[Caleb Murdock]

Most of what Sexton wrote was in free verse and not nearly this elegant. She hit gold with this one.

Because of its graphic (pornographic?) quality, my initial reaction was negative, but the beauty of the poetry won me over.


The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator

The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night alone, I marry the bed.

I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night alone I marry the bed.

She took you the way a woman takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.

Anne Sexton


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Caleb www.poemtree.com

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited June 18, 2001).]

[robert mezey]

Well, de gustibus, I guess. I don't
think she's any better in meter than she is
in the nonmetrical. The handling of meter in
this poem is really bush league, or worse. I
can't recall ever coming across a good poem by
her. Put her next to someone like Louise Bogan
or Karl Shapiro and you can see how bad she is.

[Tim Murphy]

What Bob said. Like so many others, she fled the strictures of verse because she could not master it. OK, mistress it.

[Caleb Murdock]

I don't mean any disrespect, but the amateurs are the ones who allow their concept of poetry to become so rigid that they can't hear the beauty of anything that doesn't fall within their so-called expertise.

If all you can do is to criticize Sexton for not meeting your metrical standards -- standards which she obviously didn't believe in (as I don't) -- then you are not qualified to judge her work.

This is a beautiful poem, with beautiful sounds; if you can't hear that, that's your shortcoming.



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited June 21, 2001).]

[SteveWal]

I have to agree with Caleb here; I don't know much of Sexton's work, but this has strong, angry rythmns entirely in keeping with the subject-matter. "At night, alone, I marry the bed" is a terrific refrain.

I think what some might be objecting to is the indecorous tone of the poem. This is not a neat, emotionally restrained formalism. It's a poem raging against loneliness and its own constraints.

Maybe I should investigate Sexton further...

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Steve Waling

[robert mezey]

Oh, bullshit. She obviously is trying to meet
the requirements of metrical verse; she just
doesn't know how. And if you think her sounds
here are beautiful, well, go right ahead, but
it means you don't know how to listen to verse
and can't distinguish between the real thing and
the stumbling of an amateur. And it's not
subjective: she's supposedly writing four-beaters,
but pentameters pop up, clumsily, and some of the
lines that do keep the meter are awkward and not
very rhythmical, and she strains for some of the
rhymes, and so on---she's just butchering the form.
I don't mind the indecorousness, though I think your
thoughts about your own masturbation habits is a
difficult and unpromising subject---after all, who
cares? But better that than writing about her sexual
abuse of her daughter, I suppose.

[mandolin]

Why do so many people have the peculiar idea that decorum and formalism have some connection? Decorum has very little to do with any kind of poetry, except in a few rather odd places and times such as late Victorian England, and even then there's Swinburne's "Dolores, Our Lady of Pain." Right at the beginning of English poetry there's Chaucer, and we never climbed out of the gutter.

There's Skelton's "The Tunnyng of Elynoyr Rymminng," about a brewery where the special ingredient is chicken-shit and women come from miles around

With theyr naked pappes
That flyppes and flappes,
It wygges and it wagges
Lyke tawny saffron bagges —

There's Donne's blasphemous seduction poem "The Flea" using a bloodsucking parasite as bait; there's Dryden's "Song" for Sylvie, the maid of fifteen: "Ah!" she cried, "ah, for a languishing maid / In a country of Christians to die without aid!" and is relieved when

Cupid in shape of a swain did appear;
He saw the sad wound, and in pity drew near;
Then showed her his arrow, and bid her not fear,
For the pain was no more than a maiden may bear;
When the balm was infused, she was not at a loss
What they meant by their sighing and kissing so close;

There's our own Tim Murphy's "The Peg-leg Pig" and "Infernal Sonet," asking "Which would provoke more joy, / to ravish you with Donne's / Holy Sonets or poke your buns?" and a sonnet of mine which ends "I'd lose this hardon if my face were sheared — / Smell's not the least advantage of a beard!"

It's a red herring, and a silly one. In fact, the only objection to the content of Sexton's poem came from Caleb, who introduced it and who is hardly an advocate of strict metrical form.

[Nigel Holt]

I just think that this is one of those mass debates that will go On an on.

Cheers,

Nigel

[Caleb Murdock]

Robert, you didn't absorb anything I said. You are measuring this poem by the wrong yard stick. She was probably doing what I do: listening to her own rhythms and then hammering the poem into a loose form. You're just unable to appreciate anything that doesn't conform to your rigid ideas.

I'm getting increasingly impatient with the know-it-all attitudes of some of the formalist poets on this board. They have a narrow concept of metrics which is, well, just their concept and nothing more! They talk about it as if it were a science and not an art. I'm also tired of having my tastes impugned. I'm not an idiot, nor am I a novice when it comes to appreciating poetry. If I find beauty in a poem, the beauty is there. As I said before, if you can't see the beauty, that's your shortcoming.

[SteveWal]

Hear, hear, Caleb!

I couldn't give a monkey's tuss whether the poem is correct or not. I don't think the poet could either. She was more concerned with whether it acheived her aims.

As for decorum in poetry - I know what you mean, Mandolin. But there are lots of people out there (I've met some of them) who think that poetry is about expressing nice sentiments about cats, like there are lots of people who think that art consists of nice landscapes and pictures of flowers in vases. And they'll probably be formalists (poetry that rhymes and scans and makes sense, none of this weird stuff with sex in it.)

I'd add Browning to the list of indecorous Victorians too: his My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover especially. Two poems about psycho's is a bit much don't you think?



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Steve Waling