Mari Stanley
Superman: The Chapbook. By Dorianne Laux. (Northfield, MN: Red Dragonfly Press, 2008). 32 pages. Paperback: $15
At the Drive-in Volcano. By Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press, 2007). 80 pages. Paperback: $16.95, ISBN # 978-1932195453.
Superman: the Chapbook focuses very narrowly on pop culture and the “stuff” of American life and the relation of that stuff to the people who value it. Poems in this collection explore some of the most valued icons of American pop culture such as the Beatles, Superman, and Cher and some of the pastimes of American life that serve need and want such as late-night television viewing, yard sales, and sex. While these topics are certainly not uncharted territory in contemporary poetry, what is striking about Laux’s handling of these subjects is that she finds the humor and sorrow in the connections between humans and pop culture icons and all this “stuff” and the infatuation and dependence on them.
It’s easy to laugh at our pop culture: our actors’, musicians’, politicians’ train wrecks; our swelling waistlines; our dependence on technology and convenience. It’s funny, Laux’s image of a stoned Superman contemplating his shortcomings, his own skin yellowing from the smoke: “Superman sits on a tall building/ smoking pot, holding the white plumes in” (1-2). But then Laux turns to the all-too-relatable idea of Superman’s burden too heavy for even a superhuman to carry: “He lifts his head from his hands / as the sun sets, the sound of muffled gunfire / in every city of the world ricochets/ through his gray brain” (19-22).
It’s humorous, too, the late-night infomercials—the man so excited about the stain-remover he is promoting. But not only does Laux portray the humor of bright-eyed salesman, she also shows the misery of insomnia. How terrible to be unable to sleep and to be entertained by this guy! And the speaker suggests that life as an infomercial product spokesperson must be terrible as well.
And it’s funny and accurate to think of the over-stuffed garage, its walls barely containing its contents exploding in a Big Bang. Everyone has seen those garages, if they haven’t owned one. But how tragic that the things once so valued are no longer important and are abandoned and left to “lap at the shore of an unmown lawn” (Laux 32). These things once valued and provided service or entertainment that someone longed for in a store window are abandoned, reduced to yard sale prices, and pushed onto an unkempt lawn.
Laux challenges the ideas, icons, and objects of pop culture, things that have been, at one time or another, highly celebrated by putting them in unique situations. She lets Superman smoke pot. She lets Cher be the quirky natural beauty that she used to be. And she lets our holed-up junk explode. She even takes the beloved Beatles down a notch, scorning them for breaking up when they were making so much money. Laux’s use of conversational language and vivid description allows her to make these claims and support them effectively. She shows the humor of human behavior in relation to all this stuff but she also illustrates the sorrow in the bipolar relationship between humans and the need to cling to and abandon it. One fad, one beloved icon dies, and another is born. While readers may abandon comic books and childhood heroes, they won’t be quick to abandon Laux’s contemplation of pop culture.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil deals with the humor of retrospect in At the Drive-in Volcano. Throughout the collection of poems Nezhukumatathil balances the tenderness and misery of moments and memories from childhood scuffles, to pet custody issues, to miserable hours of waiting at a bus station with the humor that is revealed once a person has distanced him or herself from the situation. The times when one might feel most ill-at-ease often become the subjects of good stories in a social setting. And that is what Nezhukumatathil’s collection of poems feels like—an intimate evening of talking with a friend, telling stories, finding the humor in them along the way.
In poems such as, “After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight” and “High School Picture Retake Day”, Nezhukumatathil deals with awkward and uncomfortable situations that seem so dire in-the-moment, but she reveals the humor of the situation given the passage of time. And while humor is a coping mechanism, Nezhukumatathil shows us how her speakers use it at as such in these moments of misery and discomfort as they reflect on them. In “After Challenging Jennifer Lee to a Fight”, Nezhukumatathil writes:
…I told her
the red dots meant she had rabies, that
she shouldn’t tell anyone because then she’d infect
them and most of all, she better say sorry to my sister,
else I’d push her face into the barrel cacti littering
the sidewalks (20-25).
And the humor of the situation is clear: the humor of the childhood threat of diseases and the premature judgments, the image of the young girl ready to fight. In “High School Picture Retake Day” the speaker points to the humor of the situation—everyone combing their hair for the dreaded retake and the backdrop of clouds (Nezhukumatathil 9-12). And these moments are relatable and funny as collective experiences of American schooling. Everyone has either had a school fight or bad school picture or seen them, and we’ve laughed about our own or someone else’s.
However, Nezhukumatathil does not expose these moments of discomfort, misery, or awkwardness only for the sake of earning a laugh from the reader. While these recollections of past horrors are wrapped in humor, Nezhukumatathil does not allow the reader to experience the humor without also experiencing the tenderness of the wound for the speaker. Nezhukumatathil’s speakers address playground fights, high school picture day, hours spent waiting in a miserable bus station (in “In Praise of Ice Cream Vending Machines at a Greyhound Bus Station”), and church plays (in “Passion Play”) are events that seem so dire within the context of the time they occur and the perception of the person experiencing them. How traumatic bad school pictures are for the image-absorbed teen. How urgent the need to protect one’s sibling must be if the speaker was compelled to fight the girl. However, given some time, generally the person appreciates the humor of the situation and allows for some forgiveness of the discomfort that once ran so deep.
The balance of humor and tenderness Nezhukumatathil establishes in these poems allows readers to experience the same conflict of emotions that causes the moments that are the subjects of these poems take up residence in our memories in the first place. And though most of the poems that deal with this juxtaposition of feelings are from a distanced perspective—that is the speaker is years removed from the event at hand, and has gained, with age, some perspective—Nezhukumatathil’s use of vivid imagery make the light (humor) and the heavy (misery) of youth and ignorance more real and recreate them again for the reader.
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Mari Stanley holds an MFA from Spalding University. She currently teaches at Owensboro Community and Technical College.