Tetris Logic
I have not been chosen to work
on the extraterrestrial project, but then
neither has anyone else. All those years
of mastering my private world with
Tetris logic has not paid off, but continues
to perpetuate itself none the less. To please
the remaining earth I will make a small car
that is powered by a sail. I refuse to go
to the Home Depot, so I must re-organize
the old things—I pull out lengths of canvas
from chests of dust and dull but
beautiful glass. There are so many
unique combinations of strange
items and at times it seems like
there is no sailboat car, at other
times it seems like there are many.
| C.S. Ward |
|
levelheaded: Tetris Logic
The first line of C.S. Ward’s “Tetris Logic” takes on a sad (I am unemployed) or prophetic (I have been chosen to do something more meaningful than work) meaning before being undercut by the humorous line that follows. As a whole, the first sentence is a silly self-lamentation. Our poor speaker who has “not been chosen to work / on the extraterrestrial project” gets over his missed opportunity pretty quickly, realizing that no one else got the job instead of him. One line/shape combines with another line/shape to form a completely different sentence/shape.
The meat of the poem is this concept of Tetris logic—that is, our speaker’s desire to organize his life, to make things fit in their proper place. To win, ultimately, is impossible. Organize, organize, organize, and more oddly shaped bricks keep falling from the sky, ready to mess things up. In the video game, Tetris, the player must manipulate shapes until they fit together. In life, our speaker enacts the game trying to “make a small car / that is powered by a sail.”
The proper noun Home Depot drops in and redefines the speaker as more of an adjuster than maker. Perhaps the surrounding lines also allow Ward to comment on the art of writing poetry itself. Maybe he is making a statement about words and ideas being repurposed rather than created in poems. Maybe he is establishing himself as a writer who prefers allusions to more classical artifacts (“lengths of canvas / from chests of dust and dull but / beautiful glass”) as opposed to nods to modern-day home improvement specialty retailers.
The biggest take-away from the above-mentioned lines, however, is that our glass chests can be both “dull” and “beautiful.” Similarly, shapes in the game of Tetris can be useful or not useful. Perhaps even more importantly, they might at first appear to be useful when they are not, and vice-versa. If you have played Tetris, if you have lived, then you know what it feels like to have obstructions relentlessly rain down on you. You also know what it feels like when all of the pieces fall into place—feels like cruising around in a sailboat car, wind in your hair.
- The Editors
