Found Poem: Buzzing Into the Evening
Found Poem: Buzzing Into the Evening
By Rina Shamilov
Dead under the distance
Of the passing moon
Like a butcher's knife
slicing into the throat of who I was
My faith suddenly filled me with life
& I came to know the lives of others:
It never happened again;
I've come to love the stranger
Across the train
who, melting into the subway seat,
extended flailing arms
--street slugging--
that reminded me of my brother's
stomping feet in the yellow
apartment
(He later loved me back)
But I didn't feel it anymore
That night,
the sky boiled into the light
of the cooking stove
With melodramatic envy
Because it could not be extended
Into the passion of the next
Waning moon,
Starving into the stars
& drying with the sheets of
Clouds
In the morning
I died that night,
I would have died knowing
& remembering
That stranger-
—With the pursed face
& glassy & evaporating eyes—
Was me
My heart converged
Under the starlight
with the imprint of
Mama's greying face
Pressed into the seal of my memories
ok your first two lines are beautiful- the minute I read them, I knew this poem was going to be amazing. The stanzas : My faith suddenly filled me with life / like a butcher's knife/ slicing into the throat, took my breath away. This poem is torturously nostalgic in the best sort of way. I wish I could copy and paste every single line of this poem and praise each word- this is truly a beautiful poem. Although these aren't my memories, I feel as though I am living in them with each and every word portrayed here. The elegance is the transition of each stanza is impressive and mystifying. I especially love, 'That stranger-/—With the plucked face/ & glassy & evaporating eyes—/Was me.' It is a reminder that the person we have to spent the most time with is also the biggest 'stranger danger' so to speak of them all; we are a stranger to ourselves and those who believe otherwise are either lying to themselves or others to feel superior, but this poem made that mystery feel like more a leg up than the latter. I can write a whole book about 'Mama', but I will save those comments for class. Thank you for this poem.
ReplyDeleteThis terse poem reverberates with energy and is nicely edited. It doesn't feel rushed at all. The opening is quite intense, even if I am not quite sure how I am supposed to feel about it. Is this violence a horror or a revelation or both? I wonder how other people are reading the simile about the knife to the throat. It is so harshly violent, quite visceral. I am trying to figure out how to apply that violence to the line above, which it is connected to syntactically. What is it that "like a butcher's knife / slicing into the throat? Is it the "faith" or the "life" in the previous line? A lot depends on the difference!
ReplyDeleteThe narrative begins in the second stanza, locating us in a train, where the speaker encounters someone who reminds her of her brother, with whom she was once estranged. I get the impression from the last lines of stanza two that this text is found language (as per the title of the poem), and that the poet inserted the words "feel it," hence the brackets. So now I am reading this as a narrative crafted out of some kind of found text.
The memory of the brother seems to lead the speaker into a memory of her mother. I'm not totally sure what is going on--what the source of the lyric intensity comes from. "Starving into the stars" is a striking and musically lovely line.
I'm confused about how to understand these lines
I died that night,
I would have died knowing
The final stanza locates the poem strongly in nostalgia, which helps me to understand the intensity of the lyricism. Memories can be like that for sure.
This poem has as some great moments, but it also feels a bit jagged and haphazard in places. We should talk about it. I feel like this has great potential but is missing something somewhere to help it to fully click.
Hey Rina I loved this poem and that you used it from findings which is an exercise I am dying to try. I am so so curious what documents and such you pulled from to build this work of art. I love your use of the & and it looks very cool in there especially because this is a found poem.
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