BAP 2009: “A House is Not a Home” (Terrance Hayes)
December 21, 2009
I’m noticing a pattern to my movement through BAP 2009 (a volume which is getting much more attention than it deserves): most of the poems don’t impress me at first, then keep nagging at my subconscious until I have to go back and re-read (and re-re-read) them. This back-and-forth includes poems by a couple of poets I really like. A few more will find their way here, but “A House is Not a Home” by Terrance Hayes fits the bill perfectly:
"A House is Not a Home"
It was the night I embraced Ron’s wife a bit too long
because he’d refused to kiss me goodbye
that I realized the essential nature of sound.
When she slapped me across one ear,
and he punched me in the other, I recalled,
almost instantly, the purr of liquor sliding
along the neck of the bottle a few hours earlier
as the three of us took turns imitating the croon
of the recently-deceased Luther Vandross.
I decided then, even as my ears fattened,
to seek employment at the African-American
Acoustic and Audiological Accident Insurance Institute,
where probably there is a whole file devoted
to Luther Vandross. And probably it contains
the phone call he made to ask a niece
the whereabouts of his very first piano.
I already know there is a difference
between hearing and listening,
but to get the job, I bet I will have to learn
how to transcribe church fires or how to categorize
the dozen or so variations of gasping, one which
likely includes Ron and me in the eighth grade
the time a neighbor flashed her breasts at us.
That night at Ron’s house I believed he, his wife,
and Luther loved me more than anything
I could grasp. "I can’t believe you won’t kiss me,
you’re the gayest man I know!" I told him
just before shackling my arms around his wife.
"My job is all about context," I will tell friends
when they ask. "I love it, though most days
all I do is root through noise like a termite
with a number on his back." What will I steal?
Rain falling on a picket sign, breathy epithets–
you think I’m bullshitting. When you have no music,
everything becomes a form of music. I bet
somewhere in Mississippi there is a skull
that only a sharecropper’s daughter can make sing.
I’ll steal that sound. More than anything,
I want to work at the African-American
Acoustic and Audiological Accident Insurance Institute
so that I can record the rumors and raucous rhythms
of my people, our jangled history, the slander
in our sugar, the ardor in our anger, a subcategory
of which probably includes the sound particular to one
returning to his feet after a friend has knocked him down.
I have to be honest: despite enjoying other work by Hayes (most of it from Wind in a Box), the first two lines of this poem put me off. Based on those two lines I expected some kind of lame epiphany poem. I should’ve known better.
"A House is Not a Home" is actually a wonderful and amazingly well-modulated work. Wonderful because of the language, both in image:
… the purr of liquor sliding
along the neck of the bottle… my ears fattened
all I do is root through noise like a termite
with a number on his back
and sound:
… so that I can record the rumors and raucous rhythms
of my people, our jangled history, the slander
in our sugar, the ardor in our anger
The modulation sees the poem through changes in tone that threaten to become a muddle, being at once the story of an embarrassing, drunken episode, and a deep realization (I guess, in a way, it is an epiphany poem, but not a lame anecdotal epiphany poem) about "the essential nature of sound" that is actually on display in the poem itself.
As Hayes alludes to, the difference between hearing and listening is relatively common knowledge. But getting at what that near-cliché means, internalizing that rational understanding so that it manifests itself in head and heart alike, is a different story. Which is why I love the way the poem considers what it might really mean for a writer to truly listen to the world and what happens in it, not just to the words that come from (or are to be found in) that world. And Hayes is able to be serious without taking himself too seriously:
… I bet I will have to learn
how to transcribe church fires or how to categorize
the dozen or so variations of gasping, one which
likely includes Ron and me in the eighth grade
the time a neighbor flashed her breasts at us.
The poem’s implicit questions are important: how much do we really listen? How do these sounds become sense? How many of us have really heard, much less considered and mentally transcribed, sounds like that "particular to one / returning to his feet after a friend has knocked him down"?
The more I think about this poem, the more meaningful it becomes. Beyond the simple (in retrospect, and not, of course, wholly new) idea of transcribing sound in this way, there are two particular insights that power the poem. The first is captured in these lines, which fuse philosophical idea with apt image:
… When you have no music,
everything becomes a form of music. I bet
somewhere in Mississippi there is a skull
that only a sharecropper’s daughter can make sing.
I’ll steal that sound.
One who makes art with words really doesn’t have any music. But everything then only becomes music if one is paying close attention… and even then we must make our own particular music, even if that involves "stealing" (listening to) the music that is particular to someone else. This notion is at the heart of Picasso’s much-abused statement: "good artists borrow, great artists steal." Good artists stop with the borrowing. They hear– maybe they even have golden ears– and can (essentially) regurgitate in a way suited to a given context, but the real work– the work that matters– is in the transcribing, first putting the sound to work in a language that is necessarily our own, then building something with it.
Thus, while the words are spoken ironically:
"My job is all about context," I will tell friends
that ironic distance protects us from a spiky truth that is simple, but not easy: the work (in both senses) of art is all about context, both our own and that which, if we are able, we create.
Tags:
bap09, poetry, terrance hayes
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December 22nd, 2009 at 6:06 am
I have to be honest: the first two sentences of your post led me to expect a close reading of a single poem—and sure enough, you delivered! No thumping of this or that Theory drum, just a thoughtful response to the words on the page. I’m old fashioned enough to believe that this approach is the ultimate modeling of reading well, which we (poets and readers) need more of. So much poetry commentary seems to be little more than claims based on other claims based on what some dead philosopher of language dreamed up while mincing the experience of language as it were an onion—or not an onion, but the fantasy of a denatured onion: no surface, no layers, no core, just a cloud of thought-particles that leave criticism no task other than parsing the cloud-chamber traces. Thanks for reminding us that writing and reading are after all human activities, a give and take, ultimately a relationship between the poet and the reader. You know: those creatures with hands and eyes and breath….
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:32 am
Nice job tackling this one, Chris. This was a poem that I discarded on the first read and didn’t go backy to–I think it came as the tail of a body of meta-poems, and I was tired of it. Not only did you hone in on all the right images, you highlighted what I think is a fabulous insight: “One who makes art with words really doesn’t have any music.” This revealed to me that the poet did speak, at times, with irony in the poem–I took it all literally on my first read, and that sapped much of my energy for the poem. Thanks!
December 22nd, 2009 at 7:34 am
Chris, one more thought: if BAP09 is “a volume which is getting much more attention than it deserves” and yet you (and, I’ll admit, I) are both finding more and more poems that we want to come back to, isn’t that contradictory–or at least premature? Or are you still finding BAP09 to be about average as far as collections go?
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:32 pm
@Joseph you couldn’t have paid me a higher compliment! Theory– at least the way it is so often used as a cudgel to attempt to beat one’s ideology into another– and theoretical “readings” just don’t interest me as much as simply reading and trying to share something of my appreciation for the good things I read. I’d liken it to the difference between wanting to watch the ballet (and then talk to some friends about it) and being a specialist in anatomy and physiology (or, in the case of a lot of theoretical reading today, a coroner, or a vivisectionist). I used to think I wanted to be a Theorist and Philosopher… little did I know that those studies would sap so much of my creative energy!
Like many, I’m trying to feel my way into a kind of writing that makes sense in this media. I don’t want to be a Critic, I’m not necessarily reviewing. I’m just trying to reflect a little, start a conversation, point someone in the direction of a work they might enjoy, give something back… and, of course, write so I know what I’m thinking!
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:40 pm
@Jared I guess I’d still class BAP09 as about average. Given the number of poems I’m not finding an extraordinarily high (or low) number of poems worth talking about. On the other hand, I’ve given this anthology a lot of scrutiny to make that determination… maybe some other anthologies would be more rewarding if I read them as thoroughly?
I think BAP09 gets more attention than it deserves amongst the causal-reading public (and, ironically, gets dismissed too quickly by the poetry ‘insiders’)