“We Humans”
I’ve been reading the poem “We Humans” from Darcie
Dennigan’s book Madame X. I’m always
fascinated by how much and how little a poem can contain. Kenneth Koch once
said, “I like the idea of bringing the whole world onto the stage.” I get it.
The potential for truth and its varied rhythms becomes more likely in, not so
much an endless bucket, but a bucket in which an endless number of things might
be fetched. The sifting of more dirt unlocks more gold. The juxtaposition of
varied dirts is better than gold. The world has to be our subject and our
audience, to some extent.
The title “We Humans” stakes a claim on a pretty big
subject, but the poem’s intimacy and precision both keep its big promise in
check and ultimately fulfill it. The poem opens, “My boyfriend believes aliens
built the pyramids.” We readers get invited right into the bedroom where the
speaker and the speaker’s boyfriend watch a PBS documentary on those same
pyramids imbedded in the boyfriend’s belief. A lesser poet would mine intimacy
from the chinks in this relationship, or worse yet make a voyeur of the reader.
Sex scenes are fine, I suppose, but how many writers can truly render the act so
its mystery rivals the mystery of the pyramids?
Instead, Dennigan creates a room as fragile and uniquely detailed
as one in a handcrafted doll house: the unlit Christmas tree, those Oreos that
cross an imaginary line, the paper roses equally likely in magic and science.
The poem retains its status as miniature while still addressing belief and identity,
what we share and what we want, what we want to share but cannot. The last line
is shocking in its want. It effectively and personally calls for the world to
continue.
-- GFA
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