When a writer is emotionally uninvolved with his subject matter, I call that “distance”. The stretching of emotional distance de-emphasizes original motivation and emphasizes craft. This is considered by many to be the sign of a master. What the master lacks in emotional intensity he patches up with odds and ends of knowledge and scraps of imagery, snazzily sewn together into a pretty shawl of irrelevancy. In his poem “The Shirt” Robert Pinksy produces a poem containing nothing but vast empty territories of distance.
The poem begins:
“The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians
Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break. . .”
How seamlessly he goes from technically rambling about a shirt to laughing in his cuff about sweatshop workers. I guess he can’t read the tag to find out where it was made. Maybe it doesn’t have a tag. Maybe the workers forgot to attach the tag because they were too busy gossiping.
Next he mentions the “infamous blaze/At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.”
I assume this was a clothing factory. Is he having visions? He has facts such as “One hundred and forty-six died in the flames”, tragic for the people involved, but what bloodless, easy distance now for Pinsky and his professional compassion. He describes people falling out of the windows of the burning building, the result of reading testimonials somewhere in the comfort of the library. Pinsky expects us to be open-mouthed at the depth of a mind that could make these connections, but it means nothing to me, it does not touch me, it bores me. It is pressed and plastic wrapped dry-cleaning.
During his research, Pinsky has discovered many specialized words involved with the manufacture of shirts:
“The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin.”
He really did his homework, so why does it taste like a meal of diapers?
Pinsky mentions Hart Crane and then quotes him. How fortuitously the quote fits into his fated three-line stanzas. This is just more indirect matter, shelf-stale, far from a living vein. The self-admiration of academics will allow no poem to pass without stitching into it a literary reference, or two: “Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme”.
And then, like a robed monarch dribbling pearls to the marble:
“Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras.”
It’s like walking through a thesaurus clothes-line.
More history:
“clan tartars
Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,
Bailey, MacMartin.”
Macbullshit! Ossians? A fraud knows a fraud. Why doesn’t Pinsky write a research paper on the history of shirts if he’s got such a hard-on for them? Or the history of underwear? Or the history of shit stains?
Pinsky’s sympathy for the blacks is made clear as he says,
“George Herbert, your descendent is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit
And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me.”
She’s satisfied, is she? Yazzer! In fact the only reason she’s alive is so she can make Pinsky look good. Maybe after Pinsky tried his shirt on, and was well pleased, he allowed Irma to kiss his hand? Notice how he unifies himself with Irma, saying “We have culled its cost and quality…” Hallelujah, brother Pinsky! Him and Irma, old pals.
One more jazzy layer of words and it’s over:
“The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.”
Ta da! Don’t worry, I haven’t ruined the ending. Pinsky did that. Notice the smugness of his corny wrap-up, like a costume-jewelry box clicking shut. After reading his poem to an audience he’s fully prepared for a standing ovation. I imagine him taking off his shirt and tossing it to the front row of screaming fans. No, never. His precious shirt! Maybe they’ll bury him in it.
Mather Schneider is the author of Drought Resistant Strain (Interior Noise Press, 2009).
