.
Diners
For single men alone, what impulse spurs us
To find them everywhere? –the burned-out lights,
the squat brick block, so many times repurposed,
the worn, clichéd inside, lit over-bright:
Plump rows of sticky pseudo-leather booths,
And dusty ferns suspended from the ceiling.
The waitress looms like Venus, sturdy with ruth
And beauty, as if to bear one’s weight of feeling.
Like Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” in come the late-night men
who know that here’s a place as good as any
To be alone in. Ghosts, they stay till when
They know they’ve gone unseen, to show the many—
The teens, the drunks, the families attending—
How lives can fade so none will see their ending.
.
.
Adam Wasem is a writer and rare bookseller living in suburban Salt Lake City, Utah.
1. Diners often serve the best dinners.
2. Diners have meals that usually cost less and give more.
3. Diners provide a place for conversation with strangers when on a stool.
4. Diners are a safer choice than a bar.
5. Despite all this, your observations ring true as though you have paid them an occasional visit.
6. An interesting read with food for thought.
Thank you, Roy, I’m glad you found it interesting. Indeed, diners can be many pleasant things to many people, but to the “single man alone,” of the poem, they have become wan, sad places where the late-night men go to disappear. Not enough poets write about the forgotten in our society, especially the forgotten men. I do.
Diners are comfortable, unpretentious, not super-expansive, and usually have a wide menu. There used to be scores of them all over New York City but many were wiped out in the COVID farce, and others have been put out of business by over-regulation, health food freaks, and environmentalists.
I think there is a problem with line 7. The word “sturdy” adds an unnecessary extra syllable that spoils the meter, and the rare word “ruth” (pity) is somewhat jarring. And a waitress “sturdy with ruth” is hard to picture — is she a strapping Amazon with an empathetic soul? If you want to keep “ruth,” perhaps you could write “flush with ruth,” or “filled with ruth.” This doesn’t over-masculinize her, and it saves the meter.
Certainly, Joseph, viewed objectively, big-city diners can be all of those things, but not in the subjective view of the “single man alone” in the poem. The type I had in mind was the Chicago variety, of course, but I doubt there’s much difference.
Regarding line 7, yes, I cheated with the meter, guilty as charged, but the waitress’ sturdy empathetic pity is meant to “bear one’s weight of feeling,” in the following line. If I could have thought of a better word, I would have, but “stout” implies squat or overweight, which Venus most certainly is not, and “filled” or “flush” wouldn’t quite flesh out the meaning of the metaphor I was going for. But poems are never finished, they just exhaust the poet working on them, as they say, so who knows, maybe one day a better term will come to me. Thanks for taking the time to critique it.
I don’t think you should worry too much about line 7’s metrical anomaly. Despite being myself fairly strict about restraining myself to iambic pentameter in my own sonnets, I still think that we shouldn’t be overly prescriptive about the rules and regulations for sonnetry. A poem can be judged on its own merits even if it doesn’t comply with all the strictures of one form or another, and your offering certainly succeeds in conveying the tone you intended it to convey.
Thank you, Richard, for those kind words. I do my best to hew to the form, but I’ve always felt that the form should serve the function, so to speak. Certainly, there is great satisfaction in perfectly filling out a form, but when push comes to shove, I feel the form is there to serve, to heighten and emphasize the content in a memorable way.
A very sad and empathetic poem. No one should have to eat alone but I know that many do. Thank you, Adam, for shining a light on the many “forgotten.”
Thank you, jd, I appreciate that. Having felt like one of the “forgotten” myself, for longer than I like to remember, the bones of the poem came naturally. To the forgotten!
The underlying essence of this poem, loneliness, is an epidemic that has been pervading every city and town of the 21st century. I think people from the older generations had a thriving and more successful life mentally and emotionally. A couple of days ago, I myself was standing near an Indian diner, and all it was occupied by were two job-disturbed men (separated by three tables). Your poem reminded me of that scene. Thanks for writing and sharing it with us, Mr. Wasem.
Ironic, in such a connected age, that we’re more disconnected than ever, certainly more than when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s. In a way, we’re all like the late night men these days, imperceptibly fading into the ether of the internet. I wrote this poem some time ago, but a recent survey showing 2/3 of 18-30 year old men in the US were single inspired me to revisit it.
Adam, your striking sonnet has conjured the very spirit of American “Diners” – and what a vivid and heart-touching picture you paint with exciting and inspirational word combinations that sing to me. I particularly like, “squat brick block” and “Plump rows of sticky pseudo-leather booths” – wow! I especially like the playful “ruth and beauty” and that closing couplet is haunting. This is the sort of poem that jolts my muse into action. Thank you!
You’re very welcome, Susan, and thank you very much for your hearty praise. I got lucky with that final couplet—once I had the rhyme, the final line just came to me all at once. And your masterful has certainly inspired me and countless others over the past few years, so I’m humbled and grateful my own modest phrasifying efforts have similarly inspired you. Here’s to tongue-twisting and brain-teasing phrasemaking, forever!
Great stuff, with such a poignant last line.
A diner such as the one in ‘Nighthawks’ is an essential setting in the film ‘The Equaliser’, with Denzel Washington, and is perhaps even modelled after it.
Thanks for the read, Adam.
Thanks, Paul, I was very pleased with that last line, also. It was a real gift. And yes, diners are an iconic representation of quotidian America, an ideal setting, it seemed to me, for everyman ruminations. A much more likely setting for such quotidian rumination, it seems to me, than, say, action movie shootouts— said action movies choosing such locales most often purely for the shock value of having such violence erupt in such a generally quiet and placid setting.
The diner was created specifically for the film and is a sanctuary for Washington’s character and a Russian escort. Some of the most moving scenes of the film occur there, though there is one violent scene.
Indeed, Paul, that’s good to know about the film, I suppose. I have to admit I don’t have much interest in commercial films–I find them cynically and tediously trope-heavy, with a puerile kneejerk recursion to violence to jerk the almost universally cliched plot along, and with little to no relatability to our everyday lived experience. As far as I recall the film was marketed as another reluctant tough-guy Denzel Washington role, which, frankly, doesn’t interest me. But I’m glad you enjoyed the film and found it moving.
There’s an excellent film “Diner” from 1982, about a group of friends during the 1950s who meet in a Baltimore diner.
This is a well-crafted sonnet about a unique topic. Much more than the dead-on atmospheric description of a diner, though, it explores the topic of loneliness, of lives detached and ignored — “single men” “dissolving” into “ghosts.” It is a timely topic, yet the deft reference to Hopper’s painting eternalizes the problem. You explore an aspect of the human condition, exacerbated by current circumstances. I very much enjoyed this work.
I appreciate your astute analysis, Adam, and I’m glad you appreciate its craft. I’m gratified you noted the exacerbating current circumstances. The topic of loneliness and disconnectedness seems to me to be one of the most pressing issues of our time post-Covid 19, when isolation and disconnectedness was forced on essentially the entire world, which disconnectedness was only deepened by a ubiquitous propaganda campaign that had a horribly divisive effect on the body politic, a propaganda campaign that is still ongoing as the perpetrators desperately try to distance themselves from the grievous harms and deaths they have caused so many. Relationships were destroyed, trust in institutions was destroyed, and a deeply ugly fascist impulse to control and punish the non-compliant was revealed in an alarmingly large part of the population. None of that is going to heal overnight, and I fear will continue to haunt us for decades to come.
Adam, thanks for this perceptive take on what it means to be alone. A very evocative sonnet.