[I]The Nation[/I]

[Anentropic IxTx]

Renewal - the one with the sun illuminating a path on the cover - is a good issue. Ragashree, this is for you : there's a poem in it called Clair de Lune, by Timothy Donnelly, that's rather provocative.

Clair de Lune - Timothy Donnelly

We revolt ourselves; we disgust and annoy us.
The way we look at us lately chills us to the core.
We become like those who seek to destroy us.

We push ourselves into small tasks that employ us
unrewardingly on purpose. We tire, we bore.
We revolt ourselves; we disgust and annoy us.

We rent ourselves to what force will enjoy us
into oblivion: wind, drink, sleep. We pimp, we whore.
We become like those who seek to destroy us.

We cat-and-mouse, roughhouse, inflatable-toy us
in our heads' red maze, in its den, on its shore.
We revolt ourselves; we disgust and annoy us.

We take offense at our being; we plot, we deploy us
against us and flummox; we wallow, we war.
We become like those who seek to destroy us.

If in triumph, our defeat; in torture, our joy is.
Some confusion so deep I can't fathom anymore.
We appall ourselves; we disgust and annoy us
into those we become we who seek to destroy us.

Given what I've been reading lately, one of the first things that struck me is that it follows the villanelle pattern... otherwise, it clearly expresses the oxymoron of war, in that we are all human.

EDIT: As evidenced by the marks, the title of this post is supposed to be in italics.

 

[ragashree]

Interesting one this. I can see where he's coming from *I think* and would mostly agree with what he seems to be saying without really feeling that it resonates that much for me personally. Perhaps we are starting *myself and Timothy Donnelly* from different ideological perspectives. I would guess that the poet (on this evidence, at any rate) may be something of a disgruntled social political activist, probably left-wing; and the poem as being largely about him coming to terms with the human qualities he shares with those he has been used to assuming a sort of moral superiority over.

There's a lot of evidence of self-loathing over relatively commonplace human failings here - but it mostly seems to be in comparison to a hostile group of others - "Those who would seek to destroy us." The writer uses the plural first person form at all times, but I don't really get the sense of him speaking for all humanity here (though he may well want to), more for the particular group with which he personally identifies. It's true at any rate that it is necessary to dehumanise one's enemy in order for most people to feel comfortable with the idea of destroying them (this is a well known axiom of military and political psychology). It's less common to dehumanise oneself, trying to become something better than human, in order to take the moral high ground in a conflict - which is essentially the perspective he is revolting against here so far as I can see. The sources of his self-disgust appear to be 1) Incontinence (in the broad sense!) and 2) Excessive conformity to the prevailing norm. This suggests that his personal ideal requires a high degree of self-control and nonconformity to commonplace expectations for its fulfillment.

The nature of the "us and them" mentality he identifies is one that I would say is more comfortable existing in small cliques with their implicit assumption of moral or intellectual superiority over those who are not members or in an opposing group. This makes the poem seem to me like something of an intellectualisation of his ongoing personal development and understanding. I agree with what you say about war, but he appears to have reached that coonclusion by somewhat roundabout means, and I'm not entirely convinced that that was his primary motivation for writing it -though I'd be happy to be proved wrong! I know nothing about the guy after all, and my meandering off the cuff analysis has been based on just one poem!

The form - hmm, I thought villanelle before I was half way through - it's that repetition that does it, I think! I've never been that keen on the form - though I like the discipline imposed by strict forms in general, it sometimes just seems a little too contrived to me. The only one I ever remember writing myself was a critical parody of William Empson's "Missing Dates". Now if you really love carefully constructed, intellectual villanelles, try him, though I must say he makes my own poor little brain undergo meltdown after a while - so that I pretty much cease to care about what he's saying long before I work out what it actually is!