Chautauqua: Nights On The Beach
I.
Chautauqua’s tiny hills, stone steps;
branches arch over. A child’s chapel
keeps meditative exploration
sacred in me, my small figure
carrying a raft towards a big clock
on the beach.
I like when night starts in, makes
views hard; my parents squint to see me
scamper over grass in distance. Always,
I submit, running back to them.
II.
I compare my inflated raft to clouds. Feels like
I lift a sky like blankets
under little fingers, striped shirt.
III.
Bathroom under the looming clock. I drop
my new stuffed bear in a toilet
by accident. Pull him out; run
away.
| Lee Boyle |
|
levelheaded: Chautauqua: Nights On The Beach
In his essay, “Yeats, Eliot, Pound – The Symbolist Inheritance,” C.K. Stead writes of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”: “It forces us to recognize that a poem is a verbal machine far more complex in its operations than any meaning it may be said to have, or express, or contain–and to recognize perhaps that this is so even in the case of poems […] which apparently exist to make statements or yield up meanings.” The question then, Stead asks, is how do we read such a poem?
We could make lots of guesses as to what the “meaning” is behind Lee Boyle’s “Chautauqua: Nights On The Beach,” but the poem, like Eliot’s and lots of poems since, is not built to confirm any singular interpretation. It resides, from the very beginning, in an attention to language most obviously manifested through the juxtaposition of opposites.
Take the title, for example. “Chautauqua,” a specific place with an inimitable name, is paired with the romance novel-esque “Nights On The Beach.” The decision to separate the specific and the clichéd with a colon creates a ratio that suggests both sides are equal. Significantly, Boyle chooses to capitalize every word of the title. Thus, we’re ushered into a world where the words “On” and “The” are just as important as “Chautauqua” or “Beach.”
Placing opposites on equal footing continues in the opening stanza. We’ve got “tiny hills” next to “stone steps”; “branches arch[ing] over” next to “a child’s chapel”; an inflatable “raft” being carried toward a “big clock.” If nothing else, the world Boyle creates mirrors the real world in that it can be as soft, airy, and natural as it can be hard, heavy, and industrial.
Re-reading this poem, it’s easy to be attracted to its craft. Yet, on a first read, most of the stuff we’ve mentioned so far probably goes unnoticed. And here lies the most important aspect of a poem built like Boyle’s: the reader. Because the poet doesn’t present a clear narrative, because he’s chosen to break the poem into distinct sections, the reader is left to fill in the gaps. In the context of each solitary life, no “striped shirt” is the same as another.
– The Editors
