Patricia Carlin presents a poem by Elaine Equi

For the first week of this new decade, I’ve chosen “A Woman of the Wrong Altitude” by Elaine Equi (Barrow Street, Summer 2007).  Among many other pleasures the poem offers, it’s an antidote to any misguided New-Year’s resolution for self-improvement.

A Woman of the Wrong Altitude

Turbulence.  Bad posture.
Air pressure falling
in the cabin’s head.

Islands lost somewhere.
Oily velour below.

Idle among
the industrial
music set to nonmusic.

Panic like a playing card
turned suddenly face-up.

-- Elaine Equi

There’s a music of the mind in this compressed and evocative poem, one filled with half tones, as phrases open into ripples of meaning.  A reader must actively complete, through speculation and imagination, what each fragment of the collage portrait suggests.  The title, for example, sets up the airplane trope that follows.  It also invites speculation: who is the woman, and what might “the wrong altitude” be?  The reader also hears the phrase “wrong attitude” lurking behind “wrong altitude” -– a phrase we associate with parental/social injunctions to improve.  “Bad posture,” too, may invoke a childhood world of parental admonishment. But in addition, a reader must wonder, and begin to imagine, what that bad posture might be in the wider sense of an attitude toward life. Perhaps, too, these phrases evoke a sense of resistance, the resistance we feel as children when told to improve our attitude or posture.

There’s so much going on in this minimalist portrait.  To choose another example, in stanza three, who is “idle” -– the woman being pictured, the poet or, by extension (as we read), the reader?  The word “industrial” conjures up (again in the sparest way) a contemporary scene, the world we live in, and also suggests “industrious” -– the hardworking inhabitants of that scene, who contrast with the “idle” one, the woman portrayed, with her “wrong” altitude/attitude. At the same time the words of the stanza convey the poem’s subtle aural music, fully original and fully of the moment -– an “industrial / music set to nonmusic.”  This music is resolutely non-lyrical.

No familiar pattern of either stresses or sound echoes shows up.  Vowel and consonant sounds do echo each other throughout the poem, but always unobtrusively, as in “posture,” “pressure,” “somewhere,” “velour.”  The poem's rhythms are abrupt, staccato, imitating the emotional mood of the piece.  Here mental and aural music merge.  Fragments of details appear abruptly: “Turbulence.  Bad posture.  / Air pressure falling / in the cabin’s head.”  The situation isn’t good.  The reader is caught up along with the woman in this distressing psychological flight through moments of a life.  The world is out there, but not much help.  Islands below are “lost somewhere”, and nothing can be seen but “oily velour.”  The poem ends as abruptly as it begins, with “Panic like a playing card / turned suddenly face-up.”  Aural music and the music of the mind merge.  Panic appears as suddenly in the poem as it does in life, as the ‘p’ sounds in the last stanza pop out at us.

I experience much pleasure in the wit and concision of this poem, even after several readings.

-- Patricia Carlin