Caroline Knox
Double-Dare
“I wouldn’t have minded,”
wrote Katha Pollitt in
1984* (the year, not
the book) – “I wouldn’t
have minded a little earthy
vulgarity, a few words
like ‘bus conductor,’ ‘galoshes,’
or ‘margarine,’ among the
laurel wreaths and laments.”
I’ve been carrying this
Pollitt insight around in
my head ever since then,
and now it’s on the screen.
“Galoshes” appears as
“goloshes” in Joyce’s “The
Dead” (the story) and it’s
how Angelica Huston
says it to her Gabriel
Conroy, in The Dead
(the movie), in a veil
of disgust and scorn!
that is enchanting: “Goloshes!
Guttapercha things!”
Panels of dark green
on the pale green dress
she is wearing
(in the movie).
The overshoes were
made of rubber.
Gabriel did not
know who he was.
In the poem of power,
all you get is the
nature part and the
holes in the plot.
It’s the absolute
key to how to
write, so that’s why
most of the plot’s
left out of “The Salley Gardens.”
I double-dare you to
sing it in the car
by yourself
without tears. All you
get is the nature part
and the holes in the
plot, that’s the key,
like with “The Wife of
Usher’s Well” – what’s
with the bonny lass anyway
at the end of that one?
“I wouldn’t have minded,”
wrote Katha Pollitt in
1984* (the year, not
the book) – “I wouldn’t
have minded a little earthy
vulgarity, a few words
like ‘bus conductor,’ ‘galoshes,’
or ‘margarine,’ among the
laurel wreaths and laments.”
I’ve been carrying this
Pollitt insight around in
my head ever since then,
and now it’s on the screen.
“Galoshes” appears as
“goloshes” in Joyce’s “The
Dead” (the story) and it’s
how Angelica Huston
says it to her Gabriel
Conroy, in The Dead
(the movie), in a veil
of disgust and scorn!
that is enchanting: “Goloshes!
Guttapercha things!”
Panels of dark green
on the pale green dress
she is wearing
(in the movie).
The overshoes were
made of rubber.
Gabriel did not
know who he was.
In the poem of power,
all you get is the
nature part and the
holes in the plot.
It’s the absolute
key to how to
write, so that’s why
most of the plot’s
left out of “The Salley Gardens.”
I double-dare you to
sing it in the car
by yourself
without tears. All you
get is the nature part
and the holes in the
plot, that’s the key,
like with “The Wife of
Usher’s Well” – what’s
with the bonny lass anyway
at the end of that one?
Wide Border
A wide border, a decorative orphrey,
a flange of deep shadow tones, honey, and wheat –
in two lines. One close to us, one
at some distance and thus smaller.
The men forming each line lean
as if affectionately toward one another,
helping to steady a neighbor, as the
sun sets, moon rises on the bleak palette
(a frieze pose, it seems, with
a liturgical cast),
while all around the feet of these
two lines of standing men, close
to us and far off, other men lie down
or try to sit, bandaged heads, arms
in slings, unable to stand, a ground
cover of the wounded and the dead.
He painted the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, Mrs. Gardner, and Mrs.
Wertheimer; he painted Ellen
Terry, the daughters of Edwin
Darley Boit, himself, Venice,
the Stevensons, Olmsted, Duse,
and John D. Rockefeller.
The painting is Gassed;
the date is 1919;
the painter is John Singer Sargent.
A wide border, a decorative orphrey,
a flange of deep shadow tones, honey, and wheat –
in two lines. One close to us, one
at some distance and thus smaller.
The men forming each line lean
as if affectionately toward one another,
helping to steady a neighbor, as the
sun sets, moon rises on the bleak palette
(a frieze pose, it seems, with
a liturgical cast),
while all around the feet of these
two lines of standing men, close
to us and far off, other men lie down
or try to sit, bandaged heads, arms
in slings, unable to stand, a ground
cover of the wounded and the dead.
He painted the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, Mrs. Gardner, and Mrs.
Wertheimer; he painted Ellen
Terry, the daughters of Edwin
Darley Boit, himself, Venice,
the Stevensons, Olmsted, Duse,
and John D. Rockefeller.
The painting is Gassed;
the date is 1919;
the painter is John Singer Sargent.
*"Double-Dare" -- Katha Pollitt, review of Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World, by Barbara Guest, New York Times Book Review, March 11, 1984.
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Caroline Knox's ninth book, To Drink Boiled Snow, appeared from Wave Books in 2015. She has new work in A Public Space, The Baffler, Narrative, and Tin House
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