Last Modified 4/04.
New edition
of this poem
AMERICAN VIBRATIONS
OR, OF A TOO-OFTEN OVERLOOKED ASPECT OF THE
PIONEER AMERICAN PAST
In Memory, the so-called "Good Old Days"--those
misty days which once held sway,
long years before 'personal vibrators' were
sold in various drugstores & other types of stores, throughout
America
Generations of practical American women at their
mixing bowls, so often at their mixing bowls,
In kitchens, with ceramic mortars & pestles, & wooden objects too
Of miscellaneous shapes & sizes--plus ladles & forks, & spoons;
& Of course all kinds of rolling-pins (some parti-colored,
even!)
--Particularly useful then, in old-time kitchens
& Heaven knows where else & for just what else, too!
2.
& Always those alternative uses were probably
kept a deep, dark secret, too
even after tired husbands staggered home from
"business"--
Meaning planting or ploughing; or cracking rocks or cracking heads,
whatever--
To demand only dinners & then silence solely, in the relaxing merciful
darkness
so often, as their sole reward;
& Besides that, wasn't "Woman's Work" devastatingly
tiring, much like "Man's Work" too?--
--Exhausting, & useful to a fault
& Also dictated solely by the sad, hard ways,
Of a world obdurate & inert, yet relentlessly demanding.
3.
Looking back, wasn't that "rough-&-ready," so-called
"boldly adventurous" pioneer life
probably really much more
than just a wee bit Gross?
& Pioneer Life "Epic" especially, in the sense of proposterously
laborious?
--Entailing the still all-too-familiar back-breaking & mind-numbing anguishes
Of tedious manual or else menial labor;
Of monotonous manufacturing or else run-of-the mill office
manipulating.
4.
Poor things! Poor things those old-time wives; &
their husbands, too
--the latter with those hands
Callused so constantly from crude, crapulous tools;
& hands & fingers &--worse
yet--minds too, sometimes,
Worn out & coarsened from the daily grind
Of beating the competition out of so many pennies.
5.
--Oh, those generations of practical American women,
at their mixing bowls,
so often at their mixing bowls,
In kitchens, with ceramic mortars & pestles, & wooden objects too
Of miscellaneous shapes & sizes--plus ladles & forks & spoons;
& Of course all kinds of rolling-pins (some parti-colored, even!)
Mostly whipping up the stuff of mere Survival
--With, in the meantime only the possibility of children & more children
to look forward to
as a way of changing things,
By adding mostly tension after tension, to the passing years.
6.
--Even hard-earned balances in beat-up bankbooks
Sinking, always sinking, like worn-out goose-down mattresses going flatter
than ever
As expenses mounted & dollar-bill after dollar-bill flew out of them
too, like moths
--Like the Romance we all long for, & like even
Life itself,
Flying daily & then year after year, straight out of the
window...
7.
Oh yes I can just see that valiant past I think--or
at least, imagine it--
With all those brave & long-suffering albeit brilliantly
resourceful
Pioneering American Women--
Hostages to their own futures (& to our Future, too!)--
Carving out wan joy & perhaps some palpable & personal &
real reason for living
Ingeniously, from a veritable forest of frustration & a vast variety
of cleverly-crafted & cunningly-shaped,
old-fashioned kitchen-objects...
8.
--And those few Husbands smart enough, finally, to
somehow catch on
Wondering, perhaps, what reason they could give
For taking those things away & hiding them. (In some of the grimmer New
England Puritan
locations, I once read somewhere,
The men actually did hide them,
To keep their wives safe from the harm of "The Devil's Arm," when those men
weren't home).
9.
And I can just see eager, would-be amorous
Bachelors--fresh young "apprentices"
at the start, yet each & every day engrained
with just that much more coarseness--
Swearing to themselves that they'd never take on a wife who could work
one of those new-fangled sewing-machines
Which could produce, after all, even much more throbbingly lustful,
dangerous Temptation,
Than their already omnipresent & suspiciously erotic, confounded
spinning-wheels, even
--Just like the alluringly caressing curves, come
to think of it,
On the saddle-seats of their confounded, store-bought,
new-fangled
bicycles!
10.
--Examples of all of which we can still sometimes
find of course, even to this
very day, stored up for generation after
generation
Hidden away behind huge trunks stacked up high in darkened, half-abandoned
attics
--Together with mountains of dressmaker's dummies & hobby-horses
& countless worn-out
rocking-chairs
Piled up almost to the ceiling!
'American Vibrations' a
poem about 19th century frontier life, romantic frustration, the dark side
of American work ethic,
& Sexual Politics in USA's pioneer days is from a mss-in-progress entitled
Transitions.
Also in the mix in this poem on an erotic topic: domestic tensions, unusual
love objects & other consoling toys, & attic clutter.
An earlier version of "American Vibrations" appeared in the literary magazine
Lips in l986, © l986 Michael Benedikt.
Webversions © l998 & © 2004 Michael
Benedikt.
Note: This
edition updates l986 & 1998 versions.
Info re Background of Benedikt Websites via article
at about.com
'The Compleat
Michael Benedikt--Poet Laureate of The Net'
Michael
Benedikt--Pages at Academy of American Poets .
Includes a complete bio. & a poem from 4 of
Benedikt's 5 poetry books.
OTHER BENEDIKT SITES
Mini-Site with poem on a theme similar to that of "American
Vibrations" (human need for more bliss in life!):
Of The
C o
l o
r f
u l Taganka Troupe
in Soviet Russia, l957
Mini-Site with another look at historical Americana, via poem
re daring early radio program that shook a nation:
Of Orson
Welles' Remarkable l938 Radio Program 'The War Of The
Worlds'
Early Poetry--The Body & Sky, home page of a
bountiful site incl.
Selected
Poems from Benedikt's lst poetry book,
The Body. Includes a relatively
New page
of
Dark Love Poems.
Site also has a
Thematic Index
with photos from Benedikt's 1960's
Archive. New:
a
Sky-page.
The Badminton at Great Barrington: or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga
Choo-Choo,
with selections from Benedikt's succinctly-titled 5th book of poetry.
Verse about a goofy, star-crossed love-affair & a not-so-comical Valentine
Poems from
Boston & Cambridge, with other poems from
Transitions.
They range from a poem-cycle called "Teenage Passions"
to another long poem on historic Americana--celebrating (of all things),
the birthday of an centennarian
The Thesaurus & Other New Verse, with selected poems from
a mss-in-progress entitled OF:
(Includes "Of Panty-Lines That Show" &
New "Of
Sexual Style").
Brief Prose
Poems & Critical Prose, with selections from Benedikt's 4th book
of poetry, Night Cries.
Poetry re domestic tensions from 'Household Hallucinations' section of
book
+ Interview on prose poetry + essay on "The Future of American Prose Poem."
Prose Poems &
Microfictions, companion Night Cries
site.
New in '04: A Woman Is A Woman, with translation of Jean-Luc Godard's witty scenario for his 1961 film re tensions between sexes.
