levelheaded: Personal Statement (in which I am)

It’s too easy to say this poem is open-ended, that it points in a few different directions, that it can be interpreted in different ways. But those are all refrains we get to use regularly as editors of a contemporary poetry ‘zine. The world is a complex place, and the best of our poems don’t wrap things up in a simplified way. With that in mind, we can still say this poem has a clear, specific purpose: it takes us on a very personal, sometimes cryptically personal, jaunt through the speaker’s memory.

Memory is at the poem’s core. And it’s a sensual memory – full of sounds (“Silent as the machines”), sights (“Beasts behind / The purple curtain”), and flavors (“Mas comemos mariquitas // Y lechon until we lick / Our fingers”). Quite often the poem’s images remain private. What are we to do with the “crumbs / Running down my / Thigh” or the abstract, mind-bending question “who are you / Pretending to be something / Dealt with in accordance / With luxury only?” We can apply meaning to these moments within the context of the poem’s disparate events, images, and ideas – but in many cases we can’t get very far, at least conclusively. Like many contemporary poems about memory, this one is fascinated by its fallibility. It’s frustrated by the impossibility of sharing the rich details and bodily reactions that accompany nostalgia.

More interesting, we think, is the literary device placed around the speaker’s memories. Ostensibly, he’s trying to overcome something. But the speaker doesn’t “move / Past” his history. He does just the opposite. He freezes his past in language. He attaches words to emotions and events that can’t be taken back. Per the poem, we will never know stopping for pizza off of Route 4 as anything but a “fun time.” It’ll be tough to separate the oppressive “fear I’d drown” from “Kneeling at the pew / with my breath held.” The poem turns that general feeling into a measurable reality. For a past that’s unquantifiable, crystallizing it may be the only way to properly discard it.

Not that the speaker wants to discard the past. What’s boldest about this poem is its title. Every poem is in some way a personal statement. Every poet puts their “self” on the line when they publish. This poem goes a step further by announcing itself as a “Personal Statement.” The poem can be read as a manifesto. What’s the message? We think there’s something in there about embracing what you might first reject. By the end, it seems the speaker has taken the past that he’s “Required to move / past” and transformed it into a plea for more.

-The Editors