We are expected to understand need through an answering of an "ad." We are also expected to understand leaving as well due to where the ads were posted "craigslist." Ultimately, these ideas, "need" and "leaving" are defined further in this series -- sometimes ideologically, sometimes personally.
In the first poem of the sequence, the initial descending image in the first stanza "horned lilac / blossoms in their pockets" could be a subtle reference to Whitman is then pushed loudly out with the prophetic tone in the next stanza, "Fellows! Let your hair grow long / your pubis bald with vulgarity." It is the tone that is loud, but the content which goes against each other -- hair growing and pubis bald. This style reflects the speaker as a loud internal conflict -- image versus outcry, how to redefine the external internally.
I think this loud internal conflict becomes actualized as "Pittsburgh" which first starts out as a synecdoche:
Out of our sweet emails, you come.
Pittsburgh misses you today,
She told me.
Note how the synecdoche holds more of the emotional weight in the first poem -- it is not the speaker that misses the other -- it is the place that does, "Not me. Pittsburgh misses you today."
The idea of separation continues with the second poem. Written in the epistolary style, the poem separates the speaker from this, "Mister G." In my notes I wrote, "a slow process of the reveal," in the first stanza. But what is revealed in the poem?
Language: "finding lost words like / beauty, sublime, or lascivious innuendo."
The Body: "brown legs, white calves, black hair, pink fingers."
The poem itself is a poem of process which tries to find the right words and the right images but all go back to an unknown name, "Today, three times I thought of your name." It is revealed at the end of the poem (the slow reveal) that the speaker tried to emulate the other's thought process, "you think of time and use logic" with the poem juxtaposing these themes with the persona of Pittsburgh having the emotional say butt up against the other's voice, "Pittsburgh misses you and you say I have so little time these days."
The third poem compares disparity -- places to people. The opening lines, "Where are we tonight? Here in Pittsburgh there are buses / that run from downtown to Oakland all at all hours of the night. Tonight!" demonstrate the difference in place -- Pittsburgh and Oakland.
However, there's a more complex demonstration of difference in the adjusted quatrains at the end -- the first one which is right adjusted:
of me
slapping parking meters
w a
flat-handed thwak!
serves as a sonic device of connection. Note how the comic sound of "thwak" brings a more light hearted image; meanwhile, the second quatrain:
here's a picture
our fingers together
like your zipper
and then not
serves as a sonic device of separation through the zipper. Note that the initial image of a picture filters out the experience -- the simile and sound of people together and not.
The fourth poem starts out self-reflexive with, "Oh me," and here is where the speaker can manifest the emotional self -- not outwardly, but inwardly. Note that the majority of the lines are rhetorical questions to whom? The self. But also note that near the end of the poem the verbs pull to reveal something, "scrape" and "peel." What is soft? Something to be touched, "I am / beneath you, remember? I am soft now, watch me touch these." And since the poem is self- reflexive, the commands to touch seems more of a plea rather than a demand.
This idea contrasts with the final poem, "Cystina." The use of repetition in the poem adds a sense of horror in discovering another cyst, but the effect becomes softened with context:
They found a cyst today, I thought of you.
They found another cyst, the old ones are still -
they found a cyst today, I thought of you the way you looked -
The reality of the cyst versus the vision of the other. Note how there's no emotional attachment, but rather a deflection of the reality to make any sort of connection. However, further along this line, "it [a cyst] leaned on my ovary like your head on my shoulder" brings something more intimate -- but this is more of an imagined intimacy so the repetition in "I thought of you / my my my my my Mister" spirals towards the internal -- the my, the cyst.
In the first poem of the sequence, the initial descending image in the first stanza "horned lilac / blossoms in their pockets" could be a subtle reference to Whitman is then pushed loudly out with the prophetic tone in the next stanza, "Fellows! Let your hair grow long / your pubis bald with vulgarity." It is the tone that is loud, but the content which goes against each other -- hair growing and pubis bald. This style reflects the speaker as a loud internal conflict -- image versus outcry, how to redefine the external internally.
I think this loud internal conflict becomes actualized as "Pittsburgh" which first starts out as a synecdoche:
Out of our sweet emails, you come.
Pittsburgh misses you today,
She told me.
Note how the synecdoche holds more of the emotional weight in the first poem -- it is not the speaker that misses the other -- it is the place that does, "Not me. Pittsburgh misses you today."
The idea of separation continues with the second poem. Written in the epistolary style, the poem separates the speaker from this, "Mister G." In my notes I wrote, "a slow process of the reveal," in the first stanza. But what is revealed in the poem?
Language: "finding lost words like / beauty, sublime, or lascivious innuendo."
The Body: "brown legs, white calves, black hair, pink fingers."
The poem itself is a poem of process which tries to find the right words and the right images but all go back to an unknown name, "Today, three times I thought of your name." It is revealed at the end of the poem (the slow reveal) that the speaker tried to emulate the other's thought process, "you think of time and use logic" with the poem juxtaposing these themes with the persona of Pittsburgh having the emotional say butt up against the other's voice, "Pittsburgh misses you and you say I have so little time these days."
The third poem compares disparity -- places to people. The opening lines, "Where are we tonight? Here in Pittsburgh there are buses / that run from downtown to Oakland all at all hours of the night. Tonight!" demonstrate the difference in place -- Pittsburgh and Oakland.
However, there's a more complex demonstration of difference in the adjusted quatrains at the end -- the first one which is right adjusted:
of me
slapping parking meters
w a
flat-handed thwak!
serves as a sonic device of connection. Note how the comic sound of "thwak" brings a more light hearted image; meanwhile, the second quatrain:
here's a picture
our fingers together
like your zipper
and then not
serves as a sonic device of separation through the zipper. Note that the initial image of a picture filters out the experience -- the simile and sound of people together and not.
The fourth poem starts out self-reflexive with, "Oh me," and here is where the speaker can manifest the emotional self -- not outwardly, but inwardly. Note that the majority of the lines are rhetorical questions to whom? The self. But also note that near the end of the poem the verbs pull to reveal something, "scrape" and "peel." What is soft? Something to be touched, "I am / beneath you, remember? I am soft now, watch me touch these." And since the poem is self- reflexive, the commands to touch seems more of a plea rather than a demand.
This idea contrasts with the final poem, "Cystina." The use of repetition in the poem adds a sense of horror in discovering another cyst, but the effect becomes softened with context:
They found a cyst today, I thought of you.
They found another cyst, the old ones are still -
they found a cyst today, I thought of you the way you looked -
The reality of the cyst versus the vision of the other. Note how there's no emotional attachment, but rather a deflection of the reality to make any sort of connection. However, further along this line, "it [a cyst] leaned on my ovary like your head on my shoulder" brings something more intimate -- but this is more of an imagined intimacy so the repetition in "I thought of you / my my my my my Mister" spirals towards the internal -- the my, the cyst.