In the Vault of Default
I store my memories in empty bottles,
Which rest on horizontal 2x4s
That gird the inner walls inside a cabin
Close to a lake in Maine. I favor throttles,
While others lean toward brakes. There’s no remorse
That’s worth the having: Let what happens happen.
Misanthropy
For sure, I’d rather vent a racial slur
Than listen to my own internal whining
About apportioned fairness. I’d prefer
An empty plate to nurse-assisted dining
In some retirement home, but I would rather
Be found incompetent than have to earn
A living for the losers. Let us gather
Separately where the dying bonfires burn,
And not make light of them. A beggar’s home
Is where economies come trickling down
Into his pocket—Holy Chromosome,
Please lead me to another part of town
Where folks are self-supporting; do away
With social agencies that bleed me dry—
Their net effect: more poverty. I pray
For larger slices of the shrinking pie,
Or smallish portions I can call my own
And not be forced to share. I stay up late,
Enjoying all my wakeful hours alone,
Alone with special friends I love to hate.
Toward a Modest Improvement
Some dress in rags, and others wear the collar,
But what they have in common is this pledge
To girls and boys: a shiny silver dollar
For all who join them at the river’s edge
And aren’t afraid to get their feet wet. Lots
Of lechers prowl the teeming streets and style
Themselves a gift to those they have the hots
For, every leer a condescending smile,
And every tumid nod an answer to
A prayer. Indecencies are manifold,
But instances of due respect are few
And far between when marks are pigeonholed
According to their usefulness as quarry
Instead of how much silver could be mined
From them with equal effort. Acting sorry
No better covers one’s unblest behind
Than tar and feathers would, and is no less
A dark disgrace. A slight but honest change
In attitude is likely to redress
The deeper stings of grievance—nothing strange,
Like hesitance to use a human being
At all, but charity to use them well.
If this should come to pass, we’ll soon be seeing
A bit more heaven and a lot less hell.
C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
Interesting and well-crafted material here, but difficult to analyze or comment on. I’ll try.
“In the Vault…” presents curious imagery — bottles on the wall of a lakeside cabin, and a preference for throttles over brakes. There’s no immediately obvious connection, but it may be that the ABCACB rhyme scheme simply dictated diction choice, without concern for meaning. Poets do that sometimes. “Memories in bottles” is the only figurative touch, making a nice little conceit.
“Misanthropy” appears to be about either life in a nursing or retirement home, or perhaps a comment by someone who sees such a place as his future, and wants no part of it. The speaker dislikes nurses and social agencies. The last quatrain reveals the speaker’s desire to be alone, and “the special friends I love to hate” seem to be not persons, but thoughts, ideas, memories, or grudges that he perversely enjoys meditating upon.
“Towards a Modest Improvement” is a tough one. It’s clearly about exploitation of some sort — sexual abuse? con-games? robbery? At first I assumed that the opening quatrains dealt with evangelical hucksters trying to organize baptisms in a river (those who “wear the collar” being preachers of some sort). But the image seems to shift to “lechers” who prowl the streets. Are they after sex? Or are they trying to cheat victims out of money?
The word “marks” in quatrain 3 clearly means the intended victims of some abuse or rip-off, and a “quarry” from which silver (money) can be mined. The word “quarry” is clearly being used in a double sense: quarry as prey, and a quarry from which material is taken. The ending of the poem shifts to an examination of the attitudes of the predators. Do they show sorrow for their actions? Should they be tarred and feathered? Will they be charitable? Do their motives change at all for the better?
All I can do is ask questions here, which is not the best form of literary analysis. But difficult poems can also be excellently constructed, and they can be interesting even when a totally clear explication of what they say is not possible.
You do well to pose questions, Joseph, and so I’ll let the cats out of the bag. The accompanying photo is misleading. These look like apothecary bottles, while I was thinking of whisky bottles. The cabin and the lake are real — for at least a decade I spent several weeks in Maine during summer and fall. The poem is also an exercise in a certain type of slant rhyme.
“Misanthropy” is essentially a complaint about the leeches that suck resources from society, which incites the narrator’s resentment, which is as true right now as it ever was: Look at all the fraud going on in deep blue states.
The last targets sexual predators, with a possible solution that seems unlikely to occur naturally, spontaneously or without interdiction by the body public.
These poems are all indeed well-crafted but also dense in the best sense of the word. They force you to pace yourself and think about what you’re reading. The second two in particular take the reader along interesting thought-paths. In “Misanthrope” we get a not-unrelatable exploration of a rough-edged individualist. “Toward a Modest Improvement” takes us through the sordid to an indeed modest proposal. And “There’s no remorse/ That’s worth the having” is a wonderful stand-alone maxim.
First, Adam, I must thank you for being a patient reader. Although I usually try to knit my lines into a coherent, logical progression (a seamless fabric), sometimes I sacrifice this ideal for the sake of generating a bon mot or two. As I’m sure you understand, the narrator of a poem is not necessarily its author. I am anything but a confessional poet, for better or worse.
Kip, all three poems are intriguing and show off your wry sense of humor. They relate experience in a highly subjective way so that reading them almost feels like intruding on someone’s private thoughts.
On “Vault”, It took me a minute to understand the “throttles” and “brakes” metaphor. Some people like the fast lane. Some people like to take it slow. Your speaker here is a fast-lane kind of guy who likes a quaff here and there. The rhymes here are clever if somewhat slanty: cabin and happen surprised me. I was expecting something like “life is for the grabbin’.” Your words are deeper.
“Misanthropy” is a fascinating meditation on dependency spoken from a place of curmudgeonly self-sufficiency – one which disdains the idea of being coddled and which is offended by those who seem to prefer being on the dole to being self-supporting through their own efforts.
“Modest Improvement” is a fascinating meditation on child molestation, with many evocative religious references, including the river and what I read to be pieces of silver. The description of betrayal is oblique and the effects of remorse helpful if still someone tepid. I was particularly taken by the lines: “…Acting sorry/No better covers one’s unblest behind/Than tar and feathers would…” Tar and feathers is an underrated and underused form of punishment.
I appreciate your appreciation, Brian, but my private thoughts are sometimes even hidden from myself. Regarding slant rhymes, I have long known that every consonant has both a voiced and an unvoiced form. We have, for instance, the T/D contrast, where butter/rudder is a perfect rhyme, and there are countable other cases, schmooze/noose for example. I agree completely that legal punishments should better reflect traditional punishments. You will notice that the Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishments, but that conjunction implies that such punishments must be both cruel and unusual. If such punishments were carried out regularly, then they would not be unusual at all.
I second (or third or fourth) the above observations and judgments. I very much appreciate both the skilled prosody and the philosophy expressed through it. I would add that, for a reason (or reasons) I haven’t yet completely figured out (perhaps it pushes the arguments along, so to speak), the enjambment in the last two poems heightens the effect of the sarcasm. Thank you for these (and for your courage!).
I second (or third or fourth or fifth) the comments above. I very much appreciate both the prosody and the philosophy expressed through it. For a reason 9or reasons) I haven’t yet figured not completely figured out (perhaps it pushes or accelerates the argument), the enjambment in the second and third poems seems to heighten the sarcasm. Thank you for these (and for your courage!). Forgive me if my comment is duplicated; I’m relatively new to this blogging business.
As much as I enjoy philosophy, Duane, the thoughts expressed in these poems were based more on feelings than on any philosophical ideas. I didn’t realize that enjambment could promote sarcasm, but I guess enjambment is a kind of FY to those who prefer end-stopped lines. It’s not really “courage”; it’s just cheek.
Ha! Ha! Perhaps I should have said the philosophy implied by the feelings expressed. I don’t know that enjambment always heightens sarcasm, or even always gives the impression of an accelerating argument, but that’s the “feeling” I get reading these poems. As for enjambment, I have just enough skill to sometimes eliminate it in my writing, but not enough skill to add it: it just occurs when my iambs happen to overflow their pentameter. So I’m impressed. And you are too modest: cheek takes courage. My compliments. Have a great day and weekend!
C.B., as ever your craftsmanship is admirable – a masterclass I benefit from. These poems are both striking yet smooth, quirky yet wise, shaken not stirred – I had to put the last one in to represent this intoxicating James-Bond polish of poems that are sophisticated yet daring. Although they’re not presented as a triptych, I feel the poems work very well together. I love how they progress from the cool defiance of the first, through the fierce misanthropy of the second, to the wary, hard-earned civility of the third. My favorite is “In the Vault of Default” for its quiet grit – your throttles/brakes line is a cocktail of restraint and recklessness – it’s a poem that has me craving a Vesper Martini and yearning to stockpile my empty gin bottles. C.B., thank you!
This, Susan, is the first time anyone has ever compared me to James Bond, and I am flattered, but I do not have a license to kill, and, though I like a nice vodka martini, I always gravitate toward Scotch. In the cabin mentioned in the first poem, I had already covered two entire walls, but the owner (one of my best old friends) decided to insulate the premises, and so the Malt Museum was decommissioned. I don’t need to tell you this, but hang on to your memories, even if you store them in old cigar boxes.
Thank you for this lovely, though rather sad story of the Malt Museum. I would have paid to have seen that grand exhibit. My memories are stored in the moons that wax and wane, send men insane, and cause wolves to howl. C.B., you make my muse a little crazy.
Misanthropy, I found particularly enlightening, CB. To understand the motivations behind a misanthrope, especially one who feels anyone not in their corner should be punished, is painfully difficult to understand.
I’m writing a book again, and there is one such character I have to get in the head of every now and again. I’ll be coming back to ‘Misanthropy’ from time to time.
Thanks for the reads.
Hmmh & ahem. I think that both misanthropy and philanthropy are means by which an ego stakes a claim on the autonomy of others. Whatever happened to the concept of benign neglect? We shouldn’t pay too much attention to Charles Dickens (or Charles Darwin, for that matter). Though it’s better to be nice than it is to be nasty, sometimes it’s better to be truthful than it is to be nice.