ARTICLE
May Swenson: “Bleeding”
They say love cuts like a knife.Very often (and each time as fresh as the first), love ends. What metaphor would be apt enough to represent that terrible pain, a psychic ache so acute it echoes the worst of the physical? And what is it like to be so wounded? Poetry is full to the brim of what it is like to be the unrequited wounded one, but rarely do we find a poem that is also written from the perspective of the wounder—that awful other who inflicts the pain.
May Swenson’s poem, “Bleeding,” gives us both sides: a talking metaphorical knife stands in for the one sensibility, and a talking metaphorical cut speaks for the other. By formally inserting a jagged gap through the text, she creates a visual echo of a ragged cut. When the poem is read aloud (or silently, with the reader’s voice echoing in his or her own head), the gap becomes a prolonged caesura that alternately acts as missing punctuation (in the first line it might as well be a comma: “Stop bleeding said the knife.”) and emphatic pause. When the cut speaks, the gap sometimes suggests the difficult speech of one in great pain: “I would if I could said the cut.” I sense an invitation to read a tiny gasp there in the gap-width.
Swenson details, with eerie authenticity, the knife’s annoyance, the knife’s inability to be other than it is, the knife’s quiet desperation that turns quickly to a menacing threat (“Stop or I will sink in farther said the knife.”), the knife’s transfer of blame as a response to the manifestation of its damage (“If only you didn’t bleed said the knife I wouldn’t / have to do this.”). There is also, ultimately, a shared realization that the knife somehow benefits from the damage it does — the cutting, as messy as it is, as noisome as it is, ultimately leaves the knife feeling purified and ready to begin anew (clean and shiny again).
Neither speaker can account for why they are the way they are. The cutter knows it has to do as it does in order to stay alive; the wounded knows it must bleed (in spite of the punishment it provokes) in order to feel. And feel it must. Nothing can change these two. The poem enacts that wounding truth by brilliantly literalizing the process. Cuts must bleed and knife types must coolly cause damage.
Read the Poem
More poems by May Swenson
About the Author
Mary Jo Bang is an acclaimed poet whose first collection, Apology for Want, received the Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize for first book of poetry in 1996. Her other works include Louise in Love and The Downstream Extremity of . . .
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COMMENTS (9)
On August 14, 2007 at 8:57 pm Majid Naficy wrote:
mutual dependency between a masochist and a sadist?
On August 24, 2007 at 7:05 pm Hilda White wrote:
I find it discouraging that so much that is published today as poetry is in reality merely prose arranged into lines to look like poetry. When read aloud these so-called poems sound to the listener to be no more than brief essays, or brief stories, justified as such but with little to justify them as poems.
While it is true that in our contemporary world we no longer cling to the past, especially the past when rhyme and meter were expected of the poet, there ought still, it seems to me, to be the feeling at least of what I call the poetic sound of experience , "a particular of life so intensely felt that the feeling has entered into it," as Wallace Stevens said.
Instead, in the 'anything goes' attitude of today, so-called lyrics for popular songs; so-called poetry for contemporary readings; all has fallen apart. Poetry has lost its balance, its depth, its beauty: Nothing is"intensely felt." And
many a true poet, discouraged by the scene, goes on working in obscurity without sending his or her work out to magazines or elsewhere.
Ought we not at least to be having open debate on the subject; attempt toraise the standards?
It is not a case of elitism, or return to the past,
or to the obscure -- but to some sense of boundary -- some sense of what a poem is, even in our "free world" where everyone seems to be an "author," a "poet".
On August 26, 2007 at 2:24 pm miriam chaikin wrote:
"many a true poet, discouraged by the scene,
goes on working in obscurity without sending
his or her work out to magazines or
elsewhere."
wrote hilda white
i would like to urge hilda white to send out her
poems. some editor is certain to see their
worth and readers will find profit
On February 10, 2009 at 2:42 pm Janet Harrington wrote:
I loved the flow of the poem. I loved the metaphor she used, (the knife talking to the cut). The way she put in the spaces, made me think that I had to pause, which in turn made the poem interesting to read. The spacing also made it seem as if knife and cut were finishing each other’s even though they aren’t. I love her poem (I wouldn't let a person who had an issue with cutting themselves read it) but all in all her choice of words and the way the verses are written made it very interesting.
On March 1, 2009 at 6:29 pm Lisa Meyer wrote:
I find this poem very disturbing, yet I
enjoy reading it. I think it is beautifully
written. And the explication of this
poem was also well done. I think Mary
Jo Bang pointed out all of the important
aspects of this poem such as pointing
out that the poem is written in both the
perspective of the
wounded(metaphorical cut) and the
inflicter (metaphorical knife). and how
the knife thrives and survives off of the
cut. It really makes the poem
interesting and unique. I also think it
was good that Mary Jo pointed out that
this poem is someone's "voice in their
head" they are thinking while doing this
to themselves and she also says how
prolonged caesuras may suggest
difficulty to speak or being in great
pain. Which is something I did not
think of when first reading this poem.
The only thing I noticed while reading
"Bleeding" that Mary Jo did not
specifically mention was May Swenson
almost gave the knife and the cut
personalities. Although this
conversation is going on in someone's
head it is the cut and the knife
speaking. However Mary Jo did
mention the cuts annoyance with the
knifes persistence to keep cutting and
make it feel better. I really enjoyed
reading this poem and Mary Jo's
overview of "Bleeding" .
On March 7, 2009 at 12:24 pm Stephanie Bressette wrote:
The poem's external form has everything to do with how it's read. As you read along you realize how jagged and grousome of a cut is actually made by the "knife".
On March 8, 2009 at 11:43 pm Eric Curtis wrote:
I thought the poem “Bleeding” was very well organized with a prodigious theme. The Metaphor of the knife and the cut were very shrew. Mary Jo Bang did a tremendous job in pointing out all the details of this poem that made it leave such a powerful effect. The form of this poem used a caesura to break each line to make a jagged cut which added a sense of imagery to the piece while reading it. I can also agree with her about the speaker of the poem, the knife. Rarely do we ever see the aggressor or the assaulter as the speaker.
On March 9, 2009 at 1:55 pm Violet Delacorte wrote:
I think that May Swenson's poem are very fresh, innovative, interesting and also shockingly earnest. Poems like these make me, and others, think in new perspectives and poets like this are what we need in order to push the boundaries of literary brilliance. I thoroughly enjoy all of her poems and am excited to do a project on her in my English class.
On March 10, 2009 at 9:05 pm Sean Miller wrote:
This poem an extremely graphic and altogether rewarding piece of literature. Each line is a back and forth dialogue between the knife and the cut. The knife and the cut are very metaphorical to any give and take relationships in life. Symbiotic if you may. Without the stabbing the cut the knife receives no gratification. But the knife doesn't enjoy the blood coming from the cut. Nor does the cut. But the cut must bleed for it to feel. It's very intriguing to think that the only thing that makes the cut feel real is pain, for the speaking is unhappy with the blood but at the same time its the only way he can reconnect with himself again. The way the poem is broken into two pieces signifying a broken slab of skin left wondering what happened and regretfully wanting more.
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