of Lemon Rinds
Let us distinguish then, between artistry and grace.
Between artistry and craftsmanship, between grace and beauty.
Artistry and beauty. Beauty and love.
Love and valor, labor and artistry. Artistry and grace.
Between love and grace.
And beauty. And artistry and craftsmanship
and valor and love and labor and grace.
Between grace and the aftertaste of cologne.
River water and lemon rinds.
Let us distinguish then, between love and lemon rinds.
Both so bitter. So difficult to distinguish from grace.
From river water and craftsmanship and the aftertaste of cologne.
Hunger and love, beauty and river water,
bitterness and lemon rinds, valor and grace.
And faith. Of course.
So difficult to distinguish from grace. I mean, love.
The aftertaste of cologne.
From river water and lemon rinds. From bitterness and valor.
Garlic and labor. The aftertaste of smoke and cologne.
Hunger and artistry. Beauty and valor.
Love. So difficult to distinguish love from river water.
Lemon rinds and the aftertaste of cologne.
Artistry and hunger. Love and beauty.
We speak of valor and hunger, smoke and grace.
| Nina Buck |
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levelheaded: of Lemon Rinds
This poem’s first line, “Let us distinguish then, between artistry and grace,” introduces us to its overformal tone. The first half of the line forgoes “Let’s” for the more professorial “Let us.” The word “then” is less a connection to a preceding conversation than a moment of rhetorical artifice. It feels as if we are being guided into a lesson on some intricate theory. The second half opens up a line of questioning regarding the entire poem: Is it graceful? Is it artistic? What do these infinitely broad words mean, and how can we compare them?
The short answer to that last question is: we can’t. Recurring words like valor, beauty, grace, artistry, and love turn the poem into an impenetrable thicket of abstract ideas. We’re shown glimmers of concrete objects – “river water,” “the aftertaste of cologne,” and of course “lemon rinds” – but even these ultimately fall somewhere on the poem’s continuum of meaninglessness. Of that latter example the speaker says, “Let us distinguish then, between love and lemon rinds. / Both so bitter.” “Bitter” is such a superficial connection here that it admits the futility of a comparison at all. Certainly both “love” and “lemon rinds” can be bitter in their respective ways, but what purpose does our recognition of this connection serve? The comparison does as much to distance the two concepts as it does to bring them together. The poem works largely in this mode, asking us to “distinguish” between things that, because of their enormity, can’t really be compared.
There is a little slip-up in the second half of this poem in which the speaker becomes confused by her own comparisons between three repeated abstractions. She says, “And faith. Of course. / So difficult to distinguish from grace. I mean, love.” Once again the poem admits the interchangeability of these words, but in that simple phrase, “I mean,” the speaker momentarily steps out from behind her professorial veil into self-consciousness. This injects a spot of doubt into our trust of the speaker and ultimately allows us to read the poem as a direct comment not only on what we might call “poetic” language, but also on what we expect from our poetic speakers. The reminder that there is a human voice, with all requisite fallibility, behind the stilted language is also a reminder that language, however large and abstract, is always human and expresses only human things.
-The Editors
