levelheaded: from Totem

We won’t venture to decipher the poem’s vague opening lines, “Slow to learn: / how words area:,” but they introduce us immediately to the poem’s primary subject: language. “Words” become the subject of a poem constructed, of course, with words – words that aren’t simply arranged but “organized as an army / in its movements.”

It’s almost wrong to call this poem “meta.” The poem avoids outright statements about the value of words or poetry. In fact, it avoids outright statements entirely. But in subtle ways, the poem makes clear that words can be, and perhaps evolved as, a force for good. For instance, while words are “organized as an army,” they are also “intent to succor the wounded / as soon as possible.” They are represented as a “gut of good will” and “a medicine / taught.” On the other hand, words are also “disguised: to hide / an actual nature,” permitting language a certain deviousness, and perhaps allowing our own inquiry as to the speaker’s motives.

While there is no real characterization in the poem, there are moments that can place the poem in a more concrete context. “[T]he object being / to avoid an ending” can refer to the end of a poem or story or phrase, but it can also describe the end of one’s life, which most of us are intent to avoid. This may be why language “succor[s] the wounded” and “hide[s] / an actual nature”: no one wants to hear someone “certain to be: / a close relative” speak ill of the dead at their funeral, especially after the poem’s potentially tragic “crash.”

This kind of literal reading is probably a stretch. Ultimately, the poem remains evasive. Its phrases can be understood as wisps of clarity amidst a fog of ambiguity (an idea supported by the poem’s liberal use of that haziest of punctuation marks, the colon). Still, something feels tightly considered about the poem’s approach, as if we are witnessing a language form from its totemic origin. If “the object” is truly “to avoid an ending,” this portion of “Totem” has done so by making the connections between phrases fluid enough to allow near infinite connections to be drawn.

-The Editors