Rachel Burns takes a close look at the opening poem of frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss
I drove all the way to Cape Disappointment but didn’t
have the energy to get out of the car. Rental. Blue Ford
Focus. I had to stop in a semi-public place to pee
on the ground. Just squatted there on the roadside.
I don’t know what’s up with my bladder. I pee and then
I have to pee and pee again. Instead of sightseeing
I climbed into the back seat of the car and took a nap.
I’m a little like Frank O’Hara without the handsome
nose and penis and the New York School and Larry
Rivers. Paid for a day pass at Cape Disappointment
thinking hard about that long drop from the lighthouse
to the sea. Thought about going into the Ocean
Medical Center for a check-up but how do I explain
this restless search for beauty or relief?
I think I came across Diane Seuss’ poetry mainly online. She is easy to find, and a lot of her poetry is available for free. I didn’t buy any of her books until frank: sonnets. Now I want to buy all her poetry collections in the way I had to have Selima Hill’s work and Wayne Holloway-Smith’s and Matthew Dickman’s, to name just a few. I loved this poem from reading the first line and knew from that line I was going to love the book.
I drove all the way to Cape Disappointment but didn’t
have the energy to get out of the car.
Let that line just sit with you for a bit.
Then, Rental. Blue Ford / Focus.
It feels quite a cinematic opening to me. Why? Is it the specificity of detail? As soon as I read Blue Ford Focus, I’m taken back to my own experience. And it’s the same for many of the poems – there is a feeling of lived experience that is real and relatable.
I loved this poem from reading the first line and knew from that line I was going to love the book
When I was in my early 20s I owned a blue Ford Fiesta. We’d put a fiver in the tank and just drove for miles and miles up to Middleton and Teesdale, listening to cassette tapes, our two-year-old son strapped in the back. Not long married and with a kid, I lived on a council estate in St Helen Auckland, it was the kind of place where people beat the shit out of each other with baseball bats and twocked cars and set fire to them for fun. Drug dealers whistled through the ginnel. Wild horses galloped through the estate. Our only escape was that Ford Fiesta and a fiver for fuel. Of course, we always had to go back to the council estate when we ran low on fuel and that was disappointing. We dreamt of a better life for our son.
Diane Seuss poem takes me back to that time in my life and other times where I’ve been at my lowest ebb. Being in absolute despair and wanting something better but it not being attainable any time soon.
I had to stop in a semi-public place to pee
on the ground. Just squatted there on the roadside.
I don’t know what’s up with my bladder. I pee and then
I have to pee and pee again.
I love the conversational aspect of the poem, the speaker is speaking directly to me and hell yes, I’m thinking, ditto. Maybe you have to be a certain age to understand.
The speaker drives all that way to Cape Disappointment and Instead of sightseeing / I climbed into the back seat of the car and took a nap. And again, I can relate to this so much. I don’t travel well as I have a condition Axial-Spa, a painful inflammatory condition of the spine. The longer the journey, the worse the back pain. I have to stop every hour and get out of the car and there is never a public convenience anywhere in sight these days. At the journey’s end I just want to lie down.
Seuss really plays on the place name, Cape Disappointment, in an ingenious way, and it reminds me of the times I’ve used place names I know well in my poetry to evoke a mood or emotional response. In the small dreary town where I grew up the high street was called Hope Street, and in the market square there was a stone called The Devil Blue Stone – really a gift! But Seuss brings in the famous poet – is she comparing herself to Frank O’Hara? If so, that takes some balls (of course she has none).
I’m a little like Frank O’Hara without the handsome
nose and penis and the New York School and Larry
Rivers.
So, we now know the speaker is into Frank O’Hara. And here we are made to smile; who wouldn’t find “without the handsome nose and penis” funny? So why introduce Frank at this point in the poem? And prior to that, the conversational peeing, which is funny, right – so intimate it could be a friend talking to the reader, someone who is comfortable talking about this stuff. I’m thinking this is the kind of conversation you’d have sat at a bar with an old friend that’s known you, like, forever.
I’m thinking this is the kind of conversation you’d have sat at a bar with an old friend that’s known you, like, forever
In an interview Seuss was asked “What is the relationship between reality and poetry?” She answered, “What a sticky question! Well, poetry is language which arises from experience, though sometimes “experience” is mind, thoughts, imagination. I don’t think the speaker is synonymous with me, but it’s sort of goofy to pretend she isn’t a derivative of myself. During the last couple of years, poetry has been more “reality” to me than what passes for reality, which often seems like a really bad hallucination.” I like this sentiment; it speaks to me a lot! Poetry more grounded in reality than reality. Words are concrete at least, where sometimes reality seems like “a really bad hallucination.”
Paid for a day pass at Cape Disappointment
thinking hard about that long drop from the lighthouse
to the sea.
So here the speaker casually drops in the reason why they have drove out all the way to Cape Disappointment and we are like – oh, wow I didn’t see that coming. That shift is perfectly timed after we have been lulled with Frank O Hara’s penis.
But why else would you drive out all the way to Cape Disappointment, which left me wondering if it’s one of those hot suicide spots. Is it actually possible to jump from the lighthouse into the sea and be dashed on the rocks and drown? Again, does it matter? We believe what the speaker in the poem is telling us. It feels like a reality. Who hasn’t, at some point in their lives, contemplated getting into a car and just drive? Perhaps even contemplating suicide.
I once found myself in a place where my chronic pain got so bad despite all the medication I was on – sleep deprivation, and also not eating, got to me. My illness won. I was hallucinating, had heart palpitations because of the severe pain. After five nights in A&E, back and forth, I twigged maybe I was having some kind of mental health crisis. I walked out of A&E in my dressing gown early in the morning. I passed college kids jumping off the buses to college, full of life. I kept on walking and walking.
The final line in Seuss’ poem:
Thought about going into the Ocean
Medical Center for a check-up but how do I explain
this restless search for beauty or relief?
So how do you explain the restless search for beauty or relief? And why beauty or relief? We are left wondering. I’ve re-read this poem over and over and in fourteen lines it does and says so much. I feel a personal connection but of course there isn’t one, not in reality, which is what makes the poem so powerful.
Diane Seuss discusses the poem on Culture Connection: An Evening with Diane Seuss, Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
Read Six Unrhymed Sonnets on poets.org
Read about Diane Seuss on the Poetry Foundation
Read an interview with Diane Seuss on the Adirondack Review
The Cape Disappointment Light is a lighthouse on Cape Disappointment near the mouth of the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington
