Very interesting "coming of age" poem this week by Erica Ehrenberg, with the narrator as an adolescent girl and her relationship with another of the girls in her class. They are still at that "awkward stage", not yet women but no longer little girls, and the narrator desribes their relationship.

The other girl, had "the most exquisite body", obviously having developed more quickly than the rest of the girls in the class, but she was also "The most careless girl in the class". And while the other girls were uncomfortable and self-conscious about their bodies, the other girl was without inhibitions -

"because her awkwardness,
so unlike ours, manifested itself as a license
to kick off all consciousness of her limbs
like a branch one smacks out of one's face"

The narrator and her classmates were clearly envious of this other girl. We all remember that girl from our school days, the one whose breast developed first, and left all the boys staring dumbly whenever she walked by. The one we all wish we were -

" ..It was through her body
that I wanted to pass close to the bodies of the boys."

The narrator wanted to be close to this girl, to somehow be a part of her world, benefit from their relationship, like most of us wanted to be associated with the girl that was popular with all of the boys. Yet, there was something unreal, mysterious about this other girl -

"She would take me home with her and all but throw me
into the dark dynamics of her empty-seeming household,
which I felt to be hung with heavily stitched draperies
that concealed not only the rooms but the beings inside"

The narrator felt somewhat self-conscious about her her own awkwardness around this girl. Yet, like the spider to the fly, she was totally fascinated by her -

"She took me there and spun me into her weird intimacy
in which my own self-consciousness was a pestering
insect— stupid, negligible.

When they were out on the street together, the girlwould play the "Lolita" role.tempting and teasing the men, and leaving the the narrator somewhat embarressed, yet fascinated and excited by the encounters -

She would speak to people, to men,
to anyone in the streets and walk just as quickly off,
implicating me in the desire she aroused,"

And here, from my perspective, we get more than a hint of a potential "lesbian" relationship between the two, or atleast the desire on the part of the narrator to know her friend in a more "carnal way".

"her uncontainability streaking through me a blazing
trail of lights from high in the whitest part of my head
down into my lungs, my entrails,
the part of me that wasn't breathing."

That, at least, is my own take on this poem

GR


"The Most Careless Girl in the Class Had the Most Exquisite Body"
- by Erica Ehrenberg


The most careless girl in the class had the most exquisite body,
the constant proximity of which exhausted us,
not least because her awkwardness,
so unlike ours, manifested itself as a license
to kick off all consciousness of her limbs
like a branch one smacks out of one's face
in the woods in an act of defiance, almost contempt,
whose ironic outcome was the deepest inhabitation
of flesh I have ever seen. It was through her body
that I wanted to pass close to the bodies of the boys.
She would take me home with her and all but throw me
into the dark dynamics of her empty-seeming household,
which I felt to be hung with heavily stitched draperies
that concealed not only the rooms but the beings inside.
She took me there and spun me into her weird intimacy
in which my own self-consciousness was a pestering
insect— stupid, negligible. She would speak to people, to men,
to anyone in the streets and walk just as quickly off,
implicating me in the desire she aroused,
her uncontainability streaking through me a blazing
trail of lights from high in the whitest part of my head
down into my lungs, my entrails,
the part of me that wasn't breathing.

Ms. Ryan,

I wondered if I was imagining that, but if you see it too, then it must be there.
Adolescence is the time to sort these things out. The poem seems to be candid and honest.

NoStar

Good afternoon, There is no question that this poem has very strong sexual overtones. And just the very feel of the poem, and the relationship between the two girls, the tension is several parts of the poem tends to hint at lesbianism to me.

It could be just the uncomfortable awakening of normal sexual desires, and certainly that is there. But I think the wording in serveral areas hints at "more", shall we say.

GR

WOW. I like this poem!!!! I like it more than any Tuesday Poem I can remember in a long time.

More in my Front Post to come...

Men !

Some young girl acts the tart and you get all atwitter. But it is a good poem. I like the phrasing very much.

GR

Hi GR (and WR, me, too!).

Good afternoon HAP. I find this a most entertaining poem.

GR

GretchenRyan:

Men ! Some young girl acts the tart and you get all atwitter. (...)

Oh do hush, Gretchen. :) (Hope that doesn't sound too harsh. I visited London at the end of May for the first time, and am something of an Anglophile in other ways, so know just a tad of the dialect...just not the relative emotive force of some of the idioms.)

Seriously: I'm atwitter at the prospect of a Tuesday Poet who can write. Do you know what a rare thing that is around here? For a long time, the Tuesday Poems were so stupefyingly bad that some of us (with me usually holding forth the banner) were calling them the Tuesday Tripe. (I know some consider tripe a delicacy, but I'm not one of them.) This poem is excellent as a contemporary poem. About time.

I find the girl's "tartness" disturbing. And that's the point of the poem: it is disturbing, for her female peers and everyone else of all ages alike. And it is reminiscent. I could tell you some stories about a sophomore high school class and three girls I knew there: two tarts and a sugar cookie (or whatever it is you call one of those over there): one tart behind me, one tart immediately to her left and the sugar cookie in the next row. I would've taken the cookie over two dozen each of the tarts. Alas, as such girls seemingly always do, she already had a steady boyfriend...

Many of you women (if I may say it) completely underestimate the Power of Nice. The girl in this poem does. Too bad for her. Too bad.

wr ()()

That last line especially, Gretchen and NoStar, is not reminiscent of lesbian curiosity (with its potential for arousal), but of feeling "un-woman-ed" in the presence of a superior heterosexual specimen, just as a man can feel "unmanned" in a parallel presence of his own gender. I've been there and done that, as noted elsewhere. There is no hint of lesbian attraction in this poem, but there are hints from front to back of heterosexual awe, jealousy and envy.

Our tolerance of homosexuality as a society has many deleterious effects, not least of which being reading motives into human interactions that aren't there.

wr ()()

Rabbit,

I agree with you now. The curiosity is about the uniqueness (for that class) of that exquisite body.

NS

Certainly I could have been mistaken. But there was just something about the poem, a feeling while reading it I think it began with the lines

"She would take me home with her and all but throw me
into the dark dynamics of her empty-seeming household,
which I felt to be hung with heavily stitched draperies
that concealed not only the rooms but the beings inside"

I suppose this could be alluding to the nature of "tart" - somehow empty, and that her behavior was a facade, a layer of protection to hide her own misgivings

". . .that concealed not only the rooms but the beings inside"

GR

It occurs to me that my response, in what I said and how I said it, is a textbook example of Jungian psychology (via John Beebe's theory of archetypes ) in action. Here an ENFP engages his supportive, decision-making capacity based on personal values in a Good Parent role (that's the archetype): a role with a particular tone of voice that brooks no disagreement or defiance.

I have to laugh at myself, even though I stand by my position.

wr ()()

I also did not pick up lesbian overtones in this piece, WR, but the last line rang false for me in an otherwise realistically evocative piece - it seems to me that ALL parts of "me" would be breathing in the presence of this marvelous creature. The alternative, I suppose, would be that the narrator is simply struck breathless.

I would also dispute Gretchen's reference to the girl as a tart. As evidenced by describing her as "careless," I instead see a girl/woman as yet either unaware of or unconcerned about her sexuality (casting it off "like a branch one smacks out of one's face"). Temporarily, no doubt.

I wonder if the ambiguity comes aboutt because the point of view is a writer looking from her adult self back at her adolescent self. .. . She is in 'constant proximity' with this exquisite body . . . Like her feet, she takes it everywhere. I wonder if the poet is, in a sense, observing herself from a different standpoint in life, and it's not lesbian curiosity, but a kind of 'objective narcisssism,' a kind of auto-erotica view that makes the poem so powerful . . .

Hi White_Rabbit:

Regarding: Our tolerance of homosexuality as a society has many deleterious effects, not least of which being reading motives into human interactions that aren't there.

You must have bumped your head. I hope your condition improves soon. Or maybe you are kidding, right?