BOOKS
Check: is the second bed
Unrumpled, as agreed?
Landlords have to think ahead
In case of need,
Too. Keep things straight: don't take
The matches, the wrong keyrings-
We've nowhere we could keep a keepsak8-
Ashtrays, combs, things
That sooner or later others
Would accidentally find.
Check; take nothing of one another's
And leave behind
Your license number only,
Which they won't care to trace;
We've paid. Still, should such things get lonel')"
Leav.e in their vase
An aspirin to preserve
Our lilacs, the wayside flowers
We've gathered and must leave to serve
A few more hours;
That's all. We can't tell when
We'll come back" can't press claims;
We would no doubt hav,e other rooms then,
Or other names.
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Why, then, does the poem work as well as it obviously does? Perhaps
because the poet has been so very relentless in the cataloguing of those
things
that in essence constitute the reality of his experience, an experi–
ence so fragile, so impermanent as to have left no other marks on the
poet's psyche. Precisely what is enforced in Snodgrass' poem is the
anonymity of experience in the modern world, a radical skepticism about
the communicability of emotions within contexts that are socially con–
ditioned or imposed. No sense of persons, of personalities emerges from
the poem. Even the authority that lurks somewhere beyond the scene
is faceless, perhaps more a product of the imagination than anything
substantial. The specter of the haunted self locked within itself, yet in
fitful combat with the world, is wonderfully suggested by the poet's use
of words like "others" and "they." Who these others are we cannot
be
expected to say, nor would the poet be likely to identify them with
precision. And yet, mysteriously, all of us know, beyond saying, for we
trust Snodgrass as a guide in these matters.
