#will schutt

A Kind of Poetry

Sometimes you turn to poetry the way you turn to another country. Everything is better. More humane. You notice things you wouldn’t otherwise. You notice things. Watching gardeners trim branches for birds to fly through reminds you of holes in your own country’s trees, which only make room for wires The entire center perforated like a dart board in a dive bar. After a while, however, you recall those wires carry a language you know.

In Chiasso, in a ho-hum courtyard at the close of the fifties, children make a game of scaling the fences to beat rugs— a puff of metal and grass. Eternal, the afternoon. Relentless, the sheep-in-clouds sky. Relentless, the games. They climb up and hook their knees over the crossbeam, hanging head down, arms dangling, and in their irrepressible little voices cry out to the world, “We’re monkeys! Beautiful brown apes, orango-tangos, tiny monkeys doing the ‘Petàce’!” Then they laugh in the late postwar period. “Petacci,” they’re corrected by a mother with a long memory. “Play all you want, don’t hurt yourselves, but the saying is ‘Do the Petacci.’ And remember: she wasn’t the only one to swing there.”

Alex Webb, San Ysidro, California, 1979, color photograph.

The poem immediately reminded me of a David Wagoner poem called “Under Arrest.” It was published in The Paris Review. We didn’t use it, but it helped with the process and it’s what made me want to include Alex’s work. David said he used to do some local reporting about crime and court cases, and that’s what gave him the idea for the poem. I remember part of it by heart—

It means stand still. It means stay just as sweet as you are and where you are and don’t do anything you were doing before or might have planned to do or be anywhere else you might have in mind and you’re wrong and have lost your chance to keep your hands to yourself as long as it may please the court or its officers who have their eyes on you and all yours.

by  Will Schutt

         Mirava il ciel sereno,          Le vie dorate e gli orti,          e quinci il mar da lungi, e quindi il monte.          -Giacomo Leopardi

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