For your enjoyment: “A Crate of Oranges” by Tana Jean Welch (and a writing exercise)
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008A Crate of Oranges
by Tana Jean Welch
sat next to the artist every afternoon
as he sipped tea on the cafe patio.
The people of Neulengbach assumed he traveled with citrus
because bright things must be a painter’s constant companion.
Even when the war came and everyone succumbed
to wearing black
with a now-and-then splash of gun metal blue,
and the sound of the rock sparrow was replaced
by the wail of the young soldier’s widow
as she watched the King’s Guard, their posture spoiled
under the weight of oak and brass, load the coffin into the white carriage–
even then, the painter kept taking tea
with his box of happy, bulbous oranges,
so was credited with having a solid spirit.
But these people lived before the time art transformed a urinal,
before the time one could fly in a passenger jet, cruise the cloud-line
to see the earth for what it really is:
a patchwork of velvet: a brown, green, tourmaline grandmother’s quilt,
soft and innocuous, smooth
except where the cities are.
By the end of the funeral, the widow’s garter belt had slipped
causing her fishnet stocking to bunch at the right knee
of her long leg, reminding the painter of the cracked opal
in his mother’s pendant.
By the end of the war
they had pulled the painter from his house,
burnt his blue sketches and paintings of naked girls, naked boys,
arrested him for using oranges as bait–
even though the village children swore the oranges were juicier and sweeter
than the ones placed in their stockings at Christmas
when the evergreen firs are hauled in from the cold
and snow blinds all with a titanium white.
—
I couldn’t find out a whole lot about Tana Jean Welch without, you know, making an actual effort, but here are a couple more poems at La Fovea. This poem won 2nd place in Cutthroat’s Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and was published in their Spring 2008 issue. This poem reminds me of Corrine Hales’ “Sunday Morning” in that for the majority of the poem you’re not sure what is going to happen, let’s call it the cuspiness. The poem seems to be tipping back and forth between the nostalgic turn and the ominous. The young soldier’s death/funeral and the whole backdrop seem very ominous, yet there are those “happy, bulbous oranges.” Another key word to note in the tone is “credited.” The painter is “credited” with having a solid spirit. A great word choice that indicates that though credited, there is an ulterior motive, and perhaps its only a symptom of today’s culture of suspicion, but ulterior motives make me think sinister. However, those are happy oranges and there was little more than atmosphere to convict the painter of anything underhanded… the quality of the writing keeps you glued to the page actually because nothing has happened, but stakes are piling up around the title: the happy oranges in the black and gun metal blue world.
I’m a big fan of the abrupt shift in a poem, in narrative poems especially; the jarring turn of events, the dramatic dissected because poetry, let’s face it, is somewhat mystic, it’s about leaving slight ambiguities, about connecting without dictating, the unsaid as much as the said and the said only the root of the experience. The blue sketches are an abrupt shift in the poem, like the mother’s call for silence in “Sunday Morning” and though never specifically indicated, they’re almost expected. The tenseness to the jump-moment of the poem. Where your facial expression changes, even if you’re reading the poem in public. That moment can only really be achieved when the tension in the poem is expertly crafted. It is easy to go over-the-top with dreary images, to get heavy-handed with metaphors, or to forget that there should be a reason for the shift, duality, humanity, something other than just a ‘ah, that’s messed up’ moment to them then nothing else.
Writing exercise: Try writing a poem that sets a pleasant image amidst a very dreary or dreadful background. Give the reader little of the pleasant image, (as in the crate of happy oranges) but that image will be the twisting point for the poem. Whether it’s something good like a type of muffin being sold in a bakery being used as secret code to help persecuted escape, or the more ominous negative side of the happy image, as so many seemingly positive things are being used for a much darker purpose it appears. Make sure that the cuspiness is woven into the atmosphere of the poem, the scenery, the mundane as unstated metaphors… Have at it!
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