American Melancholy Read online

  Publisher’s Note

  Rendering poetry in a digital format presents several challenges, just as its many forms continue to challenge the conventions of print. In print, however, a poem takes place within the static confines of a page, hewing as close as possible to the poet’s intent, whether it’s Walt Whitman’s lines stretching to the margin like Route 66, or Robert Creeley’s lines descending the page like a string tie. The printed poem has a physical shape, one defined by the negative space that surrounds it—a space that is crafted by the broken lines of the poem. The line, as vital a formal and critical component of the form of a poem as metaphor, creates rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, tension, and so on.

  Reading poetry on a small device will not always deliver line breaks as the poet intended—with the pressure the horizontal line brings to a poem, rather than the completion of the grammatical unit. The line, intended as a formal and critical component of the form of the poem, has been corrupted by breaking it where it was not meant to break, interrupting a number of important elements of the poetic structure—rhythm, timing, proportion, drama, meaning, and so on. A little like a tightrope walker running out of rope before reaching the other side.

  There are limits to what can be done with long lines on digital screens. At some point, a line must break. If it has to break more than once or twice, it is no longer a poetic line, with the integrity that lineation demands. On smaller devices with enlarged type, a line break may not appear where its author intended, interrupting the unit of the line and its importance in the poem’s structure.

  We attempt to accommodate long lines with a hanging indent—similar in fashion to the way Whitman’s lines were treated in books whose margins could not honor his discursive length. On your screen, a long line will break according to the space available, with the remainder of the line wrapping at an indent. This allows readers to retain control over the appearance of text on any device, while also indicating where the author intended the line to break.

  This may not be a perfect solution, as some readers initially may be confused. We have to accept, however, that we are creating poetry e-books in a world that is imperfect for them—and we understand that to some degree the line may be compromised. Despite this, we’ve attempted to protect the integrity of the line, thus allowing readers of poetry to travel fully stocked with the poetry that needs to be with them.

  —Daniel Halpern, Publisher

  Dedication

  For my poet-friend Henri Cole; and in memoriam,

  Charlie Gross, first reader and beloved husband

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Publisher’s Note

  Dedication

  I.

  The Coming Storm

  In Hemp-Woven Hammocks Reading the Nation

  Exsanguination

  Little Albert, 1920

  Harlow’s Monkeys

  Obedience: 1962

  Loney

  The Coming Storm

  Edward Hopper’s “Eleven A.M.,” 1926

  II.

  The First Room

  The First Room

  Sinkholes

  That Other

  The Mercy

  The Blessing

  This Is not a Poem

  Apocalypso

  III.

  American Melancholy

  To Marlon Brando in Hell

  Too Young to Marry But Not Too Young to Die

  Doctor Help Me

  Old America Has Come Home to Die

  Jubilate: An Homage in Catterel Verse

  Kite Poem

  American Sign Language

  Hometown Waiting For You

  IV.

  “This Is the Time . . .”

  Hatefugue

  A Dream of Stopped-Up Drains

  Bloodline, Elegy

  Harvesting Skin

  “This is the Time for Which We Have Been Waiting”

  The Tunnel

  Palliative

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Joyce Carol Oates

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  I.

  The Coming Storm

  In Hemp-Woven Hammocks Reading the Nation

  This is the season when the husbands lie

  in their hemp-woven hammocks for the last time

  reading the Nation in waning autumn light

  before dusk rises from the earth

  before the not-knowing if (ever) (again) the earth

  will turn on its axis to the light, the great furnace

  of the light, will it return the husbands to the light

  in their hemp-woven hammocks reading the Nation.

  Exsanguination

  Life as it unspools

  ever more eludes

  examination.

  We wonder what is best—

  exsanguination in a rush,

  or in 1,000 small slashes.

  Little Albert, 1920

  I was Little Albert.

  Nine months old in the famous film.

  In a white cotton nightie, on a lab

  table sitting upright

  facing a camera.

  Remember me? Sure.

  You do.

  First, you saw that I was a “curious” baby.

  You saw that I blinked and stared

  with all the intensity of an infant-brain

  eager to suck into its galaxy of neurons

  all of the world. You saw that

  I was you.

  You saw that I was a “fearless” baby.

  You saw that I was not frightened

  of a burning newspaper held before me

  at an alarmingly close range.

  Though indeed my rapt infant-face

  expressed the classic wariness of our race.

  Next, you saw that I was not frightened

  of a frisky monkey darting close about me

  on a leash. You saw

  that I was not frightened

  by a large dog brought close to me

  nor by a quivering rabbit, nor

  a small white rat—

  nor even a Santa Claus mask

  worn by a menacing male figure

  clad in white, shoved close

  to my infant face.

  You saw that I was attracted to the small white rat.

  You saw that I reached out to touch the small white rat.

  And as I reached for the small white rat

  behind my head came an explosion of noise—

  the shock of it sent me sprawling, cringing,

  face contorted in terror, mouth

  a perfect O of anguish, howling—

  as the experimenter John Watson struck

  a metal pipe with a hammer.

  What a shock!—how terror

  rushed through me. How

  desperately I crawled

  to escape almost toppling

  off the edge of the table—

  except adult hands restrained me.

  Children naturally fear loud noises.

  Children naturally fear surprises.

  Children naturally fear the unknown.

  Children can be taught to fear the known.

  The second experiment was one month later.

  No escape for me for I was Little Albert.

  Grim as a little gargoyle

  in white cotton nightie able

  to sit upright though now wary,

  distrustful. No joy in my little body

  as (again) a small white rat

  was introduced to me. You saw

  how this time I shrank away. How

  this time there was terror in my face.

&nbs
p; How this time I did not reach

  with infant eagerness for the small white rat

  for I’d learned to fear and hate

  the small white rat. And again

  (you saw) how the very presence

  of the small white rat

  precipitated a deafening clamor

  as John Watson another time

  struck a metal pipe

  with a hammer again, again and

  again behind my head for

  who was there

  to stop him? In this way

  establishing on film

  how (baseless) fear can be instilled

  in a subject where fear had

  not previously existed and

  how memory of this (baseless) fear

  will endure contained

  in the unfathomable brain.

  How I cried and cried! As if

  I’d known that my mother had

  received but one dollar for

  the use of me in John Watson’s psych lab

  in the experiment that would destroy me

  and make John Watson famous.

  For in the alchemy of my brain

  my fear of a small white rat

  had become generalized

  and now (as Watson ably demonstrated)

  I feared the monkey, the dog, the rabbit

  equally though each was unaccompanied

  by a clanging hammer.

  Now I feared the menacing figure

  in the Santa Claus mask as if

  understanding that Santa Claus

  was my tormentor. Cried

  and cried and could not be

  consoled, even a woman’s

  fur coat terrified me for

  how could I trust softness?

  Sudden movements, sounds

  behind my head—

  the unexpected . . .

  Classic Pavlovian conditioning.

  Bedrock of behavioral psychology.

  Brilliant pioneer John Watson!

  You are wondering: did John Watson

  de-condition me? No. He did not.

  Did another experimental psychologist

  de-condition me? No. He did not.

  Ask me what was the remainder of my life.

  Ask me did I adjust to life after the

  infamous experiment. Ask me

  did I overcome my terror of animals?—

  the answer is not known for

  I died of hydrocephalus at age six.

  All this was long ago. Things are different now.

  John Watson would not be allowed to terrorize

  Little Albert in his famous experiment now.

  Ours is an ethical age.

  Or was it all a bad dream? Were you deceived?

  You were Little Albert? You were conditioned

  to fear and hate? You were conditioned to

  thrust from you what you were meant to love?

  You were the victim? You were the experimental subject?

  You were Little Albert, who died young?

  Harlow’s Monkeys

  Assume that we are not monsters for

  we mean well.

  —Harry Harlow (1905–1981)

  1.

  To be a Monkey

  is to be funny

  If funny

  you don’t hurt

  & if you don’t hurt

  you don’t cry

  & if you don’t cry

  the noise you make is funny

  & if it is funny

  people can laugh

  for it is all right

  for people to laugh

  at a Monkey

  & people are happy

  if people laugh

  & the one thing they agree

  is a Monkey is funny

  2.

  Oh! it is not funny

  to hear a Monkey

  scream for a Monkey

  scream is identical

  to a human scream

  & a human scream is

  not funny

  So in the Monkey Lab

  to maintain calm

  Dr. Harlow had

  no choice but

  to “surgically remove”

  Monkey vocal cords

  so if there is a (Monkey) scream

  not heard

  how is it a scream?

  3.

  We were Harlow’s Monkeys

  & Dr. Harlow was our Daddy

  in the famous lab

  at Madison, Wisconsin

  from which you did not leave

  alive

  hairless bawling infants

  taken from our mothers

  at birth to dwell

  in Harlow’s hell

  “social isolation”

  “maternal deprivation”

  to be a Monkey

  is funny

  nursing the dugs

  of a bare-wire doll

  clinging to

  a towel

  draped over

  a bare-wire doll

  seeking milk, love

  where there’s none

  yet: seeking milk,

  love where

  there’s none.

  yet: seeking

  How could a Monkey

  be sad, could a Monkey

  spell the word—“sad”—?

  In the bottom

  of the Monkey cage

  listless & broken

  when the wire doll too

  is taken away

  “learned helplessness”

  “pit of despair”

  You laugh, for you

  would never so despair

  mistaking a wire doll

  for a Mother

  or a devil

  for a Daddy

  4.

  (Look: in any lab

  you had

  to be cruel

  to publish

  & succeed.

  As Israel, Harry

  changed his name

  to Harlow, Harry

  to publish

  & succeed.

  Just had

  to be cruel

  the way today

  a baby calf

  in its cage

  grows

  slowly

  to veal.)

  Obedience: 1962

  1.

  Because it was explained to you, you must follow orders.

  Because the white coat explained to you, you must follow orders.

  Because the voice of the white coat explained to you, you must

  follow orders.

  Because the white male voice explained to you, you must follow

  orders.

  Because the laboratory setting explained to you, you must follow

  orders.

  Because the fluorescent lights explained to you, you must follow

  orders.

  Because the turreted university explained to you, you must

  follow orders.

  2.

  Because it was 1962, in the wake of the trial of Adolf Eichmann.

  Because the question was—How could human beings perpetrate such

  acts upon one another?

  Because to understand the Holocaust you must understand

  the soul of humankind.

  Not what the soul speaks but how the soul behaves you must

  understand.

  Because you agreed to participate in an experiment testing

  “memory” in the laboratory of Stanley Milgram at Yale.

  Because you agreed to participate in an experiment testing the

  relationship of punishment to “memory.”

  Because the experiment in “memory” was not an experiment in

  “memory” but in “obedience”—(it was not explained to you).

  Because Stanley Milgram wanted to understand the Holocaust.

  Because Stanley Milgram would have perished in the Holocaust

  if he’d been born in Europe like his Jewish relati
ves, so Stanley

  Milgram wanted to understand the Holocaust in the only way a

  scientist can understand which is through experimentation.

  Through an experiment enacted upon a subject kept in ignorance of

  the perimeter of the experiment.

  Through an experiment enacted upon a subject kept in ignorance

  that he was in fact the subject.

  Because it was explained to you, you would play the role of the

  “teacher” in the experiment.

  Because it was explained to you, the “teacher” must follow the

  orders given him.

  Because it was explained to you, the “teacher” must punish the

  “learner” when he errs.

  Because it was explained to you, if there is punishment there must

  be one who is punished.

  Because it was explained to you, if there is punishment there must

  be a punisher.

  Because the learner was in another room, you could not see his face

  when you administered shocks to him.

  (True, you could hear the learner’s screams. But you could not see

  his face.)

  (If you cannot see the face, is there a victim?)

  (If you do not know the name, is there a victim?)

  (If you are not to be blamed, can you be blamed?)

  Because the voltage was mild at first—fifteen volts.

  Because the voltage rose slowly—forty volts, seventy volts . . .

  Because eager to please.

  Because good.

  Because obey.

  Because four dollars an hour.

  . . . two hundred twenty volts, three hundred volts . . .

  Because it was explained to you, you must continue to the end.

  Because it was explained to you, you would not be blamed.

  Because you broke into a sweat of anguish and yet—you obeyed.

  Because you broke into hysterical laughter and yet—you obeyed.

  Must follow orders, continue to the end, will not be blamed—you obeyed.

  . . . four hundred seventy-five volts.

  3.

  Because in the deep brain, the chanting of elders.

  Do as we say. Do as we say. Do as we say.

  Because in the deep brain, the elders have no pity.

  Do as we say. Do as we say. Do as we say.

  Because in the deep brain, no soul but pebbles thrust into the

  mouth.

  Do as we say. Do as we say. Do as we say.

  Because the Holocaust was not possible without following orders.

  Because the Holocaust was not possible without continuing to the

  end.

  Because the Holocaust was not possible without you.