M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Exalting "Small Disturbances"
by Doug Talley

Human nature has a tendency to avoid what is awkward, to turn away from uncomfortable realities, to erase what is ugly or grating or unpleasant. And yet much of the truth we must face in mortality, and absorb for our own growth, requires we take a hard (and hopefully compassionate) look at what we might otherwise wish to shirk, the messy, sin-laden complexities of our own lives and the lives of others.

How fortunate we are then, when an intelligent, talented poet determines to showcase uncomfortable moments and sear them into our consciousness with just enough gentleness and sympathy that we profit by the experience. Such a poet is Lance Larsen, professor of creative writing at Brigham Young University, as evidenced in his first published book of poems, Erasable Walls.

Larsen suggests in one poem that “small disturbances sometimes chart the sublime.” His book is a litany of such disturbances and the all too human reactions in response – an illegitimate pregnancy, a young girl’s first menstrual period, a child wetting his pants, a mortician dressing the bodies of alcoholics, pot heads, convicts and a prostitute. These are daily occurrences, a part of life, and yet how quick we are to disown them, and thereby miss those ironies, which otherwise would instruct us in a deeper understanding of, and sympathy for, the human condition. Time and again, Larsen’s gift for irony presents the reader with opportunities to more fully understand redemption, as when he notes in the poem “Errand” that “even worms prepare us”.

Therefore, contrary to what one reviewer of Erasable Walls suggested, it would be inaccurate to view Larsen as merely “whining”. His argument against reality is no simple rant made in ignorance, but a subtler, more studied expression hinting at hidden and sublime reasons for the way things are. He notes, again in the poem “Errand”, that there is a “delicacy” to manna. It “nourishes”, but also “sometimes rots”. This statement is not merely a complaint, typical of the children of Israel during their forty-year trek in the wilderness, that blessings from God are insufficient. It is also an invitation to investigate what conditions cause the manna – an angel’s food from heaven – to sour in the first place.

Larsen, as the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Richard Howard wrote in his Foreword to Erasable Walls, is a man “who holds his cards very close to the chest, inward, downward, anything but toward the opposite player (i.e., the reader).” So, the reader must work. In Larsen’s poems one must dig for affirmations. But they are certainly to be found, as in the poem “Funeral Home” where Larsen contends that “goodness” may be as simple as turning down a cigarette. When these affirmations are discovered, and fully appreciated for their ironies, they offer rich reward, indeed.

The word “irony” derives from a Greek word meaning “simulated ignorance”. The Greek philosopher Socrates, especially, resorted to irony, to a pretence of ignorance, as a step towards confuting an adversary. The temptation to read Larsen’s poems hurriedly and one time only should be resisted, or else one may see only the whine, the complaint, which is a pretence only, and otherwise miss the richer, more subtle meanings that make for a rewarding poetic experience – that is, how “small disturbances sometimes chart the sublime.”

We hope you enjoy this sampling from Erasable Walls. In future columns Meridian Magazine will interview Lance Larsen and explore his book more intimately.

From Erasable Walls by Lance Larsen:

ERRAND

Not God dissolving in a coin of gluten,

but how bread tastes – that miracle.

Your errand, tongue, to know

the exact savor of the world’s flesh.

Then to translate beyond it.

Yours to gather this fragmented body.

Tireless epicurean, winebibber,

connoisseur of bile and perfumed skin:

teach us the delicacy of manna.

What nourishes. What sometimes

rots. How even worms prepare us.

AND ALSO MUCH CATTLE

What did they look like – those cows God

took notice of in sparing Nineveh?

Bland-faced no doubt, eyes big as chestnuts.

Jonah must have loathed them. Jonah under

the gourd, Jonah in his cobbled-together

martyr’s booth, sulking and praying

for plagues. Anything to teach Nineveh

a lesson. If not a cracked sky drumming

fire, then leprosy, or wells curdled

with blood. As for the cows, if Jonah

followed their grazing too long, he must

have pictured them fasting again – tricked

out in sackcloth, ashes brindling their sides.

Such cheap theatrics. Didn’t real penitence

mean casting yourself into God’s mouth,

and waking in the nave of His bowels?

Just you and an acidy soup of sin and rotting

fish. Those three days, they should have

clinched it for him – God’s golden boy.

Now Jonah wondered. He tried shutting

his eyes, tried, but the drove wouldn’t slow.

All those hooves and splattered flanks.

Cows whose only offering was a little snot

on the muzzle, maybe a cracked tongue.

Cows milling until their moos echoed

across the fatness of the afternoon

like untuned pleas deep inside a fish.

FUNERAL HOME

Lungs – you could smell them.

He held them like bloated fish,

a big, slithery one leaking brown juice,

the other one puffy and clean and pink.

The good one is Mrs. Daley,

he said, eighty-four years old.

This other guy – over two packs

a day, and not even forty.

To his left, scalpels fanned out

like silverware. Behind him,

a power drill with industrial bits.

Even then I knew this was not

about careers. But who cared?

He was explaining the slow dissolve

of the body, how it unlocks

itself to the blade. At the room’s

center, a dented steel table

and tubes angling to a drain –

also our questions. How many

bodies a week? Do they sit up?

What if a shotgun, what if a bomb?

Did he have his wife undress

the ladies? Next came the putty

and fake blood and your own choice

of face wounds, gapped open so you

could river a finger through it.

Finally, the refrigerator room

and a draped body on a gurney.

Draining them, he said, you feel

this energy, either good or bad.

I’ve buried them all – alcoholics,

pot heads, convicts. And once,

a prostitute. Spirits of men

leaked right out of her, he said.

It’s a matter of accumulation,

what you take in. His voice

lifted me straight onto the table.

Razored me open. He was reaching in.

My stomach. My liver, my kidneys.

Lifting one organ at a time.

I wasn’t afraid. I wanted it this easy –

The heart something you could

weigh in the palm, goodness

as simple as turning down a smoke.

Lance Larsen received his Phd. in creative writing from the University of Houston. His poems have appeared in Paris Review, Shenandoah, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review and elsewhere, and he has received awards from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and the Utah Arts Council. He teaches at Brigham Young University and is poetry editor of Literature and Belief. He is married to Jacqui Biggs Larsen, a mixed media artist, and together they are the parents of three children.

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