I’ve posted a poem from Slate before. I’m doing so again — not because Slate publishes such consistently good poetry (although it’s yards above many publications), but rather because they’re the only publication that has a poetry feed to which I’m subscribed.

Nonetheless, I quite like this poem.

It’s called “Big Box Encounter,” and it’s by a woman named Erika Meitner. I’m assuming you’ll follow that link on your own, but let me sum up the poem by saying that it’s about confusing feelings of desire for a (past?) student of the speaker’s.

I’m partially fascinated by this poem because I feel like there’s this continual move toward poetry that embraces a very specific space between the taboo and the mundane. Poetry that is exciting to read often plays with this, and I think Meitner’s poem does so quite well. For example: “I tried not to look at his beautiful terrible chest, / the V-shaped wings of his chiseled hip-bones.” I like her detail, I like her drawing our focus to where her attention is. And I like the way she reads it, as well. (Slate always posts the author reading his or her poem; I like this.)

The line I quote, and the poem itself, is just the sort of thing that James Wood critiques in last month’s New Yorker, in his sort-of-review “Keeping It Real: Conflict, convention, and Chang-Rae Lee’s ‘The Surrendered.’” I don’t really think Wood’s article reaches any conclusions, and I’m frustrated by his simplification of the Barthes piece (although I acknowledge that I’ve never fully understood Barthes myself). Still, it’s certainly the case that many writers fall for “the cinematic sweep, followed by the selection of small, telling details.” And perhaps Meitner is doing this. And so what?

I have written down, somewhere, a note to myself: “write more poetry that is daring.” I think I mean by this: poems that hint at something, that are exciting and make us think. There’s a good comparison, at least according to google (by which I mean — I’m reporting what other websites say, and not something I feel is decidedly true; all I’m sure of is that he wrote these poems). Allen Ginsberg has two poems, both written about Neal Cassidy. One is called “On Neal’s Ashes,” and is moving but slightly vulgar. The other is called “Please Master” and is primarily just vulgar and explicit. (It’s also probably NSFW.) I imagine you’ll see what I mean? I think the first one has got something there. I think the second is interesting, but not particularly so. And I love Ginsberg — “Footnote to Howl” is one of my favourite poems. That fits this bill, as well.

I’m curious to hear what anyone bothering to read this thinks. Does something vaguely taboo engage your interest in poetry? Where can it go wrong? What do you think of the poems I link to, here?

Meitner’s poem accesses the daring on two levels — it addresses female sexuality, which we so rarely do in normal publications; and it considers the question of a teacher’s (professor’s) lust for her student, which is one of the ultimate taboos of academics. In the poem, at least, her narrator does nothing wrong — she simply agonizes over her desire for this much-younger man. (She does imply something more, since she’s corresponding with this student.) But why does it feel transgressive to me? It’s not the line-breaks, although I like some of them quite a lot (“He is both more / and less striking without a shirt on”). I’m always fascinated by the use of curse-words in poetry or literature, when it’s not wholly warranted. (Here: “I was fucking a guy who…”) Sometimes, as here I think, the words jar the reader to attention. They remind us that the speaker is lusting, not falling for, her student. We never get a description of him except this detailed continuing articulation of how he looks shirtless.

There’s definitely still power in curse words, and power in the unexpected. I don’t think this poem would be as good were it called “A Desire Uncalled For,” or something implying its contents. The subtlety. the side-stepping while being up-front, these are important. (This is also why I have trouble with “Please Master.”) Obviously, this power in the unexpected is the case in all manner of ways — don’t think that I mean to suggest that the only way to write an interesting poem is to be lewd or lean towards the taboo.

I think I’ll be more conscious of this current in poetry in the future. As always, I’m not really reaching a conclusion. But this is a blog, and I’m not a good essayist.

I do think we can draw a parallel between this play in poetry, and its play in visual arts. In both mediums, we have to pick somewhere to draw our lines — but you can show non-sexualized nudity in art more easily than you can in writing. (See, for example, this (NSFW?) art collective. Hat tip to Ben for linking me.) But really there’s lots of not particularly sexualized nudity in art. Maybe we’ve become accustomed to it, but for whatever reason nudity isn’t as titillating as it once was. You have to play with something else.