Women Waiting for the Mail and their Men
The following poem by Ed Dorn,"OnThe Debt My Mother Owed to Sears Roebuck," written circa 1960, is the best depiction I have found of pre-war America, long lost and not ever to be recovered. Reading it tonight made me realize why socialism was doomed here, why it could never take root. Sears was the Wal Mart of my parents' time, the last point in time when the things Americans bought were the fruits of their own labor. The world was still flat then (in the sense of a closed system). It didn't need to be round. As Dorn makes clear here: You didn't have to see too far past the mail box that brought word and pictures of the great industrial plentitude to prarie and village. In that world, purchase was the final stage of production; ownership was so much a part of manufacture you wondered, chicken-and-egg fashion, which came first. There was a soft penumbra of pride to what we called goods. Beginnings and ends were so inseparable then that the intimacy between the two became a kind of quality control.
I don't want to idealize this world too much. I grew up in a landscape of abandoned factories. Now most of them have been razed or renovated to become condominiums and quaint industrial parks. So there is little physical evidence of the disappearance of America. Occasionally one finds arrowheads in the attic--unused ration stubs from the war, transfers good for a ride on the interurban, and the like. But by now the amnesia is complete. The yard sales have ended any need for archeology. If you want to remember, however, let Dorn's poem attach electrodes to your brain and bring his America back.
I leave the decision up to you. This poem is extremely sad, filled with humbling, resigned Great Plains longing that makes that of "Waiting for Godot" almost lascivious. Dorn grew up in Oz country. Frank Baum could have written the opening lines of this poem:
Summer was dry, dry the garden
our beating hearts, on that farm, dry
with the rows of corn the grasshoppers
came happily to strip, in hordes, the first
thing I knew about locust was they came
dry under the foot like the breaking of
a mechanical bare heart . . .
That's Dorothy's Kansas, heartless Tin Man country. And the glue, the cohersion, of that farm life is provided by Dorn's mother waiting in any empty farm house by day for the promises of the good life to arrive, courtesy of Sears Roebuck, in the morning mail and her men to return at evening.
On the debt my mother owed to sears roebuck
we brooded, she in the house, a little heavy
from too much corn meal, she
a little melancholy from the dust of the fields
in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands . . .
Those last two lines are among the most beautiful in the English language ("the dust of the fields / in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands").
There's so much to say about this poem. Believe me when I say it says exactly what it means, and it says it in a way few others have matched. This is not a T.S. Eliot poem. Everything you need to understand it is right on the surface or sequined to its detail. Read this poem, then open The New Yorker, and wonder why their poetry editor doesn't buy a hearing aid or learn to speak English as a first language. I first read this poem at age 18 and it was an early encounter with true speech. This, a voice inside me proclaimed, is real poetry. Learn to read it and, perhaps, some day to write it. I thank God every day for Ed Dorn and I wish I had gotten the chance to fawn all over him with admiration and gratitude. May this poem announce new worlds to you the way it did, and still does, to me.
ON THE DEBT MY MOTHER OWED TO SEARS ROEBUCK
Summer was dry, dry the garden
our beating hearts, on that farm, dry
with the rows of corn the grasshoppers
came happily to strip, in hordes, the first
thing I knew about locust was they came
dry under the foot like the breaking of
a mechanical bare heart which collapses
from an unkind and incessant word whispered
in the house of the major farmer
and the catalogue company,
from no fault of anyone
my father coming home tired
and grinning down the road, turning in
is the tank full? thinking of the horse
and my lazy arms thinking of the water
so far below the well platform.
On the debt my mother pwed to sears roebuck
we brooded, she in the house, a little heavy
from too much corn meal, she
a little melancholy from the dust of the fields
in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands--
and manys ways winged their way to her through the mail
saying so much per month
so many months, this is yours, take it
take it, take it, take it
and in the corncrib, like her lives in that house
the mouse nibbled away at the cob's yellow grain
until six o'clock when her sorrows grew less
and my father came home
On the debt my mother owed to sears roebuck?
I have nothing to say, it gave me clothes to
wear to school,
and my mother brooded
in the rooms of the house, the kitchen, waiting
for the men she knew, her husband, her son
from work, from school, from the air of locusts
and dust masking the hedges of the fields she knew
in her eye as a vague land where she lived,
boundaries, whose tractors chugged pulling harrows
pulling discs, pulling great yields from the earth
pulse for the armies in two hemispheres, 1943
amd she was part of that stay at home army to keep
things going, owing that debt.
--Ed Dorn, from "The Newly Fallen"
I don't want to idealize this world too much. I grew up in a landscape of abandoned factories. Now most of them have been razed or renovated to become condominiums and quaint industrial parks. So there is little physical evidence of the disappearance of America. Occasionally one finds arrowheads in the attic--unused ration stubs from the war, transfers good for a ride on the interurban, and the like. But by now the amnesia is complete. The yard sales have ended any need for archeology. If you want to remember, however, let Dorn's poem attach electrodes to your brain and bring his America back.
I leave the decision up to you. This poem is extremely sad, filled with humbling, resigned Great Plains longing that makes that of "Waiting for Godot" almost lascivious. Dorn grew up in Oz country. Frank Baum could have written the opening lines of this poem:
Summer was dry, dry the garden
our beating hearts, on that farm, dry
with the rows of corn the grasshoppers
came happily to strip, in hordes, the first
thing I knew about locust was they came
dry under the foot like the breaking of
a mechanical bare heart . . .
That's Dorothy's Kansas, heartless Tin Man country. And the glue, the cohersion, of that farm life is provided by Dorn's mother waiting in any empty farm house by day for the promises of the good life to arrive, courtesy of Sears Roebuck, in the morning mail and her men to return at evening.
On the debt my mother owed to sears roebuck
we brooded, she in the house, a little heavy
from too much corn meal, she
a little melancholy from the dust of the fields
in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands . . .
Those last two lines are among the most beautiful in the English language ("the dust of the fields / in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands").
There's so much to say about this poem. Believe me when I say it says exactly what it means, and it says it in a way few others have matched. This is not a T.S. Eliot poem. Everything you need to understand it is right on the surface or sequined to its detail. Read this poem, then open The New Yorker, and wonder why their poetry editor doesn't buy a hearing aid or learn to speak English as a first language. I first read this poem at age 18 and it was an early encounter with true speech. This, a voice inside me proclaimed, is real poetry. Learn to read it and, perhaps, some day to write it. I thank God every day for Ed Dorn and I wish I had gotten the chance to fawn all over him with admiration and gratitude. May this poem announce new worlds to you the way it did, and still does, to me.
ON THE DEBT MY MOTHER OWED TO SEARS ROEBUCK
Summer was dry, dry the garden
our beating hearts, on that farm, dry
with the rows of corn the grasshoppers
came happily to strip, in hordes, the first
thing I knew about locust was they came
dry under the foot like the breaking of
a mechanical bare heart which collapses
from an unkind and incessant word whispered
in the house of the major farmer
and the catalogue company,
from no fault of anyone
my father coming home tired
and grinning down the road, turning in
is the tank full? thinking of the horse
and my lazy arms thinking of the water
so far below the well platform.
On the debt my mother pwed to sears roebuck
we brooded, she in the house, a little heavy
from too much corn meal, she
a little melancholy from the dust of the fields
in her eye, the only title she ever had to lands--
and manys ways winged their way to her through the mail
saying so much per month
so many months, this is yours, take it
take it, take it, take it
and in the corncrib, like her lives in that house
the mouse nibbled away at the cob's yellow grain
until six o'clock when her sorrows grew less
and my father came home
On the debt my mother owed to sears roebuck?
I have nothing to say, it gave me clothes to
wear to school,
and my mother brooded
in the rooms of the house, the kitchen, waiting
for the men she knew, her husband, her son
from work, from school, from the air of locusts
and dust masking the hedges of the fields she knew
in her eye as a vague land where she lived,
boundaries, whose tractors chugged pulling harrows
pulling discs, pulling great yields from the earth
pulse for the armies in two hemispheres, 1943
amd she was part of that stay at home army to keep
things going, owing that debt.
--Ed Dorn, from "The Newly Fallen"
posted by David Federman @ 10:17 PM
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