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Stuck Life 2004
Whoever made this unsigned, clumsy work
laid out these fruits, these flowers, arranged these jugs
of water or wine (I cannot tell) in such
an artless disarray as I must judge
his passion by the passion of his brush.
I see him in his studio; backlit, slumped
outside the frame of what hes painted in.
How easy to imagine him at ease,
perhaps his mistress at his side, his pipe
sparking ashes across his spattered breeches.
His tinctured fingers coil, comb out his beard;
a last, vague curl of smoke hangs in still air.
And she, perhaps, looks up past him, admiring
what must, to her, seem magical affect,
the living flesh of fading fruit preserved
Lemon and orange, persimmon, tangerine,
more vivid each than the gnawed melon she sees
rotting on the table at his knees.
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[center]<table bgcolor=white cellpadding=25 border=0><tr><td>Curious, packed poem, a parable, like the miracle of Cana raferred to in line 3 as a metaphor for what the artist does. The questions I'm left with seem to be: Does the artist alter the essence of things? Is the art in the passion or in the brush? Is art superior to the reality it portrays? Or does the model only think so because she loves the artist?
In a couple of places the syntax is unclear because of one word: should "as" in line 4 be "that"? And in stanza 3, line 4, should "affect" be "effect"? I suspect those are typos.
I like the way 4 of the 5 lines in stanza one end with the same dull vowel sound, as if to convey the dullness of the real world with which the artist has to "work"--the last word in line one. The next stanza shifts to him, and ends with another word using that dull sound, "slumped"--seeming to equate him with his surroundings, all equally routine and unexceptional and "outside the frame" in which the miracle takes place. That's very subtle and deftly done, and so is the introduction of that imaginary mistress who provides another point of view when she looks at the artist.
And then there's the view of the poet, who looks at the whole scene and reports to us, and then there's ours! Like boxes within boxes. And finally the only rhymed lines in the poem, the last two, which return to the ugliest stuff in the studio. And they have no point of view at all. They can only be looked at. Very smart, challenging poem!
~Rhina
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