To me the poem is in the juxtaposition of the rather mundane, ordinary
tactile and olfactory sensations called up by the memory of clean laundry--I
can recall when I was a kid, living at 4032 Garfield in St. Louis, and my
mother would have me take down the wash off the line.
She would hang the laundry on a line in our backyard. It would be spring,
summer, the wind would be blowing, I would reach up to take the clothes off
the line, the wind would blow the just washed fabric into my face, I would
stand there, smelling it, taking it in, the sunlight, the birds singing
around the grass--
I can smell, feel see all that right now. For me then the poem is a--what
do you call it when you relate two unrelated thoughts or sensations, like
when you take acid and hear colors and see music--I want to say
synchronicity but I don't think that's it--I relate these sensations of
clean clothing, passing my hands over a shirt I had just ironed, or one my
mother ironed, with the concept of cleaning up the environment the earth.
Of course as in all such pieces as this, which are almost impressionistic,
the situation the actual situation called up may seem ludicrous or ordinary
or even one of drudgery--I suppose if in your mind the idea of doing laundry
conjured up somebody working in the prison laundry 18 hours a day and hot
scalding water lye soap and gray dirty clothes and stringy hair and underfed
laundresses you might not see this.
"it has to be loved the way a laundress loves her linens" does not call to
mind the scullery maid, but the free worker taking joy in the simple
pleasures of a job voluntarily entered into, well done. In this sense
clothes are not clothes but an attitude toward life and the world--just as
when your clothes are illfitting, dirty smelly and rumpled your attitude can
be I am miserable and don't give a damn.
No, one must pass from the actual situation to the sensations and memories
liberated by this poem--"Ironing Pablo Neruda"--the title may rankle--but do
Pablo Neruda give a damn? No, this poet is going out on a limb maybe, but
she is saying she is going to go even further, the writer, the singer of the
lines, "the skin of this planet, has to be ironed" we are going to go
further, wash the trees, the grasses, the mosses, polish them.
This is poetry, not the drafting of legal briefs. We are free to be
pretentious and silly and even wrong if we want, so be it, as long as we are
rhythmic and emotional.
This poem is both--love it? If it was a person I'd marry it!
Chris Hayden
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