Tess Gallagher with Raymond Carver: Gallagher faces Dobyns in Round Three.
The road to the Final Four in this South Bracket battle, in Scarriet March Madness 2011, once again has a clash of two poems showing remarkable similarities to one another.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Both poems take place outdoors in a public space.
Both involve a sudden and surprising act of human intimacy.
From “Allegorical Matters” by Dobyns:
you are sitting on a park bench…A beautiful woman approaches…removes her halter top…she presses her breasts against your eyes…
From “The Hug” by Gallagher:
A woman is reading a poem on the street…Suddenly a hug comes over me and I’m giving it to you…A man walks up to us…”Can I have one of those?”…I walk over to him and put my arms around him and try to hug him like I mean it.
Following the hug, Gallahger’s 46 line poem ends with a stanza that reflects on the experience:
Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection,
the way the button on his coat
will leave the imprint of a planet in my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
To go back to.
The Dobyns poem, which is 51 lines, also analyzes the experience, but in a lengthier and more self-conscious manner:
Here we pause and invite in a trio of experts…The author sits in front of the trio of experts…My idea he says, concerned the seductive nature of my country, how it encourages us to engage in all fantasies…He considers the the difficulties of communication and the ruthless necessities of art.
Gallagher takes us into “the hug,” and then informs us that afterwards she is lost, and doesn’t know how to live or what to do in the cold and fallen world that exists outside the connection of “the hug.”
Dobyns absorbs the reader in his fantasy of breasts-hugging-your-face. Dobyns then tries to explain his fantasy to “cool stares” of “experts.”
Both Dobyns and Gallagher are examples for their time: both poems scream ‘we are living in the era of the self-conscious, guilt-ridden, anxious artist of Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus!’
Both poems are Faustian bargains of self-conscious, psychological, artistic experiment: what will happen to me if I truly hug someone, or if I put my sexual fantasy on display in my art?
The difference is that Gallagher is asking the reader, ‘what will happen to me?’ while Dobyns seems to be asking ‘what will happen to my poem?’
Thus, Dobyns is more post-modernist, simply because he is more conscious of his art.
Dobyns is less personal than Gallagher—who seems more stuck in the 1970s confessional school of poetry.
Dobyns also introduces that wonderful transgressing ant…
Allegorical Matters
Let’s say you are a man (some of you are)
and susceptible to the charms of women
(some of you must be) and you are sitting
on a park bench. (It is a sunny afternoon
in early May and the peonies are in flower.)
A beautiful woman approaches. (Clearly,
we each have his or her own idea of beauty
but let’s say she is beautiful to all.) She smiles,
then removes her halter top, baring her breasts
which you find yourself comparing to ripe fruit.
(Let’s say you are an admirer of bare breasts.)
Gently she presses her breasts against your eyes
and forehead, moving them across your face.
You can’t get over your good fortune. Eagerly,
you embrace her but then you learn the horror
because while her front is is young and vital,
her back is rotting flesh which breaks away
in your fingers with a smell of decay. Here
we pause and invite in a trio of experts.
The first says, This is clearly a projection
of the author’s sexual anxieties. The second says,
Such fantasies derive from the empowerment
of women and the author’s fear of emasculation.
The third says, The author is manipulating sexual
stereotypes to acheive imaginative dominance
over the reader—basically, he must be a bully.
The author sits in front of the trio of experts.
He leans forward with his elbows on his knees.
He scratches his neck and looks at the floor
where a fat ant is dragging a crumb. He begins
to step on the ant but then he thinks: Better not.
The cool stares of the experts make him uneasy
and he would like to be elsewhere, perhaps home
with a book or taking a walk. My idea, he says,
concerned the seductive qualities of my country,
how it encourages us to engage in all fantasies,
how it lets us imagine we are lucky to be here,
how it creates the illusion of an eternal present.
But don’t we become blind to the world around us?
Isn’t what we see as progress just a delusion?
Isn’t our country death and what it touches death?
The trio of experts begin to clear their throats.
They recross their legs and their chairs creak.
The author feels the weight of their disapproval.
But never mind, he says, Perhaps I’m mistaken;
let’s forget I spoke. The author lowers his head.
He scratches under his arm and suppresses a belch.
He considers the difficulties of communication
and the ruthless necessities of art. Once again
he looks for the ant but it’s gone. Lucky ant.
Next time he wouldn’t let it escape so easily.
The Hug
A woman is reading a poem on the street
and another woman stops to listen.
We stop too, with our arms around each other.
The poem is being read and listened to
out here in the open. Behind us
no one is entering or leaving the houses.
Suddenly a hug comes over me and I’m
giving it to you, like a variable star shooting light off
to make itself comfortable, then
subsiding. I finish but keep on holding you.
A man walks up to us and we know he hasn’t come out of
nowhere, but if he could, he
would have. He looks homeless because of how he needs.
“Can I have one of those?” he asks you, and I feel you
nod. I’m surprised, surprised you don’t tell him
how it is—that I’m yours, only
yours, etc., exclusive as a nose to
its face. Love—that’s what they call it, love
that nabs you with “for me
only” and holds on.
So I walk over to him and put my arms
around him and try to
hug him like I mean it. He’s got an overcoat on
so thick I can’t feel him
past it. I’m starting the hug and thinking, “How big
a hug is this supposed to be? How long
shall I hold this hug?” Already
we could be eternal, his arms falling over my
shoulders, my hands not
meeting behind his back, he is so big!
I put my head into his chest and snuggle in.
I lean into him. I lean my blood
and my wishes into him. He stands for it. This
is his and he’s starting to give it back so well
I know he’s getting it. This hug. So truly,
so tenderly we stop having arms and I don’t know
if my lover has walked away or what, or
if the woman is still reading the poem, or the houses—
what about them? the houses.
Clearly, a little permission is a dangerous thing.
But when you hug someone you want it
to be a masterpiece of connection,
the way the button on his coat
will leave the imprint of a planet in my cheek
when I walk away. When I try to find some place
to go back to.
Dobyns wins, 88-75.
