No Evil Star

There’s this podcast mostly (but not entirely) NOT about U2. It features a star of NBC’s hit show “Parks and Recreation.” It’s a little podcast called U Talkin’ U2 to Me?! I’d like to restart this blog with words made eternally famous by that program:

“It’s been awhile…”

So to catch you up, when we last met over TWO YEARS AGO it was mostly cheery talk about my grandfather and oldest friend dying within a few months of each other. Since then things have been mostly great: my wife got her Master’s, we vacationed in Hawaii and Portugal, we lost a pregnancy, so anyhoo… How are you?

But this isn’t about personal tragedy. (Except insofar as reading, writing, reading about poetry and writing about poetry could be considered a personal tragedy.) To quote another favorite podcast, Battleship Pretension – let’s get into it, shall we? 

I should preface today’s poem by saying that I have no idea what it means or why exactly it speaks to me. It’s one of the nice things about art that you don’t really have to calibrate your response as an eloquently framed argument – you respond however you do, and if you’re lucky maybe you learn something about yourself from the experience. 

Before I blather much more about aesthetics and critical response, let’s have the poem. It’s a doozy.

RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR

Anne Sexton

A palindrome seen on the side of a barn in Ireland

After Adam broke his rib in two
and ate it for supper,
after Adam, from the waist up,
an old mother,
had begun to question the wonder
Eve was brought forth.
Eve came out of that rib like an angry bird.
She came forth like a bird that got loose
suddenly from its cage.
Out of the cage came Eve,
escaping, escaping.
She was clothed in her skin like the sun
and her ankles were not for sale.

God looked out through his tunnel
and was pleased.

Adam sat like a lawyer
and read the book of life.
Only his eyes were alive.
They did the work of a blast furnace.

Only later did Adam and Eve go galloping,
galloping into the apple.
They made the noise of the moon-chew
and let the juice fall down like tears.

Because of this same apple
Eve gave birth to the evilest of creatures
with its bellyful of dirt
and its hair seven inches long.
It had two eyes full of poison
and routine pointed teeth.
Thus Eve gave birth.
In this unnatural act
she gave birth to a rat.
It slid from her like a pearl.
It was ugly, of course,
but Eve did not know that
and when it died before its time
she placed its tiny body
on that piece of kindergarten called STAR.

Now all us cursed ones falling out after
with our evil mouths and our worried eyes
die before our time
but do not go to some heaven, some hell
but are put on the RAT’S STAR
which is as wide as Asia
and as happy as a barbershop quartet.
We are put there beside the three thieves
for the lowest of us all
deserve to smile in eternity
like a watermelon.

Take a minute if you need one. 

No? Onward then.

I’ve mentioned before (to an extravagant, almost excessive degree) how much I love stuff about Adam & Eve or the Garden of Eden. It’s a surefire hook the same way a surf guitar riff or spaghetti western opening credits make me stop whatever it is I’m doing and take on a look of crazed enthusiasm. This Eden poem makes all the right moves: cynical, minimalist, barely sketching an outline of the scene but giving us weird details that fill things in. 

Some specific words that really work for me: “tunnel,” “blast furnace,” “moon-chew,” “pearl,” “kindergarten.” I notice they’re all nouns, which is one of those ten-for-a-nickel writing lessons a Yahoo! Answers page will give you: use descriptive nouns more often than descriptive adjectives. Your mileage may vary, please consult your doctor.

Then there’s the hint of repetition: “like an angry bird… like a bird,” “escaping, escaping,” “some heaven, some hell.” And the allusions: maybe some Leda and the Swan, maybe some Pied Piper of Hamelin, definitely some Golgotha. 

And the near-rhymes: “supper,” “mother,” “wonder.” There’s a lot of musicality here, and “musicality” is a word which in reference to poetry means: “I’m not sure what I’m talking about, but I like it!” Sexton is obviously a nimble, accomplished poet who uses the weird because she knows it’s weird. 

That doesn’t make it any less weird.

For example: while the palindrome obviously inspired the poem, why mention the barn in Ireland? Are barbershop quartets really an apt image for happiness? And the final image that seems to make the whole thing clatter to a halt: “smile in eternity / like a watermelon.” I’d say it’s a misstep but everything else in this thing is so assured, so effortless that it seems odd to say she just couldn’t stick the landing. It’s a visual metaphor, a slice of watermelon resembling a cartoon outline of a Cheshire Cat grin, but is that really the last impression she wants to offer us?

I don’t know, man, I honestly couldn’t tell you. Maybe that’s one of my telltale signs that something has art to it: a vague sense that it’s befuddling me but there’s something worthwhile behind it all. I think about Harmony Korine's “Spring Breakers” or Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of empty theaters or Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony” – works of art that are baffling but somehow still deft, still capable. They at least give the illusion that there’s a key to unlock everything if I’m just patient enough.

Or maybe it’s proof I’m a sucker for a good mystery.