"A. in May," by Kathleen Ossip
from Boston Review March/April 2012
Some days I think dissipation deserves a trophy. Like we could set it on a marble dais, we could feed it Turkish Delights, we could flatter it with some sort of devotional verse, maybe about the regularity of its phonemes. I've always felt that Mary Jo Bang's Louise in Love gave at least a healthy nod to dissipation, if not an outright embrace. Like if there was a lifestyle piece in the Times about what it feels like to have no direction in life, and a full measure of wealth to invest in this shiftlessness, it would end up being a selection of poems from Louis in Love.
Ossip's "A. in May" starts with that feeling. As though the woman being described could barely trouble herself to create language. "Natural it is to be disgusted and hopeless, / Disgusted and hopeless at being related to her, / Relating to her is what keeps me alive." The language actually feels as though it can't get up out of its chairbed. Or it won't. And yet, the literal message from the speaker is that she can't help but observe this woman. In fact, the statement "Natural it is to be disgusted and hopeless" could be what this speaker thinks the woman is thinking. It could also be what the speaker is thinking as she looks at the woman. We could say the first half of the poem is a double entendre dedicated to dissipation.
And the second half of the poem would be the struggle with disappointment. But not the disappointment where the speaker can stand at some distance and judge this woman, as though that woman and all her unurgable minutes are some grand disappointment. The dissapointment in "A. in May" has to do with how "natural" it is that this scene exists. In fact, how natural it is for the woman on her chairbed to be suffering, and dissipated, and self-absorbed. And how natural it is that we, along with the speaker, would be disappointed, and, naturally, our judgment would have no basis. If you can pull the frame of reference back far enough, say to the whole "universe of process," there really is nothing we can claim is unnatural.
It's like the poem is one long pean to discouragement. The woman's. The speaker's. It's like Ossip tapped into malaise. And, quite honestly, that woman on a chairbed might benefit from reading a poem about that.
Recommended Links:
The Cold War
Louise in Love , by Mary Jo Bang
Kathleen Ossip home page