The Norton Anthology of Self-Indulgent White-Boy Writers, Second Edition

Appendix II: Anonymous Poets

Most scholars agree "Corny Love Poem, 2000" is not the original title for the piece discovered on the hard drive of an obscure and aggressively anonymous poet in the first year of the new millennium. Other titles have been suggested, but none convey the complex struggle between complacency and yearning in the poem, the arrogant self-assuredness and the nervous anticipation, the immature rambling and maturely wise rationalization. Of course, no title can take the place of the piece it sits on top of; nor can a straightforward thesis hope to preserve the completeness of the poem when arguing a particular point of view. Therefore we will content ourselves with a mere explication, and leave the theses to the graduate students.

The poem was published in more than one literary review after it's discovery: being by an anonymous poet (a "secret admirer," so to speak) it was considered public domain. Samuel Drainson published it in his review Loki under the name "Earl Mason Devels," an obvious anagram of "Sam Loves Darlene," an ode to his then wife. And yet many critics still erroneously attribute the work to this fictitious name, including our nations poet laureate Dr. Sandaar Vinishuli, who's dissertation carried the title "The Devels Poetry: Love and Evil in Millennial Apocalyptica."

Today the poem is largely anthologized in both legitimate poetry surveys as well as the more ironical "bad poetry" ouvres. Some editors have even taken it upon themselves to extensively rework the poem to fit a particular political ethic, and two domain names were even dedicated to the various foreign-language translations. (These no longer exist.) The following is understood to be the original wording:

The tension in the first line is especially playful, and evocative of the sort of neo-feminist submission to classical paradigms that led the marxist critic Heidi Delliano to say "The conscious writer can cannot ignore an audience nor kowtow to that audience, either" (Delliano, 38). Obviously, the poet is trying to express the kind of paradox required of the modern paramour: safety and freedom. He will hold her in his arms, where she will be safe, comfortable, at one with him, but these arms allow her the freedom of forever, to explore her potential and be herself. But why start off with such a loaded image? In The Hubris of Rubric, Dr. Hans Wujam of the University of Texas at El Paso suggests, "There is some uncertainty in this man's heart: not that he is uncertain about how he feels, but uncertain as how she will receive it" (Wujam, 99). Indeed, this allows for the kind of cautiousness which make the irony of the later, bolder lines richer.

And this cautiousness is maintained in the next line, but using the old love-poetry standbys of the eyes and the lips, but couching them in negative words. Here the poet is relying on the standards of corny poetry so as to not to shock or overwhelm with brilliance, that is, not shock or overwhelm with the passionate intensity of his love for this girl. And the negative words allow for a kind of spiritual denial to the rational, logical realization that it is literally impossible to always be looking in someone's eyes and always be kissing her. (In fact, one hastens to point out that most lengthy kisses involve the eyes being closed!) The poet is saying that, despite this logical point, their souls will always be gazing upon one another, and kissing one another. The soul is later more forcefully presented for consideration in line ten's "sinner."

But from an approach towards forthrightness the poet hesitates again, in the third line. Here he is speaking strictly metaphorically, and even requires the reader, or girl, to provide her own explanation for what the metaphor means . A person's every day can be her duty, her passion, her efforts in accomplishment, and weather can be an environment, a mind of one's own, a puzzle to be solved, or even an admission of one's frailties. (Also, weather suggests "whether," as in, "I will love you whether you love me or not." By reducing the sentiment to one word, it becomes a statement of simple fact, not dreary, even drippy, emotion).

However, this seeming reluctance in the third line is only a feint, to ake even stronger the almost tumescent line four. Here all meekness is abandoned. Wujam states "'Fill up' has so many ubiquitous connotations: at the gas station, in the bathtub, even a glass of water or other beverage. It has an energy in the first sense, an immersive cleanliness or purity if you will in the second, and a confidant optimism in the third. Still others apply" (126). Juxtaposed with these ideas is the catalog of materials, one smooth, one intricate, one hardy. Many critics have suggested that these are to be compared with emotional states: kinds of relationships where a person can co-exist with her soul mate smoothly, intricately (and thus beautifully), and toughly, weathering all problems. Yet Gretchen Vassalos has a more compelling theory, in an article for Poetry Review : "The catalog is supposed to emulate various skin and hair textures on the body, making the line [in the poem] both wetly sexual and oddly soporific" (Vassalos, 267).

Vassalos is not merely being descriptive when she uses "wetly," for the next stanza calls on the idea of water to unify its four lines. Line five richly (no pun intended) compares the poet's complicated human struggle with the non-human natural flower, and to make the point clear uses abundance to do so. But the sophistication of the comparison is balanced with the more pedestrian term "lots," almost as if he is showing off his flexibility. But the poet is not merely "slumming" in uneducated English. Indeed, he is trying to take even the more soiled aspects of experience and clean them up, so to speak, to make every moment of the poem, and one's life, as precious as any other. In line six he uses the term again, but now "lots" has become "a lot," an improvement, and the context of the shower is undeniably cleaner. And the two lines are tied together nicely, despite their being non-sequitur, by the rhyme of flowers with showers, reversing the rhyme from that famous aphorism: "April showers/ Bring May flowers." And this, in turn, returns the reader to "weather" in line three.

And the water continues in line seven, but begs the question: why lick it from her back? Why not her breasts? nipples? Other parts? Vassalos offers probably one of the best explanations. "Licking is, by itself, sexual enough, without moving to a place of sexuality as well. Furthermore, he could not use the face, as that would suggest tears. Also, since a non-sexual pace is used, licking as sex is matched with licking as nourishment" (78). Also, one notices that with her back to him, the girl is free, as she is in the first line, to go her own way, unguided. But if this licking is in the shower, she is held as well, as safe as a womb. That the poet will do this for hours and hours suggests a kind of patience, and if we further compare this to the hesitancies in the first stanzas, this patience is to imply not only patience and understanding in the relationship, but patience while waiting for the relationship to begin as well.

But where is the consistency in line eight? There's no water, or nature; in fact, the tranquil beauty of the three lines previous is sharply interrupted by the "invent[ed] Evil King" and the undeniably phallic "tower." It may be that the poet here is swept away by his own lust. In the shower, licking one another, the poet can not help to be aroused, but it is an accompliced arousal ("we," not "I" or "you," invent this King). The use of capitalization here suggest that what is being invented is actually just a label: the entity itself already exists. Can it be, at this tender moment, that the poet is suddenly afraid of her other lovers? Does he wish to, with her help, judge them as evil, so that he can "rescue" her from them? Surely the self-assured feminist spoken to in line one does not need to be rescued. Why suggest it?

The answer is in the following line: "This is a silly game." Here the poet points out the futility of arrogantly assuming one has a right or reason to anything, since fate is far too fickle to allow any man to plan even the most mundane destiny. At the same time, in "game," the poet is asking her to a least adhere to some of the rituals of courtship, to not always be so independent and unique. Wujam calls this plea "existential," pointing out that the only joy of existence not reconcilable under the philosophy of existentialism is true love. Thus the otherwise awkward line eight is actually a transition from not only the previous lines of the second stanza, but from the beginning lines of the first stanza, (and the poet even suggest this, with the word "beginner"), rendering the the third stanza not unique, but inexorably intertwined in the other two. Leo Spander insists that this kind of meta-stylism is essential to a new understanding of late twentieth-century writing (Spander,773). And as we'll note later, meta-stylism is, in fact, omnipresent in this poem.

As was pointed out before, "sinner" in line ten suggests thoughts of one's soul, but as well it sits juxtaposed with "happy" to suggest the triumph which arrives in line eleven. After all, despite faults and flaws, even if he is beaten, the poet is, in line twelve, a "winner." How so? Perhaps he is relishing the joy of merely being in her presence, for where else but on a date would they have "dinner" together? Presumably, at the very least, the poet knows the girl well enough to have interacted with her. Both Vassalos and Wujam insist it is for this precise reason the dinner is "meager;" which is to say, the interaction is not enough interaction (will, most likely, never be enough). Spander has a different take, taking over for Wujam, oddly enough, by quoting Wujam's own book, Empty Feast, a Treatise on Existentialism. He does, however, turn Wujam's words against him. "If it is true that 'existence itself is a bare means of sustaining a spirit,' that is, the spirit or soul is barely able to survive from the minimal nutrition of being, than only love can be a reason to willingly survive this near-starvation" (Spander, 616).

The last stanza seems to be a return to the kind of declarative comparisons of the first and second stanzas, but here the poet chooses to describe the girl herself. The idea of hot chocolate in the sun and ice cream in the winter is at once both an admission for inappropriate cravings as well as a realization that propriety sometimes conflicts with pleasure. Of interest is the use of "sun" instead of "summer," which would parallel winter. Sun hearkens back to the religious ideas of soul mentioned above, but continues back before so-called Christian ethics to a more paganistic sun god. Once again we are compelled to weave this with previous stanzas, as the use of line five's "flowers" in springtime that is, around the April of "showers," and the seasonal fertility rites therein and thus the sex references of lines four and six. It also hearkens back to the poem's beginning, in the primordial infinity of "forever."

Then line fourteen is a call to action, and that these two are in a "park" can't help but suggest the Garden of Eden. They will be in paradise, A place of immortality and joy, where running is no longer pursuit but the simple pleasure of exercise. In this line, the poet is trying to convince her that together that will not suffer the self-erasing qualities of a necessary existence, and yet neither will they become lost in undirected inactivity. The cycle is the thing, not the product of one's efforts, as the poet says by using the image of the teeter-totter, with which children play and enjoy their game without actually going anywhere on it.

Spander's meta-stylism finds it's subtle door in word the "totter" itself, for it normally is called a teeter-totter, and so the reader is almost expected to find a rhyme for totter instead of teeter. But what word is a candidate for the rhyme? In the line previous is the word "hot," and thus hotter rhymes with totter. Now the use of the images is clear: hot chocolate in sun is appropriate because the girl is hotter. And now the reader returns again back to the other lines of the poem, to find more of these "never-rhymes. The obvious one is "dollars" for "flowers" in line five. Totter itself with hotter rhymes with the water in line seven. Together in line seven and together in line two do not rhyme, since they are the same word, although the shower scene suggests soap, or "lather" which does act as a near rhyme (say "togAther") to act as an intermediary for them. Finally, the word "happy" idiomatically suggests not sinner but camper, as in the phrase "happy camper," and the only adequate rhyme with camper is damper, which here is not the damper of lessening a flame, but the damper of becoming more and more wet, prolonging the shower scene for more than just lines six and seven.

Since Spander insists this meta-stylism is conscious, it is clear why the poet descends into cliche, although a fresh use of cliche, in the penultimate line. This is to achieve the kind of modest patience of the second line's negative words, again, so that the girl is not shocked or blinded by his brilliant passion. But just so that there is no fear of the poet's merely exhausting his creative faculties by this point, making the cliche an admission, not a decision, in the final line the poet uses tattoo to echo the forcefulness of line four. Ultimately, the poet admits, he is a writer, and can only function as one, though his word are as permanent (thus truthful) as tattoos and his page is the infinite possibility (see "forever" in line one) of her body. The forced rhyme "feeter" justifies the silliness of the game in line nine, and serves to allow the girl to hold this many faceted love by any handle she chooses: acquaintancy, platonic friendship, sibling closeness, playful flirtation, heavy sexual longing, or life-partnership.

It's too bad that the author of the poem chose to remain anonymous, for it is always interesting to compare a professionally rendered explication with the authors own thoughts and meditations on the meaning of his creation. Never mind that most writers get it wrong, and wouldn't know symbol from a cymbal, especially in their own work. It's still something of a tragedy that this secret admirer might never have known to what extent the intricate richness of his poem affected his beloved. But it may have been that obfuscation itself prolonged the love, for as Wujam puts it: "The existential denial of love often does more to confound the peace of loneliness than the so called inebriation of passion" (926). Of course such sesquipadalian prosity misses the soul of the matter; it's for that reason alone we continue to search for corny love poetry.

Bibliography

Vassalos, Gretchen W. "Removing the Cheese from Corny Poetry." Poetry Review, Fall 2001.

Drainson, Samuel. ed. Loki, Spring 2002.

Delliano, Heidi. "On the Treatment of Socialist Criticism in the Doctrine of Apathy." Keynote Address, Critic's Symposium. New York, 2001.

Kell, George. Uses of Millennial Poetry. Vermont: Independence Press, 2002.

Nedwards, Jaso, Hyper-Real Imaginationalism. WDC: Archive Publications, 2001.

Running Bear, Keisha. "Tautology Versus Epistemology." Poetic Nuance, Summer 2003.

Spander, Leo. Meta-Stylism. New Orleans: DeLa Montreus, 2002.

Vinishuli, Sandaar. "The Devels Poetry: Love and Evil in Millennial Apocalyptica," diss. Columbia U, 2004.

Wujam, Hans L. The Hubris of Rubric. New Orleans: DeLa Montreus, 2001.

--- Empty Feast: A Treatise on Existentialism. New Orleans: DeLa Montreus, 2000.