would just write IV and have done with that line.)

No one has said this, so I could be totally off, but "snags" seems strange to me, unless there's an idiomatic use I'm unaware of. I guess everything listed in lines 1-12 is a "snag," metaphorically speaking, & perhaps it is fair to lump the speaker in with all the forces conspiring to bring about the trees' demise. But it sounds odd; it made me wonder if "nags" is really what was meant, (though that would be more fitting for the speaker than for everything else).

My other two problems have already been suggested; the break down of the subjunctive conditional statement in the last three lines (as Paul says, 'come April next' or some such would seem more appropriate), and that use of 'morn,' which I waver over, sometimes finding it a little fusty and embarrassing, but sometimes feeling that the poem, with its IV drip and cuchifrito place, etc., has earned the poeticism, that it suggests something of the trees' quixotic aspirations, which the poet, for all his grittiness and realism, is embarrassed to identify with. Having written it down, I feel that the poem gets away with the word; but the other two issues, 'snags' and 'this,' are still snags for me.

C

[Brian Watson]

SNAG = Sensitive New Age Guy. I think the term was current in the 90s.

[Maryann Corbett]

Chris, about the use of "snags," see if definition 1b helps you out here:

Definition of "snag" from the online Merriam-Webster

The N. is referring, I think, to the people all around in this difficult city as "the standing dead" who will, the N. hopes, be proved wrong by the still-living trees next year.

(And apologies if you were perfectly aware of that definition and I've misunderstood your post.)