The trees, good
seraphim,
begin to sing
at dawn
about making sugar
out of light
and the happy
traffic
between high and
low—
as if that were
all
~
I expect
compensation
for all I don’t
say—
for each time I
stop
before coming
to an obvious
conclusion
or an uncertain
end---
for my discretion.
~
(Music needs
silence
more than silence
needs music.)
(Wobble,
2018, page 96)
~~~
To
start with the parenthetical envoi that seems to end the poem:
(Music needs
silence
more than silence
needs music.)
When I read this in 2019, it inspired me to write:
“a video needs a
soundtrack
more than music
needs a video.”
Rereading it five years later, I’m more interested in its function in her poem “Traffic.” In a way, it could tell us how to read the rest of the poem, and help us make sense of the contrast between the first 8-lined section, which uses the word “Sing” (if not the word music), and the second 8-lined section which uses the enjambed phrase, “don’t/ say” (if not the word silence).
The first section may evoke a pantheistic joyous aeolian harp metamorphosing photosynthetic inter-relatedness. One may even feel the “Happy traffic” as the music of the spheres in hubcaps circling counter clockwise on a cruising car in L.A.---but the limits of such music (not necessarily “upper limit”) come through in the phrase “as if that were all,” if we take the “as if” in its negative sense, while not exactly ruling out the possibility that it could be all.
The implicit entrance of the speaker as commentator sets up the second section, and can build an expectation that this second section will tell, or show, us, what the “happy traffic” ignores, or excludes. Both sections can be read as single sentences. Notably, the first section isn’t punctuated but left hanging after its final word, “all,” while the second has a period after the word discretion. While the “subject” of the first section is plural third-person trees as divine instruments, the subject of the second section is a singular lyric “I.” The trees don’t appear in the second section, and the “I” is only implied in the first section’s final line.
In contrast to the trees, the “I” is concerned with the ethics of utterance, and expects compensation for its discretion. Compensation from who? Or from what? It could be read as a prayer, an invocation to a muse. The violation of couplet form in the first stanza, leaving the word “say” on its own line could complicate what seemed a straightforward statement on first reading:
I expect
compensation
for all I don’t
say—
It’s possible the first couplet could be read as its own unit; the speaker is expecting compensation for all it doesn’t do. The line break could serve as an imagined comma, and “say” can be read as “for example.” As Armantrout dramatizes line breaks calling attention to themselves (in ways that remind me of Creeley & Dickinson) to slow attention, she places the words saying and doing into question:
for each time I
stop
before coming
to an obvious
conclusion
or an uncertain
end---
The longer I look, the more possible meanings and tones can emerge. Does the “I” stopping prevent it from coming to an obvious conclusion or an uncertain end, or does the stopping enable such coming? Is the “I” a personification of silence?
In the context of the entire poem, these two couplets can be read as examples of her not saying. The em-dashes that frame it can also serve as an open parenthetical, in contrast to the closed parenthetical of the envoi. In this light, the parenthetical envoi can thus be read as both/neither an obvious conclusion and an uncertain end. The authority of the statement may be obvious, but the parenthesis brings enough uncertainty in to make it live, as if, almost despite the claims of the parenthetical envoi, the poem enacts music and silence mutually making love to each other that the trees are merely singing “about,” as if this discrete poem compensates for what its discreet meanings expect.
After all, it wasn’t that the trees’ song was really making sugar out of light, they were just singing about it. Just because they’re singing about it, doesn’t mean they’re doing it, at least to the skeptical listener, who may suspect that trying to write “about” music is the least musical form of writing.
In Armantrout’s poem, this second section is no mere comedown (like the end of Coleridge’s Aeolian Harp”); no mere song of experience criticizing the “too happy trees” to contrast with the first section’s song of innocence, it shows more (and therefore less) than it says (and doesn’t).
Chris Stroffolino has published 6 books of poetry, most of which are out of print (including Speculative Primitive (2005), Stealer’s Wheel (1999), and Light as A Fetter (1997). Most recently Crisis Chronicles published Drinking from What I Once Wore, (Crisis Chronicles, 2018), a new and selected. A book of quasi-theoretical prose reminiscences, Death of a Selfish Altruist was published by Iniquity Press in 2017. Radio Survivor.org published his history of the corporate takeover of radio, Radio Orphan, in sequential form, in 2012. He co-authored a study of Shakespeare’s 12th Night with David Rosenthal (IDG Books, 2001). Forthcoming in 2024 or 2025 is In The Here There, a collection of essays about and interviews with (mostly) contemporary poets from 2015 to 2024 (Spuyten Duyvil), a sequel to Spin Cycle, a collection of essays from the 1990s Spuyten Duyvil published in 2001.
He
has taught Critical Thinking, and, sometimes, Creative Writing, at Laney
College in Oakland since 2008, where he lives in a closet with no heat but a
piano in a hallway. He has released 4 albums of songs under his own name,
including Single-Sided Doubles (2009), Predator Drone (2011), The
Griffith Park Sessions (2014), and “12 Songs of Goodbye, and 1 Song of
Hello.” (2019). Recent poetry has appeared in New American Writing, 14
Hills, Bennington Review, Volt, Konch, The Town: An
Anthology of Oakland Poets, and Fence. He is currently seeking a
publisher for Medi(t)ations, his first full length book of new poetry
since 2005.