Dear Jennifer Boyden

Dear Jennifer Boyden,

Where have you been all my life? I don't think I really saw poetry until now, or at least what poetry can do when unhitched from the literal. You language a dead end dominated by syntax, silencing the shoulding. I keep hearing Steve Martin's "May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?" The moral is, when we teach kids to talk wrong, they make poetry that sidesteps the mundane and approaches the beautiful. Skip the similes and give me pure metaphor! To quote Steve Martin, "Listen to this..."

On a first read, I liked "Like a Frequency, Like Looking Right at It" best. It is pretty easy to understand from a literal perspective, but it has one moment where the language launches itself out of the syntax:

In June, the man noticed how quietly the evenings held
themselves. Birds did not have to ask to continue, nor
the grass. There were no answers anyway that meant
they could not do as they wished, and so flying, and so
the world greenly. (23)

The moment I mean is, of course, "and so flying, and so/the world greenly." What does that mean? Literally, it doesn't make sense because "flying" is a gerund and can't really stand by itself as a clause, and "so/the world" gears the reader up for the beginning of a clause and then pulls the rug out with "greenly," which isn't a word because "green" is an adjective and not an "adverb," and I was expecting a verb anyway. Luckily, for the first-timer, the poem folds back into normal syntax after this moment.

And yet, I'm drawn back to this moment as amazing. It seems to capture the birds' perspective. Birds don't worry about clauses; they just fly. They are always already flying, even when still, so the gerund works really well. The use of "greenly" is also pretty cool because like the gerund, it conveys action in the midst of ongoing existence, as if, to quote Kermit, "being green" is the reality of the living, interconnected forest or, to quote Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Word for World is Forest." Green is a lifestyle; it is something we see in and do to the world, and the man and the birds share a moment of this together, a kind of immanence. Wow, Jennifer Boyden.

On a first read, I didn't like the other poems as well because they didn't leap out at me literally, as this immediately obvious one did, and yet, I am still reading and realizing the need to go back for a reread, to see all that your breathtaking breaking of syntax has to offer. I spent several hours last night imitating you in my own sad poetry, and I feel a whole landscape open up. No looking back, Eurydice! Orpheus writes the only poetry. Thanks, Jennifer Boyden. See you soon! https://www.facebook.com/events/1514140552146663/

Very truly yours,

An admirer

Works Cited

Boyden, Jennfier. The Declarable Future. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2013. Print.

Kermit the Frog. "Green." Sesame Street. 1970.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Word for World is Forest. Putnam, 1976. Print.

Martin, Steve. "Philosophy/Religion/College/Language." A Wild and Crazy Guy. Warner Bros., 1978. Cassette Tape.

The Declarable Future Book Cover. Jennifer Boyden. n.d. Web. 13 April 2014. http://www.jenniferboyden.com/