I’ve been reading “How the Pope Is Chosen” by James Tate, a
poem in which one of my clear-headed creative writing students perceived
“metaphors.” Hmm . . . Certain aspects of the poem certainly drop shadows we
would expect cast from other shapes. Pope selection is orchestrated in terms of
poodle selection:
If a
Pope’s hair is allowed to grow unchecked,
it
becomes extremely long and twists
into
long strands that look like ropes [. . .]
Popes
are very intelligent.
There
are three different sizes.
The poodle, the juvenile delinquent and the rugged western
hero can all stand in for the Pope as director Tate checks the lighting and
tapes off marks on the stage.
For me, however, the poem stands in for and calls our
attention to a certain kind of language at once nostalgic, because we’ve grown
up with it, and ridiculous, because we’ve grown beyond it. We are lulled to
some other psychological state by rhetoric so reassuring that Highlights Magazine should take note:
growing
up to become a Pope is a lot of fun.
All
the time their bodies are becoming bigger and stranger,
but
sometimes things make them unhappy.
And the poem, for all of its finely honed humorous barbs,
grows bigger and stranger and more tonally complex. The same lips that slurp
bowls of cream attract black flies. This is no vendetta against Catholicism or
The American Kennel Club, even if their shared pomp is brought into question.
The poem is ultimately about the joy and futility of making meaning.
[G.F.A.]
[G.F.A.]
