Right now I am reading a collection of poems called “Unincorporated
Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty” by a very smart and funny poet named Tony
Hoagland, whom I have never heard of before.
I was reading right along and he has a poem titled “Plastic”
which is about plastic. He says amazing things like:
You could mull over the ethics of enslaving matter/even
while feeling admiration for the genius it takes/to persuade a molecule to
become part of a casserole container.
But then I was stopped dead in my tracks by a few lines
which very nearly could have been about a fight I vividly remember having last
year. He writes this:
- Or in another case, the blue polyethylene water
bottle/sitting on a table in the park on Saturday/between two people having a
talk about their relationship/- which I could tell was probably near its
end/since the various lubrications/usually coating the human voice/were all
worn away, leaving just the rough, gritty surfaces/of need and fear/exposing
and rubbing on each other.
I mean, wow.
It just reminded me of how good and beautiful and honest
good writing can be. It has been awhile since I have been able to write that way,
but I am going to re-devote myself to it. I need to, for me, and also so that I
will have something to talk to Mister Hoagland about should I ever meet him in
an airport bar.
Also – and this is how good this guy is – he followed the
passage above with this one below:
I wonder if it would have done any good then/if I had walked
over and explained to them/about Plastic?/About how much easier it is to
stretch than/human nature
.
.
.
