Poetry is work. Writing it is work. Reading it is work. Like all work, poetry requires training. Since this is a poetry website, this is on the job training. A poem is in your face. Deal with it.
This poem was written on March 6 and posted today, July 6.
L. A. Map
In L. A. – six days
and the city is softening into my body,
map lines convert to somatic recollection;
this coin operated laundry,
this green cracked stucco building,
this steel-gated pawn shop,
this glass wall throwing off the sun,
this broken pavement disturbing sound,
a right turn at bus stop graffiti.
Then there is this,
a traffic-island dweller,
leaning on his shopping cart
at Venice Blvd & Centinela Ave,
soaks the city in,
fumes – horns – sirens – heat
soaks into the city,
sirens – heat – fumes – horns
He is my left turn.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
That’s it. To paraphrase a current car commercial,
“That doesn’t look like a poem.”
No rhyme. No rhythm. Staggering lines. No unambiguous moral point. Is there a point at all?
When reading poetry, we must avail ourselves of both of our minds, left brain and right brain, logic and creativity. The left hemisphere is hungry for information. Like Sergeant Joe Friday on Dragnet, “The facts.” The right hemisphere jumps at the chance to play and make meaning.
First the facts:
The poem supplies just enough information. The setting is the Mar Vista section of the City of Los Angeles. I have been in the city six days. Since my arrival I have been heavily reliant on city maps. But on day six, after traveling the route almost a week, I am now more reliant on landmarks. I listed them for you. The first six are inanimate objects, fixed in space. Specific places. The seventh is a person, a human being living on an island. That sounds pretty romantic. But this is not a palm tree sparkling blue water luxury resort. This is a traffic island in the middle of a busy L.A. intersection. The man is not standing but leaning on a shopping cart. His possessions are in the cart. He has been present every time I approach the intersection to make a left turn. I have come to count on him.
Now the meaning:
The poem describes the experience of place, how it is transformed from strange to recognizable to comfortable, how we feel misplaced until a certain familiarity sets in. Places first meaningless register as guides to where we are going. They are stationary and dependable. We no longer need maps. We know the way.
The man leaning on the shopping cart is different. He is not an object, not a place, but a person in a place. He is obviously down on his luck. No one with choices would stand on a traffic island in the rush of urban smells and noise. Out of options, he has chosen this place to make himself visible. The city disappears into him as he becomes acclimatized to the cacophony of his surroundings For him the cityscape has become a ‘thing,’ the multi-threaded tapestry of urban life.
Perhaps some kind soul will hand him a dollar.
For me he is more object than subject. I do not know his name, do not attempt to talk to him, I do not slow to give a dollar. The best I do is wonder about him, how he got to this intersection and claimed it as his own. Something draws him to this place over and over again.
Even though he is not fixed in place, he is dependable. When I arrive at the junction of Venice Boulevard & Centinela Avenue, he is present at my left turn. At night when he wasn’t there, I felt lost and uncertain of the turn.
The poem gives us the opportunity to be mindful of the feeling tone of experience; how the strange becomes familiar, how essentials (maps) become unnecessary, how we learn to feel our way along by sensory recognition, how people can be trusted to do what they do for reasons we can only imagine, how people become objects we count on (store clerk, mailman), how we easily choose convenience over generosity. I was in a hurry at the intersection of Venice Boulevard & Centinela Avenue. I didn’t want to hold up traffic.
Poetry is to be read with the whole mind, left and right hemispheres of the brain. It should be read both loosely and tightly; a sharp focus to collect the relevant data, and a soft-eyes to interpret that data through the lens of your own experience.