Atwood, Kiguli, Carver: Mildred K. Barya compares three poems about photographs

ZP_Mamie Estelle Fearing Scurlock with bouquet_1910_photographer Addison Scurlock

.

ZP Guest Editor Mildred K. Barya:

Three poets / Three photographs

.

In this piece I’m comparing and contrasting three poems by three poets that have a lot in common: “This is a Photograph of Me” by Margaret Atwood (Canada), “My Mother in Three Photographs” by Susan Kiguli (Uganda), and “Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year” by Raymond Carver (USA).

What I appreciate most is how these three poets/poems deal with perception, memory, reality and imagination against a backdrop of history, society, and culture. The passage of time and sense of place provide interesting points of view.

In Atwood’s poem, in the first stanza, we are not given the exact time the photograph was taken. We only know it’s in the past: It was taken some time ago. At a glance, the appearance is distorted, and seems to merge with the paper:

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;

Kiguli’s first stanza is a clear description of what the mother’s face in the photograph looks like, her poise, enigmatic aura, sexual energy and charm.

Her face looks out

flawless

her sexuality electric.

We are also told what she’s wearing, it’s the 1960s, and she’s full of dreams and longing of the individual and collective nation. An ethereal creature that’s here and beyond, not as “ghostly” as Atwood’s woman, but equally mystifying.

In a mini dress and sheer satin stockings

the girls of the 1960s

beautiful beyond belief.

She is looking through the camera

like her space is here and beyond

enchanting and enchanted

by the times when dreams of freedom were young

the fortunes of Uganda

hot and sizzling.

So here we have what we can see through our tactile and perceptible quality. There’s also something corporeal and ethereal at the same time. This is also true of Atwood’s message in her first stanza.

Carver’s first stanza provides clear setting and time. October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen. Right away we feel a strangeness—something chilly that comes with October and a dank, unfamiliar kitchen. In ideal or normal circumstances, one’s kitchen ought to be a cozy, familiar place, but not Carver’s kitchen. Then the father’s face is described, what is, and the appearance of what’s expected:

I study my father’s embarrassed young man’s face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.

In short, the three poets in their first stanzas are portraying what is [appearance] along with specific expectations and representations. The first image is hazy, affected by the imbalance of light and dark so one can say it appears oppressed even. The second captures the Sixties imagination: freedom, excitement, revolution, dreams, women’s power and so on. The last, what it means to be a [macho] man: able to fish and drink beer.

Moving on to Atwood’s second stanza, other things appear in the picture upon close inspection. To the left is something like a branch of a tree, to the right, something like a house. What can we make of these symbols appearing when we are looking at a face, a woman?

then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

I would say a tree is productive and branches on to produce other trees, being on the left side where rationalism dwells, brain-wise. What the mind says you are. To the right, realm of intuition and heart field, we have a house, a vessel, which can be the embodiment of this face. Therefore we can say it’s the face that’s both tree and house, what’s inside manifesting outside. One can go deeper into feminist and patriarchal interpretations while trying to figure out what these symbols might mean culturally, how they get to replace a person, or we can stay with the intellectual and spiritual interpretations that can be applied universally. Your mind will tell you you’re one thing, your heart, another. People too; history, society, governments, ideologies, and so on will try to define you. To find the true you, you have to view all the perspectives and hope that by going through the labels, definitions, and constructions tagged on you, you might disappear inside yourself and come up with the real you on the other side.

It’s the 1970s in Kiguli’s second stanza. The face or body that was electric is now somber. Times are harsh although gentle on this woman. Instead of the mini dress the body is covered all the way to the ankles, the confident look replaced by sorrow. We learn that she’s also widowed, not of natural causes but government action, and the dress is imposed on her by the government of Idi Amin, which forbade women from wearing mini skirts. In very few words, so much history is packed in this personal stanza.

My mother in the 1970s
More sombre but her skin
Still flawless
The abrasive years gentle on her youth.
Her body wrapped in a long nylon dress
stopping her ankles and
full sleeves touching her wrists
hooded sorrow in her posture
the flowing dress
is not because
she is a widow (which is by government action)
but it is a government decree.
Her magnificence and elegance
Seem to support the given name of the dress
Amin nvaako.

In Carver’s second stanza, we discover what the person would like to be [but isn’t], what he wanted to be all his life. We have 1934, time of the Great Depression, WWII close on its heels. Like Kiguli’s and Atwood’s second stanzas, something grave has happened, the brave individual is disappearing in the struggles of history, and dreams are being squashed by the nation. Melancholy has replaced radiance, a new identity has emerged.

In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.

What would be Atwood’s last stanza before the parentheses reveals other things in the background, a lake and low hills.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

Here we can assume the person is completely gone. Perhaps not to end on a sad note, Atwood introduces in parentheses a chunk letting us know where the person is, where the photograph was taken, and how we might find her if we look closely.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface

Drowning is a key metaphor that can be used strategically so it’s neither good nor bad. More like dying in order to live. She’s submerged and in the centre [of all things?]

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.

but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.

In these last three lines, it seems after all that her disappearance is not an act of conformity but survival. It is necessary, and to know the difference is wisdom. Besides, isn’t it right to say that things of beauty and truth require one to dig deeper and longer in order to see the value or the self? We have something complex going on as the photograph obscures and reveals at the same time.

Kiguli’s last stanza is the 1990s. The mother wears a traditional dress, busuuti, which is also recognized as a formal, cultural and national dress. She has found peace, however uncertain, and is ready to pass on the future.

My mother in the 1990s
neat short hair
luring in its intricate curls.
She wears a busuuti
a sign of the times
a return home, a finding of
uncertain peace
a maturing of a woman and nation
an endorsement of a recognition of the troubles
she has weathered
a sitting down to count her losses and blessings
and a handover of the future.

In spite of the sadness, losses, changes, diffusion and pain, there’s no regret, tone-wise. What has happened has happened, what is, is, and what will be will be. This is the claim of reality, what endures. How the individual, cultural and national icon come together and are embodied in as simple a metaphor as a dress.

Like Atwood’s last stanza, the conformity is an act of survival. Beneath it all the person still lives. The personal is so blended with the public/national you cannot see one without the other, you cannot appreciate or celebrate one without the other getting in the way. Also, what starts as personal—Kiguli’s “mother” and Atwood’s “I”—takes on the representation of every woman of those times. Just like Carver’s “father” might symbolize every father then.

In Carver’s last stanza, we have what the father is in real life as opposed to the “bluff and hearty” appearance in the picture.

But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can’t hold my liquor either,
and don’t even know the places to fish?

There’s the importance placed by society on males who must teach their sons how to fish and also hold their liquor. What happens when they don’t conform? The contrast here is that unlike the women/mothers (in Atwood and Kiguli’s poems) who might be killed if they don’t conform, the males/fathers get away with it, and are still loved. This is where society’s double standards come in.

From the gender perspective, the saddest thing perhaps is that in the poems, the women were all those confident things that had to be submerged, while Carver’s “father” was never all those bold poses to begin with. In the end, the emotional punch line in all the poems is in the lack of fulfillment of dreams, no matter how false or genuine their premise.

All three poems recognize that a person is a product of both the individual’s and society’s failures, struggles and successes. In spite of disappointments and frustrations, love remains—for Carver—it is what conquers however dismal the person is. For Atwood, it is the discovery of the true self within the drowning, understanding why sometimes one has to appear as a smear on the surface, the real tiger or lion beneath. For Kiguli, it is the resilience and maturity that comes to surface, the hard times lived through, and how one may count both blessings and losses.

—Mildred K. Barya

.     .     .

Margaret Atwood (born 1939)

“This is a Photograph of Me”

.

It was taken some time ago
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;
.
then, as you scan
it, you can see something in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.
.
In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.
.
(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.
.
I am in the lake, in the centre
of the picture, just under the surface.
.
It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or how small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion.
.
but if you look long enough
eventually
you will see me.)

ZP_Ugandan women wearing busuutis

Susan Kiguli (born 1969)

“My Mother in Three Photographs”

.

Her face looks out
flawless
her sexuality electric
in a mini dress and sheer satin stockings
the girls of the 1960s
beautiful beyond belief.
She is looking through the camera
like her space is here and beyond
enchanting and enchanted
by the times when dreams of freedom were young
the fortunes of Uganda
hot and sizzling.

.

My mother in the 1970s
More sombre but her skin
Still flawless
The abrasive years gentle on her youth.
Her body wrapped in a long nylon dress
stopping her ankles and
full sleeves touching her wrists
hooded sorrow in her posture
the flowing dress
is not because
she is a widow (which is by government action)
but it is a government decree.
Her magnificence and elegance
Seem to support the given name of the dress
Amin nvaako *.

.

My mother in the 1990s
neat short hair
luring in its intricate curls.
She wears a busuuti
a sign of the times
a return home, a finding of
uncertain peace
a maturing of a woman and nation
an endorsement of a recognition of the troubles
she has weathered
a sitting down to count her losses and blessings
and a handover of the future.

.

* Amin Nvaako means Amin let me be or Amin leave me alone

.

ZP_Portrait of a man in North Carolina_1910s_photographer Hugh Mangum

.

Raymond Carver (1938-1988)

“Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year”

.

October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen
I study my father’s embarrassed young man’s face.
Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string
of spiny yellow perch, in the other
a bottle of Carlsbad Beer.
.
In jeans and denim shirt, he leans
against the front fender of a 1934 Ford.
He would like to pose bluff and hearty for his posterity,
Wear his old hat cocked over his ear.
All his life my father wanted to be bold.
.
But the eyes give him away, and the hands
that limply offer the string of dead perch
and the bottle of beer. Father, I love you,
yet how can I say thank you, I who can’t hold my liquor either,
and don’t even know the places to fish?

.     .     .     .     .