Two weeks ago, Ringmaster Lehman provided us with an extraordinarily fruitful prompt concerning the power dynamics inherent in romantic love. Inspired by John Updike’s Couples, NLP writers were tasked with responding to the claim that “Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant.” Is it true?
Donald LaBranche’s “Treatise from a Seaside Town” may win the popularity prize based on the amount of likes it received from other regulars. Though the poem does not mention Updike’s line, its relation is quite clear.
“Let reality return to our speech.” ––Czeslaw Milosz
What I had come to the ocean to learn
is not what the ocean chose to teach.As when, up on the boardwalk, with first light
at its most lucid, a young Sister of St. Francis,
shimmering with vocation
shares coffee and a seaward facing benchwith an elegant woman in a bright red hijab.
They seem to me to be aristocrats of secrets.
The sun travels higher and shadows rise and recedelike tidal surf. Their heads are close in
as they attend to each other’s words.
They sip coffee and consider. Voices
of children, seagulls, and barkers are lost to me.It goes on like this for some time, in recurring
rounds of speech and silence, of hand gestures
in the air as if they seek to maintain a balance
against these waters no one else can see.
Pamela Joyce S’s “Horse and Carriage,” which the author tells us she dashed off as a “quick take in a busy week using the words in the aphorism,” offers a more abstract rendering of Updike's line:
Marriage is a peasant.
It tends itself and survives.But love, an aristocrat,
consists of every art.Together—sustenance—
that masterpiece of heart
Timothy Sandefur offers his “Pasiphaë on the Simple Life,” which he calls a “a pseudo-sonnenizio”:
“Come live with me and be my love,” he said.
I didn’t know by “live” he meant abide.
Survive. Exist. For surely it’s not living
to be denied what makes you feel alive—
Aea with its lively salons, art,
music, lights. Here there’s only olive
trees and goats and work the live-long day,
and maids who drive you livid with their tales
of insipid romances of lives
past. I’ve told Minos the Simple I’ve
got to have more, but he lives—
despite his gold and silver and liveried
slaves—an unenlivened life. Dull.
Undelivered. Dead-alive. Unfull.
Timothy adds that a “true sonnenizio would take a line from a sonnet, and I’ve fudged a little by using a line from Marlowe’s famous ballad.” A sonnenizio is a form invented by Kim Addonizio, a superb poet whose work has appeared The Best American Poetry and The Best American Erotic Poems. Kim invented the form by taking the opening line of Michael Drayton’s most famous sonnet, “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,” and repeating one word from the line in 13 subsequent lines.
“A Common Enemy,” Millicent Caliban’s title, immediately catches the eye. Can the marriage of true or untrue minds resemble the diplomatic endeavors of nations acting on the idea that the enemy of my enemy is my friend? Here is Millicent’s poem:
To be a couple is a kind of play.
Each spouse performs a part with assigned role
although the script demands improvisation.
Together actors must work out the plot,
each one attuned to read the other’s cues.
The one who takes the lead to rule the roost
provokes a partner who is there to serve,
though not without resentment underneath.
The one who is allowed to rant and rave
forces calm and reason on the other
unless that one insists on going crazy.
Which one can play the fool or lunatic?
Ideally each of us yearns to be free
while also in control: there are constraints.
The cost of being two is to obey
the passions and the lust of someone else.
The benefit is being not alone
when facing the indignities of time.
Unsatisfied with her attempts to write a poem based on the Updike quote, Josie Cannella wrote that the assignment “was tough for me,” because “I’m what one might call ‘between marriages’ very literally, as I am divorcing a woman and soon marrying a man.” As soon as David read that sentence, he wrote, “That’s a first line for you!” And Josie responded with an extremely successful “Epithalamion after Separation”—an oxymoronic title:
Divorcing a woman and marrying a man,
I’m undoing the undoing that was my undoing.
For twenty-five years, I played the peasant to
her false fiefdom.
Supremely subjugated,
my ambitions abbreviated
and my creativity confiscated
by conversations unelevated,
I was deliberately devastated.
Now the life for which I’ve waited
a lifetime or two is celebrated.
Amen!
In response to Mr. Lehman's recent article, “How to be a Big-League Critic” for The American Scholar, Patricia Smith submitted “A Lofty Verse Essay on the Role of Partners in a Marriage,” noting that she “could not have written this without your professional hints,”
According to John Updike
“Every marriage tends to consist
of an aristocrat and a peasant.”
Today’s iconic couples no longer
consist necessarily of a male and a female
traditionally the aristocrat and peasant
respectively
according to the expensive research
of noted Professor O. B. Livious [et al.]
who have concluded that roles
change regardless of and in spite of the players.If my eidetic memory serves me correctly,
that may or may not be true
as some of the renowned Professor’s [et al.]
research lacked authenticity
and may have been incorrectly
interpreted so you may go ahead
and conclude what you will.
“The Peasant Revolt,” Elizabeth Solsburg’s clever sonnet, reverses the usual order of stanzas to excellent effect. The two three-line stanzas precede two four-line stanzas, as if the structure of the poem could reinforce its argument:
Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. —John Updike
Is it true that every marriage is a miniature fiefdom?
One aristocrat, monarch, benevolent despot
and one peasant to do all the heavy lifting.The aristocrat knows how the kingdom
works, how its currency is love frugally spent—
the power goes to the one who is hoarding.The peasant is the one who talked first about love,
revealed a weakness the monarch exploits.
So only the peasant tills in the field,
only the peasant cares for the soil.But one day the kingdom becomes the trope
of a heavy burden pressed too hard,
leading to the cliched peasant revolt—
and the whole damn fiefdom falls apart.
There's a lot more to say on the topic of love and marriage, and plenty more poems to read. Visit the American Scholar's page here and here to read all of the poems, mini-essays, and dialogues on the topic.
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