In part 3 of this strange and wandering series of posts about the poetry of Arda Collins, I’m going to look more closely at her poem “Low,” which first appeared in The New Yorker on June 2, 2008. And then we’ll glance quickly at “Pool #13″ from her collection It Is Daylight.
(from “Low”)
It’s not happiness, but something else; waiting
For the light to change; a bakery.
It’s a lake. It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by pines.
There’s a couple.
It’s a living room. The upholstery is yellow and the furniture is walnut.
They used to lie down on the carpet
Between the sofa and the coffee table, after the guests had left.
In these lines, Collins is using that now-familiar impersonal voice in order to set up dimensions, a kind of hierarchy of the mundane. There are markers, however– the formal repetition of “It’s,” with which we can view how this “impersonal” voice bounces surprisingly away from whatever “It” may or may not be. Collins gives us a way to cover the distance.
“It’s not happiness, but something else’”- a feeling?
“waiting/for the light to change”- an expectation? An impatience? Momentum about to change?
“A bakery”- hmmm. Personal, or at least specific, all of a sudden. A place. And one that’s mere inclusion in the poem hints at import.
“It’s a lake”- OK. Is this the same “It” from the previous stanza? Is the lake also the “something else”? I doubt it. Suddenly, the speaker is bringing us to another question, another doubt, through the very act of saying something certain– what something IS. If you’ve read Collins, or if you’ve read Part 1 or Part 2 of this series, then this tactic will seem familiar, her use of certainties and specificity to create conflict and doubt.
“It emerges from darkness into the next day surrounded by pines”- Well, I don’t know what is happening here, but that is just a beautiful line. Holy shit. Excuse the profanity. But, ya know, some lines deserve some cussing about them.
“There’s a couple”- Again, an impersonal observation melds with the personal. Not only does the lake emerge, but so does “the couple” and we must immediately question if the speaker is a part of or apart from the couple. Does the speaker feel anything at all about the couple? More questioning through a certain statement. Collins is brilliant at that. She keeps doing it.
[continued below]
Arda Collins, 2008 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition
A Look at “Pool #13”
I become envious
of my imagined image
of a person holding two six-shooters
and wearing clothes from the mall and a cowboy hat.
Let’s forget for a minute the fact that these lines tumble into a discussion of personal shame regarding image and self-image. Here, Collins is using a highly immediate, personal, confessional voice to twist us quickly around. This confessional voice is actually not revealing much about her actual self. She is merely admitting to an imaginary envy, coveting a fantasy self. What a strange inward turn of negative reflections.
The next great thing? She surprises us again. Her fantasy self isn’t a super model or GQ cover specimen. It’s an absurd, campy cowboy-outfit-wearing consumer.
This technique is far more interesting than simply being confessional and saying “I have bad self image” or “I don’t know who I am.” Collins is far more subversive and subtle. The unexpected reversal, the fantasy envy, is a great way to lead into the admission of shame. Otherwise, it would seem far more cliché, melodramatic, and diary-like. Dig?
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OK. I think that is enough Arda Collins for one season. Her work is compelling and complexing, and worth discovering. Check it!
