 |
| {credits: "When the Leather is a Whip" by Martin Espada; Online flirter donated by Stephanie} |
I was hard, once.
So the best I could love
was hard. People felt tweaked when they
hugged me.
I was loud and unrelenting, so my love
was ugly.
She was a torn soul. So her affection
was
sometimes terrible: “I hate you!”
“No I love you! Intensely!”
Everything she felt, she spread
immensely.
They were always drunk. So they got
more drunk together. He died at 51 in a
car crash.
She sold all his things, and drank the
cash.
*
When I was 12, I looked at this picture
Every night, of a woman in her pale
underwear.
Touched myself, felt lightning there.
You might have
asked me at 24, was that love?
And I'd have
laughed you a “No-hh!!” But then again,
at 24, I was a
pompous prick; I wouldn't have dated me then.
For my own, my
ex's, my uncle's ghost's sake—
for all that I want
to embrace and adore—I think I've decided to understand:
my love is only as
good as I am.
My love is as good
as I am.
The speaker considers the types of love that he has encountered in his lifetime and also how his wisdom and perception of love has evolved. He admits to having once been callous with his affection and to have been a pompous prick at 24 years old. This idea of love from a flawed person is present with the other anecdotes: the overly emotional ex-girlfriend and the alcoholic uncle. All of these characters gave and received love, but they had their own vices that made that love lesser. Thus the speaker comes to the final conclusion that "my love is as good as I am", meaning that for his love to have value he must improve himself.
ReplyDeleteFrom the opening line, “I was hard once”, the speaker is quick to scorn himself for embodying a peculiar hardness, which is possibly caused by two factors: his physical desires for the “torn soul” and his negative experiences with his alcoholic uncle. The connection he makes between his hardened character and his “ugly love” allows him to make the broader correlation that he ends up repeating two times: “My love is as good/ as I am.” What intrigues me is the theory that his hardness could have been a direct consequence of his love, the “torn soul”, going off with his uncle. If that is the case, then I can only speculate about who is the female he finds deep pleasure in within the 4th stanza; what is the significance of that scene? Could it be the start of a superficial love that culminates in his own self-realization? It is interesting how the poem, excluding the final two lines, has the rhyme scheme ABB CDD EFF and so on. For a poem with a disordered timeline, this orderly structure provides a juxtaposing feeling to me. Love can either be straightforward or it can be chaotic, with the personality of the lover serving as the determining factor .
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThis poem makes the point that we can only give as much as we get, and that “my love is as good as I am.” People must share a bit of themselves to love another, and the way they treat another will be reflective of themselves, their attitude, and the way they interact with the world around them. The poem mentions how the aunt and uncle were “always drunk”, and so that's how their love behaved: they drank together, and after he died, she continued to drink, no different or better off than she was before. The speaker mentions how “I was hard, once. So the best I could love was hard.” These opening lines set the tone of the rest of the piece, which is contemplative and somewhat melancholy, but not hopeless. It is simply a fact of life that we can only love the way we are, and that our love will reflect our own experiences and personalities even without our intentions.
The speaker characterizes love as a reflection of experiences. The first three stanzas describe how the speaker’s views on love were molded by his emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend and alcoholic uncle. The speaker states that what his ex felt “spread immensely”, thus thinking that his “love was ugly” because their relationship was ugly. The fourth and fifth stanzas jump in ages, showing how love has no definite definition. Stating twice “My love is as good as I am” is reflective, and the speaker is looking back on how he loved. Deep down, he wants to improve himself to be better and refuses to end up like his ex and uncle. The irony is that he ridicules them, but he isn’t any better by saying “I was loud and unrelenting, so my love was ugly.” Noticing these flaws represents how love is flawed, but once he becomes better for himself, his love will only improve.
ReplyDeleteWait - huh? There's no distance in this poem between the ex, the uncle, and the speaker: they are 3 examples side-by-side. All of us, our love reflecting our inner states.
Delete