American Pastoral
Lo, how a rose ere blooming
just beyond the camera lens,
a wildlife habitat protected
from Pinterest and Twitter.
If all life is suffering,
according to Buddhists,
is death then sublime?
Yes. There, there, we’ll wear
Noh masks and forgo
eating, like models.
Each morsel will become
an object of contemplation
rather than fuel for a body
already long past its prime.
I fell in love with my fifteen-
year-old self of late, but she
is also long dead, like Melville,
and all the Great White Men
(canonically speaking).
Let us now praise famous
hipsters, riding shotgun
in a Camaro, with God.
| Virginia Konchan |
|
levelheaded: American Pastoral
The title and first line of Virginia Konchan’s “American Pastoral” suggest we’re in for a romantic reflection on rural life. Yet, by placing the rose “just beyond the camera lens,” the flower exists alongside the technology. By suggesting “a wildlife habitat protected / from Pinterest and Twitter,” the environment is in fact impacted by the social media platforms it is supposed to be guarded against.
Perhaps the speaker’s understanding of this duality fosters their rumination on death. Even the philosophizing is multi-sided. While it’s sad to think of our final end as the route to happiness, the speaker’s straightforward ask and answer is also pretty funny.
Through death we are stripped of our excess to reveal our beauty: “we’ll wear / Noh [pronounced “no”] masks and forgo / eating, like models.” Aspiring to be like models, however, doesn’t seem entirely aligned with Buddhist teaching.
These conflicts shape the landscape of America. It’s serious and silly, pastoral and technological. The nation’s inhabitants have a foot in the past (“I fell in love with my fifteen- / year-old self of late”), yet are unable to relive it (“she / is also long dead”). Our concerns are at once material (“riding shotgun / in a Camaro”) and existential (“with God”).
– The Editors
