levelheaded: Transformations

 

Excluding “you,” every word in this week’s poem is just one letter off from the word that precedes it. Through generative associations, Camille Guillot reminds us how incredibly similar words can look and sound, and at the same time, how vastly different they can mean.

 

When we begin reading the first line, the verbs seem to be enacted by the speaker, as in “[I] kiss you, [I] miss you.” But, when we arrive at the less familiar phrase “mess you,” various interpretations are possible. The speaker could in some way think that he or she is messing up the poem’s “you.” Or perhaps “mess” is a descriptor for “you” (ie. You are a mess).

 

A line later, the poem takes a strange turn with the phrase “Moss you.” The period here heightens the attention given to this phrase, making us focus on these two words as their own individual unit, and giving us the sense that the speaker him or herself was brought to an abrupt stop by the quizzical nature of this word pairing.

 

The myriad ways in which the speaker might “moss you,” and the ways in which a “you” might be like “moss” are too many to go into here, but this push toward exploration is one of the poem’s greatest strengths. The poem’s “you” is constantly transforming, being redefined time and again through the subtraction of one letter and the addition of another.

 

While we revel in the sounds of the words themselves, it is even more delightful to think of the ways that these words relate to one another metaphorically. After the exclamation “You lush, you!” the poem quiets down with “Hush, you husk, you dusk.”  Perhaps our speaker hopes to tame the lustful lush, or perhaps the speaker is in tune with the other’s softer side. Though the speaker may be a boisterous mess, he or she also bears the quiet beauty of an encased corncob, of a day melding softly into night.

 

The complexity of “you” provides the tension in the poem’s loose narrative. As much as the speaker may want to “tame” the amorphous “you,” the central character ends up being the “Same”—presumably ever-changing “you”—and this version of the self may actually be “sane” because it makes him or her feel “Safe.” “You” is ultimately able to “save” him or herself by continuously transforming, passing through the “gate” that may be an exit and/or an entrance, and which leads, sadly, to a fated self-hatred.

 

 

– The Editors