The latest in a semi-regular series that breaks down a poem to analyse what it’s really trying to tell us.
over under fed is Amy Marguerite’s first collection of poetry. The poems range in length, form and tone, but together they build an intense body of work and thought. I use the word body deliberately as the physical is always there in Marguerite’s poems. There’s pain in the poetry; terrible struggles with physical and mental health. There are heartaches and states of “limerence”, an intense longing for someone who may not reciprocate those feelings. The word is cruelly close to limerick.
In and around the spikes and agonies the poetry is dazzlingly. They almost have all the qualities of fairytale: pretty, dark and sometimes dangerous. There’s a heady quality to Marguerite’s work: you want to gobble the images up, layer them, get lost in them.
A note on lower case: over under fed is all in lower case. This might drive some people mad. But I find it pulls attention to itself: deliberately throwing away rules of dominance and hierarchy between letters. There’s a devil-may-care attitude in lower cases but also fluidity. Somehow the lack of the upper case to begin a sentence lets the eyes fall down the poem more easily. You also take more notice of the ‘i’, too, like the voices of the poems are looking at you as you read.
mount street cemetery
each time i contemplate
loving her
another cigarette is lit
in the wind.
am i supposed to be
laughing
because it’s happening
so hard right now
like all the sparrows
are suddenly having
affairs in my mouth. they are
so caught up
in the optimism
of my plaque
they can’t wonder why
hell is no longer
the clearing. but i am
just a corridor
for the reunion
of joints and why
shouldn’t i be
proud of my ability
to tunnel?
my mother broke
a tooth on a shitty
liquorice strap.
she was watching tv
so it didn’t really matter.
– Amy Marguerite
Reading notes:
Mount Street Cemetery is the oldest cemetery in Wellington (with the Bolton Street Cemetery). It is leafy, spacious and grassy. It’s also windswept, very close to the University, and high on a hill. Marguerite’s title gives us a precise setting to begin with: gothic, romantic, hovering between life and death.
each time i contemplate
loving her
another cigarette is lit
in the wind.
Once we’ve got the image of an historic cemetery in our heads, this first stanza works beautifully inside it. A person in a graveyard, in contemplation, a cigarette, the wind. It’s a restless and uneasy image: lighting a cigarette in the wind is frustrating. Flames get wobbled away, blown out if you’re using matches. The image is directly related to the thought of loving “her”, whoever she might be. This is starting to feel like a story about the pain of desire, or being bothered by a crush. The flame is not thriving.
am i supposed to be
laughing
because it’s happening
so hard right now
like all the sparrows
are suddenly having
affairs in my mouth. they are
so caught up
The contemplation of love in the first paragraph now expands. “am i supposed to be / laughing / because it’s happening / so hard right now.” There’s no question mark so the tone could be read as sarcastic, droll. The ‘i’ of the poem is uncomfortable. This contemplation of loving is difficult.
The phrase “so hard right now” is colloquial. It makes the voice of the poem close and familiar. Young, too. It’s not a phrase you often hear from many people post-40. From this dry, cigarette-smoking voice the poem flows rapidly into a simile: “like all the sparrows / are suddenly having / affairs in my mouth”. This is so startling, so original, it stops a reader in their tracks. If you bring sparrows to mind you think, small, quick, alert, chatty. There’s chaos and there’s animalistic back and forth. Imagine a hoard of sparrows tweeting and jumping at each other, inside a mouth … The image conveys a deeply felt confusion, anxiety, noise. Language is replaced by alien chattering both familiar and incomprehensible. This is a serious crush. It’s invading the body in surprising, even horrifying and perverse ways. I love the idea of sparrows having affairs, though. They don’t mate for life so they’re always cheating on someone. The idea lends a charm to the image, even as it makes your skin crawl.
in the optimism
of my plague
they can’t wonder why
hell is no longer
the clearing. but i am
just a corridor
for the reunion
of joints and why
This is where the poem becomes beguiling and we have to do some hefty interpretive work (the fun part of poetry). “they are / so caught up / in the optimism / of my plague / they can’t wonder why / hell is no longer // the clearing.”
What does that mean? The “they” could be the sparrows. Their chatter sounding encouraging (sparrows rarely sound concerned, or forbidding), fuelling the inherent optimism that lies in thoughts of love. The “plague” could be the trickiness: a crush can feel like a plague: a consuming, physiologically challenging, and psychologically bullying state. “they can’t wonder why / hell is no longer // the clearing.” This is an interesting idea, “they can’t” is very different to “they don’t” or “won’t”. If we’re still on sparrows then this fits: these creatures, who are standing in for a particularly energetic and obstructive feeling, can’t be anything other than what they are. Sparrows can’t wonder just as a feeling can’t wonder. But what is the hell? And the clearing? It’s useful to think of what hell is not. If hell is no longer the clearing, then what could it be instead? Is the poet’s state of mind hell? This sparrow-mouth? A clearing gives an impression of space, calm, tranquility. If hell was emptiness once, now it’s the opposite: it’s high-intensity activity, it’s density (sparrows having affairs in a mouth reminds me of one of Bosch’s ghastly yet brilliant and surprising landscapes of hell in his painting The Garden of Earthly Delights).
“but I am just a corridor / for the reunion / of joints and why”. Another startling image: a corridor for the reunion of joints. This is a reduction of the body down to a series of connections as if all it is is to hold our bones together so they can remain locked in place. The word “reunion” is interesting. As if bones have been separated once but are now put back together. It gives the sense of being broken. That this poet, or the voice of the poem, has been broken and is left feeling like a passageway for hell to pass through.
shouldn’t i be
proud of my ability
to tunnel?
my mother broke
a tooth on a shitty
liquorice strap.
she was watching tv
so it didn’t really matter.
The poet wrestles. The contemplation has taken on a questioning: “and why / shouldn’t i be / proud of my ability / to tunnel?” The word “tunnel” reflects the “corridor”. But the word tunnel also carries ideas of digging through, going deep, going underground. Should the voice of the poem be proud? Is this an admirable quality? The voice of the poem sounds defensive here, or even defiant. As if they are fighting another voice that thinks they shouldn’t be tunnelling, shouldn’t be thinking of themselves in this hollowed out, functional way.
The final image of the poem marks a drastic departure from the image of a person in a graveyard, smoking and struggling. “my mother broke / a tooth on a shitty / liquorice strap. / she was watching tv / so it didn’t really matter.”
We’re still with the body here: teeth. Breaking teeth is a powerful image. Like that common nightmare where teeth have gotten wiggly again, like in childhood, and fall out. But here it’s untimely and unfair: a shitty liquorice strap. Teeth should be stronger than that. And what makes the liquorice shitty? Quality? Or does the voice of the poem think liquorice is an inferior treat? How old is the mother? Liquorice strap sounds old-fashioned. So did this happen in childhood? The final couple of lines really pack a punch: “she was watching tv / so it didn’t really matter.”
TV is a great distractor. Especially for children. Especially when they have lollies, too, even if it’s a shitty liquorice strap. Bad things can take place to the body while the brain is focussed elsewhere, on other sensations and senses. How does this relate to our plagued graveyard-wanderer? There’s almost a sense of justification. That because the mother broke her tooth and was so absorbed in other activities that made up for it, then maybe it’s alright for the voice of the poem to take in shitty things, and get broken by them, too. Because there’s always distraction, there’s always the idea that we can justify our small pains so long as there is something else out there to focus on, to pull us away from ourselves. Is it alright to become funnels for shitty treats? To be a portal for hell? Is that what a crush is?
I hope that this crush is requited just so the sparrows can leave and the mind and body can feel better. But this poem isn’t a resolution. It’s a series of captivating images told by a voice who is deeply in it. I think anyone who’s ever had an all-consuming crush will relate.
over under fed by Amy Maguerite ($25, Auckland University Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books.
