Poem Post: "Crackerbell" and Grace

[radiantfracture]

This morning while I tried to decide whether to be awake or asleep, as though I had any real say in the matter, I was listening to episodes of The Slowdown, Major Jackson's poetry podcast.

I must have heard about The Slowdown on Poetry Unbound, and the format is similar, except that the story the host tells at the beginning is more elliptically connected to the poem, which is left uninterpreted, except for the juxtaposition of the two.

The episode about Mary Ruefle's "Crackerbell" was guest hosted by Shira Erlichman.

Half-listening, I was captured by the grace of Ruefle's last stanza, and I thought I'd like to share the poem with you.


Crackerbell
by Mary Ruefle

I grew up

I became myself and
was haunted by it

and I loved to wander, utterly alone

listening to the sound of tears
striving to guess my own secret
and racking my imagination for
a dream

meanwhile,
everybody else knew my story
and there was not one of them
who would give me so much as
a bird dropping

so on I wandered
with arms and nitric startled eyes,
nitpicking my way through the world
when the electrical current
that runs in all directions
deep beneath the earth
shook me

and at once I felt
there are so many years to fail
that to fail them all, one by one,
would give me a double life,
and I took it.

* * * * * *


I don’t know Ruefle’s work with any expertise, but in the past I have enjoyed her combination of play and postmodern craft, a self-aware surreality mixed with an affection for the ordinary reminiscent maybe of John Ashbery, but with a lighter touch.

I have not gone to any poetic sources here, so my response will be mostly personal, with a dash of of what's-on-the-page close reading, influenced by the Slowdown take, which focused on the humour.

To begin where the poem begins, with the title: Crackerbell. It seems playful and self-satirizing, even though I don't entirely understand it. Am I meant to think of Tinkerbell, but cracked? The bland Americana of Cracker Barrel? It's an unserious yet mysterious word.

And the poem seems to me a seriocomic quest-narrative, almost a hero's journey through mundane psychic landscapes. (There is almost no actual landscape described here, so I sub in an infinite sequence of identical suburban streets, or rather the same block of my own adolescent street, repeated over and over.)

This might as well be my life story as the narrator's: "striving to guess my own secret"? Ugh, me and the guy in Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle" (thanks, Eve Sedgwick). There's a glorious golden truth inside me if only I could get it out! (Any time now, glorious golden truth! Annny time.)

The "meanwhile" stanza -- this one seems, as they say, broadly relatable, this kind of existential sulking, though it isn't quite as resonant for me now.

Younger me, yes, I often did think, roughly, "Oh god, why doesn't someone just come and get me?" -- but I hope I am better now at seeing how much I have been given, and what I want to say to the comic narrator here, or to write in my own take, is that sometimes no matter what people give you they just can't give you the exact tool you need for your own journey. They give you seven-league boots when you needed size eight.

The most specific, and, yes, startling word here for me is "nitric," and despite looking up the interesting uses of nitric oxide I can't quite make sense of it, which means I startle on it every time. What does it do for you when you read it?

There's a revelation here and an insight, though again described in vague terms -- what is this "electrical current ... deep beneath the earth?"

And then that final stanza, the one that won me with its grace. I think often of failure, and have felt like one since before I was old enough to possibly deserve that label, though I am plenty old enough now.

and at once I felt
there are so many years to fail
that to fail them all, one by one,
would give me a double life,
and I took it.

The grace of thinking of failure as a gain, a doubling, rather than a loss; the power and joy of that "I took it," seizing the absurd and foolish day.

It is the kind of grace I love. I will take it wherever I can find it.

What do you notice?

* * * * * *

Here's a response from this morning, not so much an answer as a parallel journey.


Hero

I aged, and acquired
a little wisdom, sometimes from injury,
often through sheer repetition

And now it may be too late
to set off in any fashion
other than alone

Since, for all the gifts given me,
and there have been many, from many hands,
the whole city equipping and adorning me
while begging me not to go

I did go, and found myself lost
in the wood without names,
where that child -- who was it? –
and that animal – what was it called –
well, you see how this goes --

Unable to recognize, let alone make use of,
any of the implements I carried,
I had to begin again with what was to hand.

This, I saw finally,
was nobody's fault, or my own,
which amounted to the same thing;
and that gave me, in my long labours,
some peace.

{rf}

Comments

[sabotabby]

so on I wandered
with arms and nitric startled eyes,
nitpicking my way through the world

This jumped out at me. Maybe it's the "only Jewish kid I knew growing up in the suburbs thing" but the description of wandering where the landscape is not described, and "nitpicking my way through the world"—that resonated.

[radiantfracture]

Maybe it's the "only Jewish kid I knew growing up in the suburbs thing" but the description of wandering where the landscape is not described

I think I see what you mean. Is the next stanza,

meanwhile, everybody else knew my story

--part of that reading, too?

(Like for me, I think I understand that stanza, recognize that experience, but also I felt much more unknown than mistakenly known)

The more we talk about it, the more that word "nitric" feels like a pivot -- and the relationship to the world described in those lines you pulled out.

sovay's point about nitric acid is driving me here, thinking about the speaker as a chemical undergoing a reaction when subjected to the electric current -- transformed, alchemized, awakened (vz Frankenstein).

"nitpicking my way through the world"—that resonated.

For me too -- like, for me it sets up the idea of failure in the last stanza -- having focused on trivial things is in the end -- kind of okay?

What does it say for you?

[sabotabby]

I think I had a similar reading to that.

I didn't know that about nitric, but the word jumped out at me.

[sovay]

What does it do for you when you read it?

I associate "nitric" with "nitric acid," so it's a harsh word; it makes a jolt, so makes the reader feel the startlement in preparation for the electric current.

The final stanza is phenomenal; I can see why it caught you.

Unable to recognize, let alone make use of,
any of the implements I carried,
I had to begin again with what was to hand.

I like this very much.

[radiantfracture]

I associate "nitric" with "nitric acid,"

Thank you! -- so a corrosive gaze, or an alchemical one?

[derien]

Nitric eyes gave me an image of very wide open, staring, confused, with a side of the clarity in the image of a silver nitrate photo, like Ansel Adams.

[radiantfracture]

Ah! That makes so much sense -- photography, and the eye. That's very illuminating for me, thank you.