A review of Charles Simic's Come Closer and Listen

 

Koon Woon

Professor Gery

Book Review

 

“Unending Unevenness”: Charles Simic’s Come Closer and Listen.

Review by Koon Woon

 

Charles Simic. Come Closer and Listen. New York, NY, HarperCollins, 2019, 75 pages, $24.99.

     Come Closer and Listen is Charles Simic’s 25^th collection of poetry. The poet has won a Pulitzer, a MacArthur Foundation ”genius grant,” the Griffin International Poetry Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the appointment as US poet laureate (Poetry Foundation website). I purchased his ninth collection of poems, Unending Blues  in 1986 because I like blues music and there was that in the poems, except not of the American flavor but of a Serbian background that the poet grew up in WWII.

He was born in 1938. I knew then in 1986 that he was an unusual poet, as he wrote elsewhere that his mother shielded his eyes when they walked down the streets where men were hung on telephone poles.

And one memorable line I read of his is “Fear travels from tree to tree, leaf to leaf” in a poem called “Fear.”

     Come Closer and Listen has four sections, with each sections organized around a theme. The first section is metaphysical musings; the second section talks about the evil “out there.” The third section perhaps can be called love poems.  And finally the fourth section may be about mortality. No matter, in each section, regardless of theme, there is a sense of the surreal coupled with metaphysical musings in workman’s language rather than those of an academic philosopher from a prestigious institution.

     The book is introduced by an epigram from Ralph Waldo Emerson – “As if one needed eyes to see.” This is to alert the reader that if one is just looking, he may not see, because it is not the eyes but the mind that can make sense of Simic’s words. The first poem of the collection: “Some Birds Chirp,” and I quote:

                        Some Birds Chirp  

                       

                        Others have nothing to say.

                        You see them pace back and forth,

                        Nodding their heads as they do.

 

                        It must be something huge

                        That’s driving them nuts –

                        Life in general, being a bird.

 

                        Too much for one little brain

                        To figure out on its own.

                        Still, no harm trying, I guess.

 

                        Even with all the racket

                        Made by its neighbors,

                        Darting and bickering nonstop.

 

     This poem pretty much sets the tone of the all the poems in this collection. It involves thinking and it is self-referential in that he is referring to himself as a bird that does not chirp, that is, to made useless racket, but “trying to figure it all out,” even though is too much for one brain. Simic is at his best when using visceral language to discuss metaphysical musings. The title poem of the book is also in the first section, “Come Closer and Listen.” 

     “I was born – don’t know the hour -- / Slapped on the ass / And handed over crying / To someone many years dead / In a country no longer on a map…” He states further that he doesn’t know if he is cursed or blessed, and he no longer frets about it, because he heard about “A blind lady called Justice,” and she listens to everyone’s troubles, but people still have good days and bad, and he doesn’t blame her because she is blind and does the best she can. One begins to notice that Simic puts himself squarely in the middle of humanity as he caricaturizes thinkers in a skid road mission as “metaphysic anonymous,” where they are “estranged from family and friends” pondering “knowledge beyond appearance.” All the trappings of a Schopenhauer are here.

     Just about all the poems in this collection are one page in length or shorter, and so we do not get a symphonic build up of sonics and message, but pithy insights and wisdom. Because the poet is now 81, many of these poems have a sense of fate as in the poem “Blind Fate,” in which a mad woman grabs a man’s arm, which causes him to yank free of her, but only to knock the coins out of a beggars cup, which causes the beggar to swear at him. And this and similar fateful things are beyond our control.

     At his best in this collection, Simic is able to summarize great philosophical and political issues such as separation of Church and State in the poem, “Arson,” where a church is set on fire. The third and final quatrain of this poem reads:

                        As for the firebug, we were of two minds:

                        Some kid trying out a new drug,

                        Or a drunk ex-soldier angry at God

                        And country for making him a cripple.

 

But not all the poems in this collection are so insightful or revealing. Some poems seem to be just “fillers” as he publishes a book once every two or three years. That was the same feeling I had back in 1986 when I read his Unending Blues. But still, there are some 80 poems in this collection and for the sales price of $24.99, it is like getting a poem for 40 cents. And if just one or two can profoundly help the reader to delve deeper into things, it is worth it. And the language is everyday speech. You get wisdom and not machinery. And so yes, I think we should come closer to Charles Simic and listen to what he is musing about.

 

 

                       

 

                       

                       

    

 

Review of "Turtle Soup," poem by Marilyn Chin by Koon Woon

 

Turtle Soup

Marilyn Chin                                    

From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Fall 1991, Vol. XIII, No.4

for Ben Huang

 

You go home one evening tired from work,
and your mother boils you turtle soup.
Twelve hours hunched over the hearth,
(who knows what else is in that cauldron).

You say, “Ma, you’ve poached the symbol of long life;
that turtle lived 4,000 years, swam
the Wei, up the Yellow, over the Yangtze.
Witnessed the Bronze Age, the High Tang,
grazed on splendid sericulture.”
(So, she boils the life out of him.)

“All our ancestors have been fools.
Remember Uncle Wu who rode ten thousand miles
to kill a famous Manchu and ended up
with his head on a pole? Eat, child,
its liver will make you strong.

“Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice.”
Her sobbing is inconsolable.
So, you spread that gentle napkin
over your lap in decorous Pasadena.

 

 

 

Baby, some high priestess has got it wrong.
The golden decal on the green underbelly
says, “Made in Hong Kong.
Is there nothing left but the shell,
and humanity’s strange inscriptions,
the songs, the rites, the oracles?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                   

 

 

The Turtle No Longer Swims in the Soup *

 

      With mirth and impeccable diction, in her whimsically serious poem, “Turtle Soup,” Marilyn Chin explores the incongruity, the dying traditions, the roles of the sexes, and the persistence of meaningless rites in the reluctant assimilation of Chinese Americans in a new land. With the voice of someone who straddles two cultures and in the varying tones required for the poem, Chin points to artifacts (the cauldron, toy turtle) that reinforce the persistence of culture however vacuous they have become in the new land. In this short narrative poem featuring dialogue as well, in second person plural and in third person omniscient, Chin deftly encapsulates Chinese civilization, history, religion, and filial piety with a critical eye. She does not do this out of self-contempt but with a sense of resignation. For their bitter-sweet sacrifice for economic survival, Chin is sympathetic to the older immigrant generation and their sense of becoming a burden for the young and their trying to matter. In this sense, the Chinese assimilation in the United States, with some serious bumps along the way, is still in progress, not unlike the assimilation of some other nationalities. While this poem touches quite a few immigrant nerves, it remains that the unsaid is the real poem.

     Chin, in the very first line of the poem in conversational tone, presumably addressing a Ben Huang, possibly a colleague, for whom this poem is dedicated, “You go home one evening tired from work” occupies a strategic placement because historically, the Chinese came to America for economic survival in the 1800s, China was devasted by the Manchus who set up the Qin Dynasty, and built the Forbidden City in Beijing (formerly Peking) that excluded entrance to the Chinese. So, it is not surprising that in strophe three, an Uncle Wu “rode ten thousand miles to

 

kill a famous Manchu…”  Because of war, bandits, pestilence, and drought, and the availability of a gamble in the United States for survival, especially work building the railroads (my great-grandfather immigrated to the US for that very reason), Chinese “coolies” came to the US as “indentured servants.”  Indentured servants were explicitly barred from citizenship and for this reason, many Chinese came to risk their lives for a fortune and go back to China for retirement.

So, this very first line of the poem can mean (but I doubt) as far reaching as returning to China after a long labor contract.      See Koon Woon,   Paper Son Poet

 https://www.amazon.com/Paper-son-Poet-When-rails-young/dp/0692689168

     The last two lines of the first strophe have the mother spending twelve hours “hunched over the hearth” cooking turtle soup in a cauldron with dedication and maternal love. The word “cauldron” is important as it serves both as a cooking pot, a vessel to drink from, as well as an urn for incense offerings. Yet the second strophe irreverently, after Ben Huang presumably telling the significance of the turtle as a symbol in Chinese history, Chin mocks it as something one “boils the life out of…”  The mother does this out of ignorance of Chinese history herself, for Chinese women of her generation are seldom educated, and this tells us that she is not from a Mandarin or upper class in China, but most likely of peasant heritage as most of the Chinese in the US of that generation were. But the belief that eating turtle will increase one’s longevity is a myth since ancient times in China. One might note here too that sometimes people confuse the symbol for a thing for the thing itself, as in the very first line in the second strophe, the “you” addresses the mother like this: “Ma, you’ve poached the symbol of long life;” presumable, the

 

mother believes that eating turtle is efficacious to health, thus what the turtle symbolizes is taken to be the case literally. Notwithstanding, the mother in strophe three rather thinks of self-preservation at the expense of honor in her calling “Uncle Wu” a fool who set out to kill a particular famous Manchu. Perhaps “Uncle Wu” did not eat enough turtle soup and consequently was not strong enough and the Manchu slaughtered him as a consequence and paraded his head on a pole? The role of the mother, from the mother in the poem, is to obey husband and sons and try to make them “strong,” because, as the first line of strophe four summarizes her duty as to preserve the patriarchal lineage through the son, and therefore, the mother’s concern is this filial piety.  

     The second strophe, Ben Huang enumerates the geography of the life giving and sustaining rivers and accomplishment of the Chinese civilization over four-thousand years, including the Silk Route via central Asia to as far as Greece. But how he knows these histories is not explained. The Silk Route was so named for the heavy trading of silk, which came from the sericulture in China. The Bronze Age also reached its peak and so did the Tang Dynasty reach a cultural peak. But the mother was not impressed and retorts with, “All our ancestors have been fools,” implying that trade, travel, and high culture was not valued by her, especially when she betrays her defeatist attitude by saying, “(an Uncle Wu) traveled four thousand miles to slaughter a high-ranking Manchu only to have his head chopped off and exhibited on the top of a long pole. She attributes this to his not eating enough turtle liver. It is unkind here that Chin mocks peasant stupidity unless she is just being realistic and protesting that ancient China and China

 

under its patriarchal society failed the women by not educating them and in this way, keep them in intellectual bondage as it were.

     Furthermore, when the mother sobs, “Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice,” the mother is trapped by her mentality of being subjugated by filial piety and the patriarchal system for so long that sacrificing for her children is the normal duty in life, especially to the one, the oldest son, who carries the family line. She sees the self-sacrifice being completely obligatory and natural. Chin up to now has been addressing s certain “Ben Huang” who at this time feels guilt that he is the cause of his mother’s suffering and so he “…spread that gentle napkin / over [his] lap in decorous Pasadena.” Pasadena is the part of Los Angeles that is his life which is full of Victorian décor. One sees the incongruity of the world views here between mother and son. And then in the fifth and final strophe, Chin speaks but this time to her peer “Ben Huang” in the jargon today’s youths speak and with a feminist slant. Chin  calls “Ben” baby and refers to a high “priestess” rather than a priest who “got it all wrong.” The turtle in the rite is fake! It’s got a “golden decal on the green underbelly / [which says] made in Hong Kong.” Chin then angrily bemoans that everything has been lost of the genuine culture and probably berating herself for hanging on when there is “nothing left but the shell, … strange inscriptions, / the songs, the rites, the oracles.” Chin is upset because the true culture of China is reduced to empty gestures and meaningless motions.

     Ostensibly, there are three speakers in this poem, Ben Huang, the mother, and  Chin herself. But basically we see everything through Chin’s eyes. It is her voice and tone that gives this poem

 

its power and subtlety. On the one hand, she is only talking about one immigrant family, but in doing so, she makes oblique references to the historical weaknesses as well as the strengths of China. One such weakness is the secondary role of women in its patriarchal system, as when the mother “[sobs inconsolably] / Sometimes you’re the life, sometimes the sacrifice.” This can refer to sacrificing for her son or that women in general were “sacrifices.”

     The complex tone of this poem carries the problematics of transplanting in a vastly different culture as in the mother sobbing while the son “spread that gentle napkin / over your lap in decorous Pasadena,” showing both respect and guilt toward the mother’s sacrifice.

 

 

 

* Turtle in Wudang Tai Chi form 

Wudang Sanfeng Taiji Quan 28 by Master Zhong Yunlong (slo-mo) - YouTube

 

** Oracle Bones  by Keith Holyoak from Goldfish Press  

https://goldfishbooks.com

https://www.amazon.com/Oracle-Bones-Poems-Time-Misrule/dp/0978797523

 Koon Woon,   Paper Son Poet

 https://www.amazon.com/Paper-son-Poet-When-rails-young/dp/0692689168