The poem "Hospital " by Charles Webb is a perfected bit of crafted babble, a three note
mantra spoken and sung by someone doped up and being wheeled through
institution corridors, from one room to the other, meeting employees in
variations of the same work clothes running tests, taking samples, adjusting
lights and dials on machines, writing items on clipboards and inputting data
into computer stations, smiling, whistling pop tunes under their shallow
breathing. It is a delirium and the mind, of course, is not out to lunch but
aware of and making note of everything that is going on--the curse of it all is
that the mind cannot finish a sentence, complete a thought, find a frame or a
metaphor to contextualize an experience that is sufficiently unreal and
dreamlike. The mind, though, can sustain a rhyming, punning set of extrapolations
on what the deeper mind registers and finds dreadful.
Charles Webb manages to maintain that balance between an
indecipherable cleverness, nearly falling with great weight and speed into
resolute incoherence, but this, as I take it, being the record of a drugged up
mind or perhaps a mind suffering an organic derangement, this is the struggle
to remain at or near the surface of consciousness. This made me think of those
many times I had in the hospital while younger, about to go under the knife,
after the needles and the ether had been applied--the world was recast as one
fish eyed lens and the soundtrack was such that it reminded me of slowing down
a turntable and then increasing the speed again quickly.
“ Hospital “ as a swaying, visceral rhythm that is not
always pleasant--panic, giddiness, elation, more panic follow one another
quickly, seamlessly, without pause or explanation. This poem is an achievement,
a successful evocation of sensory overload.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated due to spam. But commentaries, opinions and other remarks about the posts are always welcome! I apologize for the inconvenience.