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Poetry / The Royal Fitness Center
THE ROYAL FITNESS CENTER
From the parking lot a patch of
close-cropped bluegrass softly cushions my feet,
a notable sensation this time of year.
Inside: thump, thump of treadmills;
in my ear: sonnets of Shakespeare.
Silence of the sauna; pores opened, sweat drips.
Momentarily an emotion wells up,
memory of rage, a try at suicide:
bridge culvert in headlight’s glare – then blackness.
Capillaries, like thinly branching
winter tree limbs thread my thighs.
Wrinkles now appearing on your face.
When asked, an acquaintance responds:
“I spent the holidays sitting on my ass reading,
I went to the library and just said, ‘Give me all of ‘em .’”
Another time he told me he had missed several sessions
because his cat had been sick.
A reader, a lover of cats: a man to know.
Homeward, the near full-moon of January,
first of the New Year, rising in the wan blue east;
westward, beneath flushed clouds, the gold-bearing sun sets.
On the car stereo Cathy Berberian, mezzo-soprano,
sings Folk Songs (1964) of Luciano Berio (b. 1925, d. 2003)
You are near to me as I return: I am lighter, awakened, refreshed.
The Art of Maria Callas fills the living room.
I do not disturb you at work on a painting in your studio
but instead sit down at the computer and write this.
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Dustin85 reviewed Version 1 -
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princess_tommy reviewed Version 1 -
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KerensaRose reviewed Version 1 -
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Only one concern,
I am not sure why it is called The Royal Fitness Center. Something about the word Royal does not ebb with the rest of the poem. Just the name of the fitness center?
Beautiful in memories and bits of life explode. This is a very impressive piece. I especially like that you give dates. After all, time, life, and death – are all forms of poetry.
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Bosco reviewed Version 1 -
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This is a great poem. I believe the allusions create a very precise mood for the reader, those that do not know the references will have plenty to keep them going, maybe even giving the poem a new depth and understanding each time they go back to read it, in other words the poem is more than strong enough to carry an errant reference along the way. As to the sunset, I think I see why you are unsure, my thoughts would be “westward, beneath flushed clouds, the gold-bearing sun” if it is west it is implicitly setting.
Excellent, graceful poem, Age before beauty, that’s what I say.
jakespatz reviewed Version 1 -
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OVERVIEW
You and I evidently disagree about some fundamental aspects of writing and of poetry, and I look forward to your (anticipated) rebuttal of my critique. If my critical assumptions are flat-out misapplied here, I trust you’ll let me know.
I’ve read this poem several times, and I have to say that if I read the stanzas in reverse order, the piece improves considerably. THAT tells me your construction is defective. I also notice that any stanza can be cut without much altering the poem’s flow, since it doesn’t really have any “plot” or forward thrust except the almost arbitrary inclusion of one detail after another. In the opinion of some, this may be a strategy of quiet detachment, forebearing “judgment” (or some such morally charged act with, for some reason, negative connotations). In my opinion, this is a strategy of tameness and impotence—hardly an aesthetic at all, let alone one that can have any valid relationship to the assertive, shape-cutting energies of Callas and Berio.
WEAKNESSES
This is basically a documentary (not that I imply the events or details are all autobiographical; it makes no difference if every least bit were invented). And the trouble with documentaries is that they leverage everything on having (a) compelling subject matter and (b) a compelling presentation of that subject—and I believe this poem has neither.
Each of your stanzas presents an image cluster. No matter how slowly I read, nothing forms completely. Everything whizzes by, barely glimpsed. If this is deliberate, I have to wonder why you’d strive for such an effect at all (I equate it with a failed attempt at what Pound called “phanopoeia”). (How can getting halfway there, even on purpose, count as success?)
Likewise, your lines here make overtures towards form without achieving it. With the exception of your last, not one tercet gains any advantage by being a blank tercet; every one of them (last excepted) could be improved rhythmically (and imagistically) by re-setting the line-breaks, and chucking the 3-line objective.
COUNSEL
Your poem’s whole mood is one of retiring and retreat. You could draw this out by strengthening its presentation (and effect), as Weldon Kees often did. If you conflate the poem’s mood or subject with its devices, you’ll just end up with a weak poem, too deferential to its own content to serve it well.
I’d start by identifying the instances of verbal irony (Pound: “logopoeia”), such as your very detached “notable sensation” in line 3—and get them out in front. Carve around them. They constitute this poem’s most active moments. But you’ve got to bring them in line with each other, so that your otherwise channel-changing approach to subject matter GAINS an inner consistency. “A man to know”—I can’t read the spin on this. Were the voice (or personality) of your poem less mutable, your poem would have a stronger sense of plot or progression; the order of your stanzas would be more inevitable, rather than rearrangeable.
As for your sunset… I don’t think it makes any impact. The image doesn’t cohere. Again, it oddly works better in reverse order:
The gold-bearing sun sets under flushed clouds in the west.
(But can’t you do better than “sets”? Even “goes down” is an improvement. “Retires” is even better. You need something that reveals the speaker’s attitude a bit more; something with a touch of irony to it.)
“The wan blue east”—that’s nice. Compass words always work better at the end.
As for your mood “and what triggered it”... I just don’t see it as something presented in the poem itself. It seems there before the poem has even begun. Perhaps your plot doesn’t shape your “narrative” enough—if narrative is even a goal here.
I also gape at your title: it seems offered up in defeat—but not even exasperated defeat, just a concession to the way things happened to go.
REMARK
I’m sure there are qualities here that I haven’t attended to; but I’m also sure this poem could be much improved, and hope I’ve indicated both how and why in my comments. My apologies for the “cost” of this (in any event, the credit-counter stopped awhile back); but I thought the poem’s potential deserved full critical consideration.
Caroline24 reviewed Version 1 -
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The sunset works if you could also see the moon at the same time, as your poem implies. It’s quite a lovely description. Not sure about the mood. It seems to fluctuate from intense sadness (suicide memories) to upbeat about a revelation from a casual acquaintance, to “lighter now…”
I liked most of your snapshot except the line that starts: “sings Folk Songs…” I’d lose that one altogether.
Durian reviewed Version 1 -
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I don’t think you need to question so much your own work. It’s a fine poem, fractured and allusive as experience. Some people comment as if Ulysses was never written.
A contemporary, living honesty here is written with an alchemical passion for words.
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