Subject: There Will Always Be a Moment in Your Life That Can Change Everything
If you think there’s been enough foment
in the heartland, try keeping your thinking
to a minimum. For now take comfort in
sitting in a bar, assessing the heartland
from afar. Ask your bartender for a shot
of anything & remember: the modern nation’s
clairvoyants have no time for the dalliances
of astral charts: they’ll just pronounce you happy,
possessed of everything. Long an advocate
of lengthy memory & strong alliances,
you’ll address the grievances of the masses
with grim pride. The leaders of the coup
made announcements; they didn’t last.
You called a press conference to comment.
These feelings shouldn’t be allowed to ferment,
you said, not if we’re to change anything. By now
you’ve lost your shot to the gaunt blonde
watching the revolution fail on the television.
Ask your bartender for another moment’s
peace. Ask your martyred friends
if there’s still hope for cheap feats of resistance.
| Samuel Wharton |
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levelheaded: Subject: There Will Always Be a Moment in Your Life That Can Change Everything
Samuel Day Wharton’s “Subject” begins with a sense of openness, with a title that promises things can always turn around. But is it a hopeful poem?
In the opening couplet, the second line reads, “in the heartland, try keeping your thinking,” but following a clever break, the sentence ends, “to a minimum.” It is only possible to assess “the heartland / from afar,” perhaps meaning only shallowly, clumsily, like the rhyming of “a bar” with “afar.” Order “a shot of anything,” the speaker advises, indicating that where there should have been importance (“the heartland”), a sense of futility now reigns.
Who are “the modern’s nation’s / clairvoyants”? Perhaps politicians, the media, or even the advertisements that drive the commercial world. These are the ones who will “just pronounce you happy,” or convince you that you will be happy when you are “possessed of everything.” As this last phrase harrowingly suggests, to gain ownership is to be owned.
The strange climax of “Subject” arrives when our opaque, nameless “you” becomes a person who addresses the masses, and all the more, after a coup. He says: “These feelings shouldn’t be allowed to ferment, / […] not if we’re to change anything.” It seems he is forced to argue for the suppression of feelings, on top of the suppression of thought we find in the opening. This is where, the speaker hints, modern nations lead us. The failure and irony in these lines grimly suggest that today’s change or progress require dehumanization—don’t think, don’t feel, stop caring which drink you order.
What’s left then? The poem’s addressee (“you”!) loses even his comforting drink to a non-personified blonde. She is a conceptual figure, has no characteristics. Pop culture tells us she is another thing we should possess. But alas, our “you” loses not only his drink (“shot”) to the blonde, but also his shot at this blonde. What’s left is some “hope for cheap feats of resistance,” a phrase we can also turn around and read “feats of cheap resistance,” or “feats of resistance against the cheap.” However we read the line, it implies a drifting away from what’s profound or revolutionary. It is this loss that our speaker laments.
So, is this a hopeful poem? Not quite. But is there still hope? Maybe—ask your martyred friends.
– The Editors
