Post
by Tracy Mitchell » Sun Mar 18, 2018 12:41 pm
Tim --
Thanks for posting this head-scratching gem. This is a complex, dark and troubling poem. As a reader, I trip on the pronouns - it, it and they. There are other loaded words – brutality, domestication, percolating, and of the course the title word “Afforestation”, all of which heavily influence the poem’s reading.
Stanza One
The poem opens with a challenge. My first reading of ‘brutality of mother’ is the obvious – ‘mother’s brutality’. My immediate thoughts are the cruelty and pain inflicted by her on her children. This interpretation is reinforced by the phrase ‘her domestication’ – being brought back from or cured of her savagery.
I now understand the passage is intended to say that cruelty and pain are instead being inflicted on mother – she is the victim. While I think the language can be read in this way, it is not the first and obvious reading. “Brutalization” would more directly convey that position.
When brutality of mother is read as her brutalization, her domestication takes on a more somber tone. ‘Domestication’ starts smelling of understated euphemism for beatings, or other forced compliance.
L.2 - ‘by this meaning’ – a phrase also susceptible to a first misread. A comma after ‘this’ would be a fix. A more direct fix is: ‘by this I mean . . . .” Of course the downside, if that fix is applied in S.2 L.1 as well, is the use x3 of the ‘I’ pronoun.
I have tentatively concluded that the “it” in ‘it was about’ (S.1 L3) refers more to N’s remembrance than to the brutality, although that is a stingy slice of the potato. The phrase ‘it was about’ seems to fuzz up what should be precise lines. This feeling applied to both uses of the phrase (and S.2 L.1).
Here is what I get from S.1:
I remember the brutalization
of mother and by this I mean
her loving him,
her domestication.
And in this context, ‘loving him’ gives a whiff of Stockholm Syndrome.
Stanza Two
I can't tell from the comments how others are taking S.2, nor for that matter how you view/intend S.2. Does the pronoun ‘they’ refer to the trees or to mother and father? Though the definition of ‘percolate’ as seeping is non-directional, I image, like perk coffee or spring water, an upward movement. I image mother and father buried/planted in the back yard, her breath percolating up through the ash trees, father still anxious about whether it should have been the front yard. Even in death he is consumed with making decisions for them both, while she is, finally, merrily feeding carbon dioxide to the ash trees.
Some brief googling informs me that afforestation is the planting of trees where they would not otherwise be, making a forest where it would not be on its own. It is done for the economic gain, or for ecological reasons – the creation of a carbon sink.
A little boiling down gets me to this – “the brutalization of mother – by this I mean her breath percolating in the ash trees . . .” Of course this suggests he offed her, and maybe himself too. It doesn’t completely fit because we have no one left to do the planting in the back yard. And of course it is far fetched, but the ripples of the poetic lines travel far.
How does it read ending the poem with the ash trees? I don’t suggest that, just speculate.
So this is what I got. Make of it what you will, or ignore it.
I enjoyed engaging with the poem, it was rewarding.
Cheers.
T
