Review of American poet Denis Jhonson’s poem ‘The story’

 

Review of American poet Denis Johnson's poem ‘The story’

I request readers to read the poem first from the link below and then only my review. Thanks.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=34230

Denis Johnson's poem is rather abstract. So let’s first look at the visualizations of the poet. The first two stanzas picture a donut shop in a train station. The narrator is looking around and an old woman in an adjacent seat looks disturbed. But the third stanza is crucial:

in the fear of replies, in horror

of doorways, sleep, friendships,

and what napkins! – wordless

white interrogations wanting the

whole story again!

 

The poem breaks loose from a tiny bakery backdrop to the formal brief exchanges of daily life that impacts sleep. The narrator is like too seriously living. He is unable to accept people are meeting you on business, and if they run into you they may not focus on what you tell and might request you to repeat. The tissue paper is a witness. The napkins are a metaphor for mornings that are never as bright as the narrator wants them to be. If this stanza is about brief unfocused exchanges, the next one drifts to the dilution in relationships over a period of time. A person who was lovable looks now a Martian. The architecture of the old houses is irrelevant now. So it’s natural that is fading away. The boxes are metaphors of the present state of empty mind when the love has diluted and the memories of the native village or town. The minds are these boxes. So the minds are recalling some legends and shedding tears for a motherless person can drift him from the sense of loss only for a while. The minds can refuse to accept the present and the compulsions of an urban life. But the bitter truth remains we are part of it.

 

The poem is on the other side of the insecurity, loneliness and recluse feel in modern life. The poem is very abstract, subtle and demands creative reading.