Sibling Assignment #93: The Last Good Kiss You Had Was Years Ago

For our 93rd sibling assignment, InlandEmpireGirl went a little bit outside what we usually do. Here's what she assigned us to do:

"A Perfect Pair.... find a piece of art and a poem that are a perfect pair. Explain why they are so perfectly matched."

I hope you'll go look at and read my sisters' work on this. You'll find Silver Valley Girl's -- well, I was going to say "here", but I can't find her post for this assignment. I hope she'll help me find it! But InlandEmpireGirl paired an Anne Sexton poem with a piece of art by Lauren Hamilton, here. Between the two you can experience how the world of the child and the adult are not far apart. At all.

Click on this image for a larger view.

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" portrays the loneliness of a man at a diner, presumably late at night. His isolation at the counter is magnified by the presence of a couple at the far end of the counter, and the distance between him and them and by the distance between him and man working the counter. The man is sitting at an angle that has him looking away from the diner's employee and the downward tilt of his head suggests little contact with the couple. Furthermore, the diner itself curves, it curves into darkness, suggesting that upon leaving this place, the man will stroll further into isolation.

Similarly, Richard Hugo's "Degrees of Gray In Philipsburg" explores loneliness, isolation, and defeat. Philipsburg is a rural Montana town on the decline. There's not much reason to go there....but, "You might come here Sunday on a whim./Say your life broke down. The last good kiss/ you had was years ago." Nothing else to do. I'll go to Philipsburg. I can be lonely, broken down in that broken down town, that town whose glory days are deep in the mining past, as well as anywhere else.

The man at the diner: when was his last good kiss? Has his life broken down? Why is he seated at this Chicago night spot, all alone, folded into himself? On a whim?

This is what I'm most attracted to in poetry, art, movies, and stories: loneliness. I just watched The Wrestler not long ago and its portrayal of the brokenness of a man in his early fifties without love, with an alienated daughter, thanks to his own failings, and with his glory days way behind him speaks to the shadow side of American optimism and faith in the strength of the individual. For many, as represented in this painting, this poem, and in The Wrestler, individualism equals isolation, loneliness, and lives broken down.



Degrees Of Gray In Philipsburg
--Richard Hugo

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done.

The principal supporting business now
is rage. Hatred of the various grays
the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,
The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls
who leave each year for Butte. One good
restaurant and bars can't wipe the boredom out.
The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,
a dance floor built on springs--
all memory resolves itself in gaze,
in panoramic green you know the cattle eat
or two stacks high above the town,
two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse
for fifty years that won't fall finally down.

Isn't this your life? That ancient kiss
still burning out your eyes? Isn't this defeat
so accurate, the church bell simply seems
a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?
Don't empty houses ring? Are magnesium
and scorn sufficient to support a town,
not just Philipsburg, but towns
of towering blondes, good jazz and booze
the world will never let you have
until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty
when the jail was built, still laughs
although his lips collapse. Someday soon,
he says, I'll go to sleep and not wake up.
You tell him no. You're talking to yourself.
The car that brought you here still runs.
The money you buy lunch with,
no matter where it's mined, is silver
and the girl who serves your food
is slender and her red hair lights the wall.