POEM: ARDEN ALWEN JONES

Arden-Alwen Jones

Arden Alwen Jones came upon his way

late in his fifty-seventh year that May.

Birds chirped and with bright flowers in field

Time came around to see what’s revealed.

“Arden-Alwen! Arden-Alwen! Come in for dinner!

Grandma’s made meatloaf and latecomers are sinners!

Tomorrow, we’ve church and our weekly confession.

(I’m sure you’ll remember last week’s omission.)

Say goodbye to your friends—their parents are calling.

Don’t drag your heels! Young man, quit stalling!

Wash your hands before dinner. And wipe those shoes.

Hang your coat up quick, there’s no time to lose!

Put away your glove, your ball and your bat.

Don’t fight with your sister! Just sit were you sat.

And if your homework’s all done—then some Fibber McGee.

Now come in and greet grandma, your father, and me.”

...

“Arden-Alwen! Arden-Alwen! Come pick your shame.

The cows are in the corn, calling your name.

Don’t sleep under haystacks—soon you’re a man!

Your schooling’s near finished. What is your plan?

Why, when I was a boy as the bard once wrote,

I was true to myself, to bend the quote.

But there’s no pie in the sky, no lunch that’s free.

It’s settle for you as it settled for me.

It’s the way of the world, lad, to choose what’s known.

Straying too far is like a horn that’s blown

against the wind or in a peal of thunder.

We do what we know, not what we wonder.

I know you’re sorry to be so confused;

it’ll all be over after you’re used.

So take my advice, be it plastics or rice,

the ball’s in your court. See you don’t slice.”

...

“Arden-Alwen! Arden-Alwen! Where can you be?

There’s pudding on the table and colour TV!

And after you’re done we must pad our nest.

There’s a bun in my oven—you know the rest:

Like that blue car with tail-fins, all shiny and new;

that house in the tract with its breath-taking view.

And mothers for tea and dads on the lawns

talking their politics and other great yawns.

And children in cribs, children on bikes,

girls baking cookies and boys making dikes

while watering flowerbeds with new plastic hoses,

getting in scrapes and wiping their noses

on muddy sleeves wet with water that’s held

by newly built dams where wild rivers once swelled.

With isotopes of progress and chemical sprays,

Arden Alwen, we live in the best of new days!

O let me smother you with kisses and love you all up!

My sweet thing! My rose! My ever-full cup!

Arden-Alden! Arden-Alden! Where can you be?

They’re fishing for sharks in the deep blue sea!”

I HAD A RATHER FRUSTRATING DAY TODAY. I wanted to work on a blog post entitled, “Rock and Hawk”, which is a poem by the American poet Robinson Jeffers, and about which I wrote an essay at university, back in the day. I wanted to get a feel for his poem and my essay, and also to read another essay about RJ written by John Michael Greer, and discuss it a bit. But…of course that entails doing a bit of work—and even thinking—so instead, I went into my nostalgia cage and culled this poem (that I do kinda like, actually).

I had the image of someone being 'talked at' all his life. I thought it would be interesting to have a poem in which everyone except the main character has a voice. The poem traces the life of Arden-Alwen from childhood to adulthood. I wasn’t being nostalgic in opening the poem with a post-WWII setting. I mentioned in June’s 20/18 post about how, after the war, there was a gradual loss of innocence, as the relief of having that horror end gave way to other (some more subtle, some not so subtle) horrors of the 50s, 60s and onward. I wanted to describe or suggest that innocence and its loss, and the resulting anxiety and fear, as seen through the eyes of one individual, Arden-Alwen.
 The first stanza sets the stage with the obligations of family placed upon the boy; nothing particularly extraordinary or burdensome, but I was amused to write the list of ‘do’s and don’ts with which little Arden-Alwen has to live.

The second stanza takes up with Arden-Alwen at an age where he is about to enter the working world in some manner. And yes, I was thinking of the movie, The Graduate, and the scene where young Benjamin is getting advice from a family friend on career choices about how “plastics” was the wave of the future, and how the plastics industry was where the new university graduate should make his mark. I thought of parents shaping their children into clones of themselves, perhaps unintentionally, and 'dragging them' out from under childhood's haystacks, dusting them off, and sending them on their way into a future that's been chosen for them.

Another theme in the poem is change. Change today is so stupidly rapid and we’ve come to assume that’s just the way it is. We feel, for example, the much touted “digital age” that has metastasized over the last two decades is the base line for our learning curve, and what came before (previous technologies, processes and practices, traditional political and social structures, etc.) is passé and yesterday’s news. My point, of course, is we should be cautious about what we discard along the way to our imagined future. There are some things we still may need. 
 Perhaps the changes we see about us are more superficial than we imagine, maybe more of a smoke screen disguising the reality underneath all the razzmatazz, a reality we may soon trip over and face-plant in if we’re not careful. 

I think there is a suggestion in the poem that some things being passed along from parents to their children shouldn't be passed along. The speaker who gives young  Arden-Alwen advice seems jaded and cynical. And he seems determined to ensure what happened to him will happen to his young charge. I thought it was interesting where the second stanza ends with a bit of a threat. (“See you don’t slice," suggesting the image of a knife.) And I’m sorry for the mixed sports metaphors!

The third stanza covers Arden-Alwen’s early married life. I did have images of late 1950s and early-60s in mind—times which were full of hope and change, as well as threat and challenge. The image of little boys with new plastic hoses watering flowerbeds and daydreaming about raging rivers in the mud of their gardens is a memory of my own. I daydreamed away gallons of water carving the mud of the bushes and shrubs in front of our house. I probably washed away everything except the nutrient-poor, so-called ‘soil’ around their root balls that's standard fare for newly built suburbs, then and now.

I like the juxtaposition of the children’s activities with the adults, and that they all seem to be caught in a way of life that for the most part is devoid of living. That's why, at the poem’s end, our erst-while hero seems to be missing. Where, oh where can he be? Unlike Waldo, I don’t think you’ll find him in the picture anymore.

Cheers, Jake.

POEM: DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING MORE TO ADD?

Do You Have Anything

More to Add?

“It’s not what you use—

it’s what you don’t use!” *

Gig Young as “Jones” in an odd sort of role:

He plays a how-the-mighty-have-fallen-

too-bitter-to-talk late-Sixties,
Nevada desert-dweller type.

It’s not a role he’s usually

known for, that being the sophisticate,

or the dissolute (or most-resolute

and charming!) rake; or the befuddled

bachelor-father-uncle—so worldly

and busy, yet touchingly comic and naive

when it comes to small children,

strong women and pets.

He often played the hero—

the handsome bomber-pilot;

the cowboy-adventurer-rescuer type;

the sheriff or platoon leader,

or some other holdout

of post-War optimism.

I remember him as the dapper,

tuxedo-wearing Monte Carlo gambler,

the Seville Row-garbed spy,

the international jewel thief,

the professional heart-breaker!

He played the role 
of the devil-may-care manipulator—

so cynical and fearless, 
so well.

Usually his characters were too busy

living and loving to worry much
about paying no-never-mind.

He was a solid B-List Hollywood actor,

with his sardonic smile and laugh,

and carefully arched eyebrow.

He died in 1978. Before all this.

Before this became that.

In the movie,

the daughter of Jones’s

love interest is getting water from

an outdoor well pump.

As she drinks, she lets the water run,

prompting Jones to admonish the girl

about  her citified, spendthrift ways—

the irony being that he was once, himself,

a rich and high-flying playboy,

and a far greater wastrel

than the girl will ever be.

And we know she won’t be a wastrel

by the shape the story must take—

by the dove-tailing of opposites—

like cutting and crimping a sheet metal

to bring the two ends together.

(In high school shop class it took me forever

to cut and bend and bang a sheet of tin

into a tool box. But I did it. Eventually.)

The story of Jones—

going from city to desert,

from one end to the other,

like the girl and her mother,

is carefully shaped:

Snips and cuts are made;

film tossed to the editing-room floor

until all the opposites dove-tail neatly

to meet each other.

Sad beginnings bend into happy endings.

Nowadays, we’ve lost our opposites:

Our beginnings and endings

seem to go on forever.

There are no edges, no shapes.

And there’s nowhere to cut.

We can’t see the pattern of the toolbox.

We can’t see what we use and don’t use, anymore.

And we can’t add because we’ve forgotten how to subtract.

*from the TV movie— The Neon Ceiling (1971)

And with apologies for all I’ve mis-remembered.

For the liberties I’ve taken. For the trust I’ve shaken.

For races not run.

For every last undone.

For those I’ve un-gladded,

For all I’ve not added.

For my late subtractions

and inaction;

my blood-lettings and siphoned airs.

And for all that wishful climbing

of those wistful,

un-climbed stairs.

Of razors dulled, favours culled.

Of apples bitten, 
love letters unwritten.

For stones I’ve cast 
and rocks uncovered.

For days sped by, 
undiscovered.

For all the galls in all the stalls,

behind the walls 
of broken, plastic shopping malls,

with their airs of got

and their hot 
and carboned 
parking lots.

For the draping and aping,

the ever-so-clever 
shaping of the truth.

For this and that and everything 
from my age to youth:

For these and all and every,

and those still yet to come.

In sum I’ll say, "forgive me"

for what I shan’t become.

THIS IS ANOTHER POEM THAT I’M NOT SATISFIED WITH. (If only I could write the perfect poem! Is that even possible?) It’s a combination movie review, memoir and a look back on a previous era, so it’s kind of a hodgepodge, cut and crimped together like a toolbox I made in shop class, one time. I was thinking about the optimism of the time following World War Two and how that gradually gave way to things like the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Arms Race and all those other cheerful contests and conflicts and social disorders, and I guess I was thinking about how this type of zeitgeist affects people and society. I skewed all this (awkwardly, I think) through the lens of the movie actor Gig Young and the types of roles he played throughout his career, from victorious GIs in WWII, to cowboys with white hats, to movie heroes in the 6os and 70s. All the roles, the movies, the times seemed to be on some kind of upward trajectory to—what? a better world? Perhaps. Even if it was one seen from a narrow, Hollywood perspective.

     I guess part of what I'm getting at is this gradual loss of purpose or trajectory, today. We don’t know what to do anymore; the signs on the road ahead are either missing or out-of-date. Gig Young’s line from the movie that I quote at the start of the poem, in part, asks the question we all ask: What can we do? How can we make sense of our lives, of our place in the world? The poem seems to suggest that we need to let go, to “learn to subtract” again—something we’ve forgotten how to do. Perhaps it’s a call to be environmental stewards—to replenish our planet; that’s one interpretation. After all, Gig Young’s character, Jones, is certainly vexed with the young girl as she wastes water while taking a drink at the outdoor pump. She doesn’t ‘add’ anything in Jones’s point of view; she wastes valuable water.

     But there is an additional point made about no longer having “opposites”, that we can’t see the endpoints on any continuum we might imagine, and thus we don’t know where we can stand because we can’t see either extreme. Perhaps this means that, unless we're careful, we can end up at one end or the other, unbalanced in our lives. I know this is a bit unclear (and it is a bit unclear to me, rest assured). But our lives involve ‘editing’ or ‘clipping’ or ‘crimping’ or ‘folding’ things to bring those extremes of adding and subtracting into some kind of balance. My reading of “adding” and “subtracting” is pretty simple: adding means giving back in some manner—to others, to our society, to our planet. Subtracting is taking away, but the speaker says that we have “forgotten” how to subtract, which might mean that we are unaware of how to take away just what we need (like a bucket of water without wasting water). It’s a rather simple message. Simple messages aren’t necessarily stupid ones.

     The postscript seems to be more of a personal apology on the part of the speaker for having lived his life at those extremes, and of not having attempted to find any balance or harmony. And perhaps that's a common failing in a lot of people, especially these days. The speaker ends his apology on a note of despair, stating he is incapable of change. That his apology is in the form of an open, unaddressed letter suggests he is at a remove from others, perhaps because of the “extreme” choices he made throughout his life; he can't talk directly to others, anymore. Though, the fact that the speaker is aware of his situation and does indeed compose his apology, even if it is tacked on at the end, gives a glimmer of hope that change is not impossible.

     Finally, the exasperated tone in the title makes it pretty clear what the author feels toward the speaker!

     I don’t know if I care for this poem. The postscript seems to be tacked on, and I'm not sure if it isn’t just unnecessary ranting. But my favourite image is the “carboned” parking lots. For some reason, I've got a fixation about parking lots. (“Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”)

     Enjoy this poem, or go make your own toolbox! 

Cheers. Jake

*I don’t know if this is relevant, but in 1978 Gig Young shot his new wife, Kim Schmidt, then committed suicide. Somewhere along the way he had lost his sense of balance.