Poem: Buñuel's Magic Arrow (an editing saga) (Achilles' pudgy ankle)

Last December I was asked to write a poem for a series on on Sophocles' Philoctetes. I was excited to be asked and read three different translations of the play which intrigues but is no match for drama of Oedipus, Jocasta and Antigone. I was stumped.

Finally I planted myself at the Mid-Manhattan Library, open to 11 p.m. (at least then it was), wrote and refined--the usual. Then became involved in a ten or so emails back-and-forth with the guest editor (who had come up with the Philoctetes theme and was going to post a poem a day for a month). He was very young and this was his first run at editing.

I trashed my draft and wrote a new poem, trashed that, revamped the original. Writing a poem on a deadline was new to me. Articles, reviews, yes, but a poem?

When my poem was published online, I was bowled over to see no mention of Philoctetes. Instead of telling me the other writers had sent in whatever they wanted the editor had kept up the pretense with me. Man, I'm naive and studious. I posted a comment following the poem with a note about the play. He was furious and said I was insulting his editing. What the . . . !#?!X!

But the poem is fun with its references--my life history in lit--to Buñuel's seared-in-my memory film Simon in the Desert, Penelope in the Odyssey, Laura in The Glass Menagerie, Job. To a Franny & Zooey quote I've remembered since, what, junior high? Of course baby Achilles' pudgy ankle (oh, once it was). And my long-held belief that men would be improved by wearing make-up. Enjoy, PLEASE.


Buñuel's Magic Arrow

Place thumb and forefinger on a baby's ankle. So pudgy!
Obtuse Rex-es and the gods plague my self-esteem.
Hard to keep them separate: gods; Rex-es; me.
Penelope was tricky herself. Laura primped for
genteel callers while a thousand putti wept.
Job loved too much, perhaps, and was bewared of gifts.
Philoctetes needs a good talking to.
I'll escort him to a showing of Simon of the Desert.
Simon stood on a pillar in a bright Bibley landscape.
Philoctetes is a study in shadow puppetry.
A lot of people are forsaken then learn a craft.
The Greeks don't have “that goddam Bide-a-Wee Home
heart of [Franny's]” do they.
Life would be gentler if gentlemen wore make-up.
For the discothèque, St. Simon Stylites and Philoctetes
might rub a Hercules beetle exoskeleton before
its blue is black. Is everything subject to change?

Stroking the Poem: Planchette by Juliet Cook

I don't get these feelings much anymore, but I used to, feelings of being little little, doll-like little, small, a little player in a tiny house by toy train tracks where my sister's electric ran past little houses and tufts of trees. Feelings of having pastel blood and cashmere skin. I imagine it to be, if not universal to young (whatever) women, at least easily accessible by many. There is a part of many of us which is Glass Menagerie-bound, an inner Laura archetypically frail and dependent. (With age -- and I probably am twenty years older than poet Juliet Cook -- that part, if resilient, can change.) Too hopeful and slightly depressed and charming. (The male equivalent might be: too boastful and slightly aggressive and charming.)

Revived as it is by reading this chapbook, my little little Sarah part identifies with and recommends the poems in Juliet Cook's handmade, lace-tied chapbook Planchette. My girlish twists are classic urban; hers are punk and goth -- the chick who sits in the back of the class, smart, prescient, a reader. From 'Hippomancy":

My sloppy cocoons, my soft-looking cardigans
in muted hues like hollow seashells like
bright fizz dulled by narcotics. Luminosity
taken to the matte. Naying flatly at the naysayers.
Dolled by narcotics, two blue pills to
match my eyeshadow. Pretty coordination
or lack thereof. . . .

"Pretty coordination" -- what a phrase; distinct to the universal female (which doesn't exclude men). Images are infused ("muted hues like hollow seashells" "bright fizz dulled by narcotics"). The two blue pills may or may not be part of Cook's life, though I don't expect autobiography. Our lives are our material. Our art mixes our material with imagination, psyche (soul, spirit, breath) and sheer good luck.

While hypomania is a "mild mania" I have heard in arenas more esoteric than Webster's, hippomancy to be linked to divination. Which brings me back to that early girl. Whether the blue pills are valium or more "narcotic," in the poem they serve as emblem of the "secret bruise" Cook writes of, of the "Dream of white fizz" and its powers.

I'm figuring "white fizz" can nullify the bruise. Pills do what pills will do. Mind will continue to struggle, as will spirit, thank God. Hence, poetry. The fizz feels chemical, feels alchemical, and that's part of Cook's intention, to draw the reader into a mysterious, suspect but real world. Sir Isaac Newton, let's remember, was an alchemist. Poem titles reinforce this ouija + girl world: "Planchette" "Cataract" [seeing] "The Spindled Girls" "Stained Bloomers" "Ghost Doll"

Cook repeats words from poem to poem -- as the chapbook unfolds it self-mimics, which unites the ten poems. The bruise of "Hippomancy" is foreshadowed by the bruise in "Parlor Tricks." "Our fancy dessert plates burst / with lurid peonies, so swollen, / bruise-colored, almost lewd, but already wilting at the edges." The parlor - isn't that where Laura had her glass collection? In "Omen," "The parlor shrinks / into a crawlspace. / Pink liquid fizzes furiously."

The fizz, the experiment, the bruise, the change. From "Planchette":

Something is wrong with me.

I can't make things happen.

I'm trapped inside a little glass bunny.
I quiver inexplicably,
but never move smoothly across.

"Glass bunny"? No wonder I remembered Laura. Fortunately, Planchette's persona is not waiting for the fabled gentleman caller to save her. If anything, blue pills are a stand in, and by sheer mention of them, Cook dismisses their power without dismissing potential usefulness.

Blood Pudding Press, Cook's own, offers Planchette as a soft and strokable, jeweled and flocked treasure. Eat of the pudding.

(Start at http://bloodyooze.blogspot.com/)

Image from: http://www.jenklairkids.com/EShop/products/drooz-tiara-in-box.jpg