levelheaded: The Existing Situation as it Presently Exists

When a state of being pops up not once but twice in the title of Nate Pritts’ “The Existing Situation as it Presently Exists,” warning lights start flashing. Is this guy going to deliver an earful of idealistic fluff?

Moving through the poem, we maintain our guard. There’s a “you”—probably a lover—described that morphs from character into concept via the inappropriately conjugated verbs. We don’t have you are, but “you is” (with an important exception, discussed below). The absolute is all over the place in this poem: “everything,” “the whole world,” “everyone,” “everywhere.” “You” is all over the place. We’re outside with the sun and birds. You can practically hear the Carpenters singing.

But this isn’t pure idealism.

The exception to the objectification of “you” is “You have big feelings,” instead of “You has.” Where the you + is instances are delighted observations about you’s beauty and presence and sunshiny effect on the surroundings, when it comes to assessing you’s emotions, the speaker gets serious and humanizes you. And anytime there are big feelings involved, tender complexity is not far away.

The most delicately complicated aspect of the poem is its opening question: “What could be wrong?” At first, it comes off as rhetorical and self-assured, with something of an answer following (the poem). Besides this reading, however, might there be more sincere undertones embedded in the question and answer? With this spin in mind, you “shocking the whole world / blind” is more subdued than joyous; the big feelings “should be unbruised,” but are they? Makes for quite the mournful poem.

Each stanza but the last ends with “you”; the poem’s final word is “me.” The existing situation essentially revolves around “you needing this me”—the focus has undergone a major shift now. We’re left straddling the flatter, idealized impression of this relationship and a much edgier, darker one.

 – The Editors