The Myth of Correspondence
To fully understand the pictures I have sent you
first, fill a bathtub with water and ice
get into the tub with all of your clothes on.
Only then should you shake these photographs out
of this careful assemblage of paper.
This is the only way you’ll be able to understand
the shades of weather that separate us, the only way
to separate yourself from your envelope
of tropical breezes and permanent sunshine.
I will speak to you through the ice bruising your skin
a frigid wraith clinging to you from too far away.
___________
Holly Day
Review by Jared Pearce
I like how the poem forces the idea of real experience onto the reader (and the ideal reader) in order to be understood. Sure, we might say the poem lunges into an absurd position, but it’s precisely that absurdity that make the poem hit: we rely on shared experience to understand and maybe even to love others. I’m not sure there isn’t a jab at Baudelaire in the title?
Review by Philip Kirsch
“Correspondence” because that is “communication,” correspondence also because that is correlation, how one thing relates to another, how “shades of weather” are emotion and circumstance, how only some shock of ice and cold will shake the other from their “tropical breezes and permanent sunshine” of being, and the “frigid wraith” they have reduced the correspondent to can at least “cling to you” from an emotional distance “too far away.” Wonderful work!