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Pattern Bluffer

 

We shake on it, but the fanfare is dimmed by the chummy

 

adieu and specimen detective pose I take that I think

 

looks good as I get smaller

 

Cue layover montage to stash my daily fabling in

 

‘To wait is a sport now or science,’ he had muttered, more featureless

 

horizon than actually standing there

 

making a bet     I scanned

 

myself for laws and found none, and now watch his wave like a bellows

 

boost with minutes what present we have left

 

I am already readied

 

I diagnose the exit with Acute Crummy Odds

 

Those footsteps’ minuet of fading out, I think,

 

have their simpatico with any crooked inch I have marched before

 

Still I’ll send my letters to a desert with Internet, roam our ratio to its lopsided max, and

 

if something of us should spill in that rickety arithmetic, I might win

 

I might greet it like North with my compass alone




Peter Milne Greiner

levelheaded: Pattern Bluffer

 

You could label any poem “human,” but this one’s stance gives “people” special attention by stressing our conspicuousness and focusing on the human-centric.

 

Let us show you our thinking:

 

1) Throughout “Pattern Bluffer,” there’s emphasis on how people walk, how they stand, how they pose. As early as line two, the speaker assumes a specific physical attitude (“specimen detective pose I take”); line six’s “actually standing there” continues the motif; later, those “footsteps’ minuet of fading out, I think / have their simpatico with any crooked inch I have marched before.” From your insincere poser, to your meditative yogi, to your Average Joe moving through a human life—all of us deal with, like it or not, the self-conscious presentation of ourselves.

 

The posture and the posturing of animals? Maybe they do “pose,” or consider deliberately their motions, but it seems likely that it’s only with survival instincts as motivation. Animals use their bodies as needed in economical ways, not to impress (unless we’re talking base levels, here: mating). There’s no posing for pictures, no sequencing of movement or shifting of angles, no dancing, in hopes of galvanizing an audience, or creating a tableau. Posing is a human impulse.

 

2) The poem centers around a bet (“We shake on it” are its first words). Bets hinge on the uncertain outcome of a situation, which presupposes that some outcomes are certain. Animals win and lose in more basic ways (competing for the more desirable meal, mate, shelter). Betting is a human thing to do, an action growing from attitude and confidence. Layered on top of natural/animal competition inside us, some of us feel the need to shake on it. Betting is showy, even if the wager is kept quiet. We seal the deal with the handshake, a meaning-encoded gesture that cuts a fine figure (see no. 1).

 

This poem is so deliberate, cold almost in its movements. “We shake on it,” we quickly learn, would never mean in this poem that we tremble, because trembling is an involuntary expression. Everything about this speaker is voluntary and controlled (or so he wants us to think), calculated and calculating. “I diagnose the exit”: who but a health care professional has the power to diagnose? This guy.

 

3) Direction and production of film show up in the poem, too. The speaker is aware of how he might appear to a camera (“pose I take that I think / looks good as I get smaller”), of perspective in general; he even suggests directions (“Cue layover montage”). He compares someone’s wave to “a bellows” that boosts “with minutes what present we have left.” Did you know that a bellows, in addition to the device that produces air, is also a collapsible part of a camera, used to control the image? A wave, then—another meaning-encoded gesture, like shaking on a bet—is a creative force, a force capable of controlling an image (and posing = controlling an image).

 

What’s the connection between posture (human, impressive) and gesture (human, expressive), betting (uniquely human confidence/bluffing/“Bluffer”), and visual recording (creation of art, recreation, observation, recording of special moments for replaying later [reliving, nostalgia])? Human being, as elevated and distinct from the lives of our animal, plant, and mineral friends; human being as spectacle.

 

 

– The Editors