The Male Gaze

            I had time for a quick lunch on Thursday during which I read and critiqued one of Vivian’s poems. I took a siesta and when I got up I immediately read and made notes on the rest of the poems from the members of my group. That took me well past the usual time that I would get ready to leave and I had twenty minutes to get to Northrop Frye Hall by 18:00.
            Maybe it’s because spring is in the air that two attractive women, one along the way and another while I was locking my bike, made eyes at me. It could also be because I hadn’t showered for a couple of days. I have noticed that often it’s when I’m greasy that women slip me amorous looks.
            I got there at 18:05 and most everyone was there but classes don’t officially start until ten after the hour, which is when Albert comes in.
            Jenny was wearing her blouse with one extra button undone and looking even more alluring than usual. Again, there must have been something in the spring air.
            Quite a few of the students in our class are graduating in a few weeks and so Albert took some time to ask what they’re going to be doing. Ashley said she’s landed a job in marketing right here at the University of Toronto. Emily said she is going home to California for a while. He hometown is just outside of Los Angeles.
            Albert was wearing a tie for the first time in the course and I asked him if he had meetings. He said he did and actually would have to leave us 40 minutes early to go to something at the Fischer Library.
            It seemed that Albert had caught spring fever as well. He’s usually in a pleasant mood but this time he seemed so elated that I might have guessed that he’d smoked up before class if I didn’t learn later that he doesn’t smoke pot but now that it’s legal he might try some edibles if the opportunity arises.
            Hearing about the location of Ashley’s hometown somehow got Albert talking about a part of Chicago that was one of the locations where they developed the atomic bomb. But then he said it might have instead been the location of McDonald’s Hamburger University. I asked if he was saying that McDonald’s is responsible for the development of the atomic bomb. Albert answered something like, “It could be true in different world”. He told us that he loves McDonalds and has ever since he discovered it at the age of 16. They used to stop at McDonald’s and get a bunch of McDonald's hot dogs. I asked, "Did you say hot dogs?" He said, "I meant hamburgers but I probably said hot dogs because they are my favourite food”. His ideal would be to get his after dinner hamburger and to put it in a hot dog bun.
            Albert told us that he’d invented the plaid light bulb.
            He wondered if now that Marijuana is legal there might be cannabis products sold at McDonalds. Someone suggested, “McWeed”. Ashley said that there are cannabis infused Jolly Ranchers but when someone asked she confirmed that they don’t have the Jolly Rancher brand name.
            Albert said, “I’ve gotta get me an anarchist tie”. They do exist.
            We were going to have two groups working at opposite ends of the table because Albert wanted to keep his office free, but the other group was so noisy that Albert said Vivian, Margaryta and I could go into his office. Albert joined us and he wanted to start with one of my poems. He was full of embarrassing praise for all three of the poems that I’d brought in last week.
            I read “Abdullah”:

I’m out here on the bench
with my book and my pen
old Abdullah comes along
wearing no coat and no shoes
just his white cotton shirt
and his trousers and nothing else on

There’s this greeting he’s taught me
it’s “Khuda hafiz”
so we say it and then he sits down
There’s no pressure to talk
we just sit there and watch
whatever might come around

Perhaps a little bit bored
Abdul takes out a coin
then he flips it and asks me to choose
I hate these kinds of games
but to please my good friend
I say “tails” and I hope that I lose

But it turns out I win
whoopee we forget it
and move on to other things
like how he says he loves art
but that creative pursuits
do not lead to happiness

He says my ambition
of making a living
with poetry is a dead end
and that poets like Gibran
always end up alone
without any family or friends

A merchant by contrast
is never an outcast
and his family will never leave him
Then he invites me to come back
to his Pakistan
and I don’t know if he’s kidding

He assures me he’ll pay
for my trip to his home
and he’ll teach me about business
Then the wind blows beneath
my old winter coat
and I actually consider it

It’s now rolling around
to that pale time of year
when blue skies are colder than grey
The streets are now thinner
as shadows get thicker
the winds in my chest are at play
and there’s a leavening omen
as those winds start blowing
all my elation away

Abdullah remembers
our long buried coin toss
and says “We forgot to wager”
He says name your trophy
I say without thinking
“Give me your youngest daughter”

One might think I would know
it’s not his kind of joke
plus his youngest girl is fourteen
He gets up from our seat
insulted and leaves
and I never see him again

            Of the line "and there’s a leavening omen" Vivian thought that I should find a better word than "leavening" but Albert said he liked it.
            Margaryta thought that my use of capitals, even though it was correct, was aesthetically inconsistent. There are no capitals in the first stanza other than for the first word because the whole stanza is one sentence but some of the other stanzas have more than one sentence. Albert didn’t think that was important.
            She liked the fifth stanza because it reminded her of some of the interviews/academic pieces she’s read that mention a kind of poetic isolation and the burden of the poet in that regard.
            She said of the last two stanzas, “Kind of torn about the ending – as someone who grew up on the brothers Grimm, this kind of gambling away of daughters is nothing new. Shocking, but I’m sure some people will take issue with it. Not recommending you correct it, just voicing my thoughts, especially since you mention that his daughter is fourteen so that can be taken in different ways.”                    Blythe had not arrived yet when I read my poem but I’ll put her written comments here.
            She said she loved the eighth stanza but thought that it should be the first. She thought the line “whatever might come around” at the end of the second stanza needs more syllables. Her longest comment was about the last two stanzas: “Honestly, this end seems random and distracts from the rest of the poem, which was more detailed and vivid, but now seems like it was all to lead up to this ending. It would be a much better poem if you moved the above stanza (“It’s now rolling …”) to the start of the poem and ended with “and I actually consider it”.
            Holy crap! She missed the whole point of the poem. Considering going to Pakistan is not what moved me to write the poem. It was the conflict that came at the end and the emotion that it brought about.
            Albert especially liked the longer eighth stanza. He said it was magnificent and compared it to the bridge in a ballad. He said that he likes the way the rhyme in the third and sixth lines kind of drop out. He likes the way I read it and observed that I alter the rhythm, enforcing more regularity than there actually is. He said he likes it both ways.
            Vivian is constantly eating in our class. She’s the only person that brings food in and I especially find it annoying during the workshops. She has the courses piled in front of her in Styrofoam containers and the odour would be fragrant if everyone else was eating but as it is it’s almost offensive. The ironic thing is that she is also the skinniest person in our class.
            We next looked at one of Vivian’s poems. I write most of my criticisms and suggestions for her poems. In this poem she ended each couplet with the beginning of a sentence that was continued on the next couplet. I told her that there was no need for the space. Albert agreed and said that there was no need for the couplets as the lines kept getting longer as she went along. He suggested that she just make it into a full poem without stanzas. She had a line “flushed down through the years" which I suggested she change to "flushed down the years”.
            Blythe arrived just as we were finishing our comments on Vivian’s poem.
            Margaryta’s poem had some interesting uses of Ukrainian and Russian words. She said that there is a Ukrainian saying that the Russian language sounds like the barking of dogs while Ukrainian resonates like the singing of a nightingale. Her poem was about the fact that, although she is Ukrainian, she can barely speak it because she comes from a part of the Ukraine where Russian is prominently spoken.
            I really liked the poem but I didn’t like the little numbered notes that she put in beside the Russian and Ukrainian words. I suggested that she free the poem of the numbers and just put the notes at the beginning. Everyone else agreed that the numbers have to go but thought that the explanations should be footnotes. Albert was okay with top or bottom but definitely agreed about the numbers.
            We looked at one of Blythe’s poems.
            Her work tends to explore mostly unrequited love. They are often charming and sometimes she finds a new twist but mostly she doesn’t break any ground or advance poetry in any new directions.
            At this point Albert had to go but lingered and chatted for a while anyway. We talked about Jacques Prevert’s poems, songs and screenplays. I told him that I’ve translated his poem "Une orange sur la table” and also his song “Les feuilles mortes” and that I think “Les Enfants du Paradis", for which he wrote the screenplay is the best movie ever made. Albert thinks the best films ever made are by Tarkovsky but he agreed that “Children of Paradise" is a great movie. He said that Prevert wrote the screenplays for all of Marcel Carné's films, he named some other Prevert songs.
            I asked Albert if I could come to see him next week and he said, “I wish you would!” His office hours are 14:00 to 16:00 on Wednesdays so I said I'd come and see him then.
            I asked if I could bring my guitar and sing a poem for the last class and he seemed excited about the idea.
            After Albert left it would have been logically my turn to read a poem but it was almost as if they, especially Blythe, were all avoiding that.
            We ended up looking at all of Vivian’s poems, all of Margaryta’s and then all of Blythe’s before we finally came back to me and I read, “She Would not Settle for the Limits of Satisfaction”:

She Would not Settle for the Limits
of Satisfaction but rather left
herself open to being swept away
as a piece of the machinery
in the vibrator of mother nature. She
rode the orgasm of situation
all flux as a victim of fate waiting
patiently for a promotion
to destiny. To her being raped
while coming home from a night
club was no different from being caught in rain
storms. Hers was an indiscretionary
hedonism with a mutated coat
of many Buddhas thrown over it
She had the stuff to be a guru
when she wasn’t like a crumpled poem
found on the streetcar or gutter
on garbage night. She was beautiful
enough to get away with it
and she wasn’t crazy but was good theatre
because she didn’t know how to act
so people always paid her since
there is nothing quite as mysterious
as someone that refuses
to conceal that she has no plans
and so others made plans for her. She
never landed on an orgasm
although her pleasures mounted much higher
than the average climax, she had one
gee spotless reputation
and was so passive that she would fuck any
body for nothing. But women don’t seem to
flirt with madness as successfully as men
meaning they tend to need a handle to handle
insanity, like Jesus
or fascism or else they lose
their way. My head whispers blindly
a hallucination of her
has been delivered to my mind without
the usual condom, because I am
no one if I don’t display the blind
contours that illuminate the wonder
of animal magnets that don’t
need a leash but merely a polisher for their poles
My wounded heart needs nourishment in sweet dreamland
so that’s where I’m going and won’t be back

            Of the phrase, “She / rode the orgasm of situation / all flux” Blythe said that it should be “in flux”. She didn’t get that “situation / all flux” is a play on “situational flux”.
            She liked the phrase “promotion to destiny” and the last line, didn’t get “coat of many Buddhas” or “gee spotless reputation”. But it was Blythe’s comments on “To her being raped / while coming home from a night / club was no different from being caught in rain / storms” set off a heated argument that lasted for the rest of the session: “I really don’t think the rape line is necessary or adds much essential to the poem. As is, it reads like an attempt to use a person’s pain to create shock or drama in the poem or to create their character. Maybe not intentional, but it’s in poor taste and isn’t important or effective enough to justify its negative attributes. If you do keep it, you should have a content warning if publishing/reading in public.”
            Both Vivian and Margaryta agreed the passage made them uncomfortable and was problematic.
            My response to her comment was that it was not poetry criticism but rather moralization. It takes the stance of knowing something to be absolutely true. She said, “That’s a lie!” I said that phrases like “poor taste” have no place in a poetry workshop. I told her that she could have offered something like, “Some publishers might not publish this because they might consider it to be in poor taste” but to offer “poor taste” as a critique is inappropriate. We went back and forth for a while and she was raising her voice. I asked her if her reaction would be different if the gender pronoun in the poem was “He” instead of “She”. She admitted that it would be. I said if that’s the case then it’s all a head game. If a poem bothers one less when the genders are switched then objectively one doesn’t have as much of a problem with the poem as one claims.
            Margaryta piped in with a comment about the lines, “women don’t seem to / flirt with madness as successfully as men / meaning they tend to need a handle / to handle insanity, like Jesus / or fascism or else they lose / their way.” She said it made her uncomfortable because it promotes the argument that men are more logical than women. I don’t know where she got that. It’s not necessarily better to be better at going insane. A man slipping into madness with more ease than a woman has nothing to do with logic. It has to do with male privilege and not giving a fuck what other people think because of it.
            I noticed in her written comments on the lines, “She was beautiful / enough to get away with it / and she wasn’t crazy” that she said, “This is another problematic trope: that of the ‘crazy woman’” How did she get “crazy woman” from “she wasn’t crazy”?
            She said it not only has issues with the poem on the level of describing women but it also lacks unity. She said it feels like voyeurism and the male gaze in a very uncomfortable way. How does she know the speaker is male? How does she even know I’m male? I don’t recall saying so.
            I told them that I have known women that were indifferent to being raped and so why shouldn’t poems be written about them. Margaryta argued that those women should tell their own stories. But what if they don’t write poetry? If this person were a character in a movie they wouldn’t be judging it according to whether the screenplay was written by the woman on whom the character was based, if she exists.
            We ended the argument when it was time to go and so my other poem didn’t get any time. The other members of my group stayed behind to “Friend” each other on Facebook. I doubted if they wanted to be friends with me, and so I said goodnight and left.
            I’ll add here Albert’s very different comments on the same poem. He first of all underlined his favourite parts: “She / rode the orgasm of situation / all flux as a victim of fate waiting / patiently for a promotion / to destiny”; “Hers was an indiscrectionary hedonism”; “she wasn’t crazy but was good theatre”; and “there is nothing quite as mysterious / as someone that refuses / to conceal that she has no plans”.
            Of the lines: “My head whispers blindly / a hallucination of her / has been delivered to my mind without / the usual condom, because I am / no one if I don’t display the blind / contours that illuminate the wonder / of animal magnets that don’t / need a leash but merely a polisher for their poles” he wrote, “The complex rightness of this sentence justifies for me even the tricksy ‘animal magnets’ – it works in the image system, and in the system of wit in extremis”.
            Here are his overall comments for the poem, “This poem – wonderful – deserves and justifies everything it brings in, and yet I was going to discuss this as being a ‘fantasy’ … until the marvellous turn in the last two sentences that admits the whole portrait, claims the whole portrait as a fantasy – a creative fantasy if also a tribute to the woman who was its basis in reality and who is now gone - really or figuratively into madness. A related marvellous turn in the poem is the contradiction of “she wasn’t crazy” by the later “women don’t seem to flirt with madness as successfully as men”. And there’s also the turn from that to the conclusion that is a sort of demonstration, or admission, of the speaker’s flirtation with madness”.
            Of my poem “Dumb Bike Ride”:

I slogged out on my dumb bike ride
westbound along the boring route
pedaling tedious beside a sky
that showed a yield of diverse clouds
above the lake especially
but none of that quite impressed me

I turned on Islington Avenue
and dragged my way past all those plazas
that are cloned anywhere you travel to
but found relief from the miasma
on turning left onto Norseman
to find an industrial wonderland

Past the Animal Eye Hospital
sits the Believers’ Christ Embassy
I mused that fundamentalists
are now mass-produced in factories
There was Global Cheese, Super Collision
Hot Rod Scott’s and Police Auctions

I passed a building that belonged
to a large franchise called "For Sale"
a company that seems to own
property on a global scale
though it doesn't seem to want it
which is Zen when you think about it

I went north and then turned east
and saw the towering tidal wave
of clouds of white and ebony
that’d been behind me all the way
and was now motionlessly smashing
the air above my home direction

Perhaps my father's analogy
that the horse loves the home trip best
holds true, because suddenly
there was nothing that did not impress
The Sputnik Vintage Furniture store
had Rocket Fireworks right next door

Then southbound I began to move
past a school that may have lost a “C”
but "Holy Angels Atholic School”
might have been its real identity
and maybe Atholic School daughters
wear their kilts just a little shorter

As I turned left onto the Queensway
the gravity that pulled me home
was that of the clouds that hung and played
over the eastern horizon
and which overwhelmed my senses
with their spectacular menace

            Of the first stanza, Vivian thought that “pedalling tedious” was unnecessary because I’d already said the route was boring. A route and pedalling are two different things. One could be boring while the other one isn’t or they could both be boring. If they are both boring I’m going to use two synonyms of boring describe them.
            She also didn’t get why I used “menace” at the end, since the poem had taken a positive turn. I didn’t just use “menace” but rather “spectacular menace” which is a very positive ending.
            Blythe loved the opening, “I slogged out on my dumb bike ride / westbound along the boring route”.
            Of the lines “maybe Atholic School daughters / wear their kilts just a little shorter” she asked “Than what? Than whom?” Huh? Is it really not obvious?
            Where I said “the Queensway” she crossed out “the”. I guess she doesn’t know that “the Queensway” is the name of the route.
            Of the final stanza she wrote, “You mention clouds before – maybe eliminate that? Or connect the two somehow. Two separate cloud references seems repetitive.”
            The two references to clouds are connected by the transformation the observer goes through, from the beginning when he is not impressed by the clouds to the end when he is impressed.
            Margaryta was “not ok with these lines”: “maybe Atholic School daughters / wear their kilts just a little shorter”.
            Of the whole poem she said, “I know the area so this felt like a nice, familiar and simple poetic journey.”
            Albert’s only edit was to change “which” to “that” in one line.
            Of the poem he just said it was “spectacular”.
            He added an overall comment about all of my poems: “To my mind, you’d have a powerful book from the poems alone presented in Vic480.
            “You’re a long practiced poet with many poems behind you, so I hesitate to attribute anything in particular to the last three months, but the last two or three groups of poems do seem to me, while of a piece with the superb earlier ones, full of a confident freedom and brio that goes with a deep, complex look at their subject – and at the mind of the poet-speaker-singer. I have thoroughly enjoyed and profited by your work. It’s all its own: I don’t feel I could get the feeling, knowledge and example it gives from anywhere else”.
            When I got home I had tomatoes with avocadoes and watched a great and well-written episode of The Rifleman, which was also coincidentally quite appropriate to watch after handing in an essay about ugliness. 
            The story begins with Mark outside doing some washing when a decrepit old disabled Confederate war veteran named Frank Blandon staggers up to ask him for a drink of water. Mark obliges and offers that he could use the shower behind the house too if he wants. Frank is offended because he thinks Mark is telling him he smells bad. He comes very close while yelling at him and just then Lucas rides up. He comes forward with his rifle but then sees Frank’s mangled arm. Frank says, “Why don’t you shoot me?” Lucas invites him in for coffee and provides him with a meal as well. Afterwards Frank asks him for a job but Lucas says he’s not taking on any extra hands. Frank leaves but on the way out says, “You can stop fumigating with that there cigar!” After he leaves Mark says, “Gosh, I sure am glad you didn’t take him on pa!” “Why?” “He makes me shiver, he’s so ugly!” Lucas gets up and walks toward the door. “Where you goin pa?” “I’m goin to hire both of us a clean conscience!” “Oh no pa, please! I can’t even stand to look at him!” “Neither can I son, which means we’re both in worse shape than he is!”
            A little later a group of soldiers rides up and Lucas recognizes the leader as General Sheridan, under who he served during the Civil War. Sheridan asked him what his rank had been Lucas told him that he’d made Lieutenant by the end of the war. The general says, “If you’d been a sergeant I’d remember you”. The general wants to camp on the ranch and of course Lucas obliges. Because of this Frank wants to leave but Lucas convinces him to stay. That night while the soldiers are drinking and enjoying the general’s stories, Frank comes out of the barn and approaches him. He says, “Howdy general! Nice to see you again!” “We’ve met?” “Missionary Ridge!” “What did I have in my right hand?” “A big pistol!” “The other?” “Same as now!” Now he’s holding a bottle of liquor. “You stopped to have one right down in front of my rock hole and you were looking straight up my sights, I just couldn’t have missed. But for some reason I hung fire. But you never waited though, not a snap second! You glimpsed me and then right away you blowed off my shoulder!” “Johnny I’m sorry for it!” “I didn’t ask you to be sorry, cause it’s the South’s turn now!” Frank pulls out a derringer and points it at Sheridan’s head. Lucas pulls out his rifle but Sheridan says, “At ease McCain!” He tells his men, “I’ll handle this myself!” Sheridan tells Frank that he disgraced the Confederate army by hiding in the rocks and by not firing the shot that could have tipped the balance of the war in the South’s favour. Frank is suddenly shaken and he walks away saying, “I’m nothing to nobody!” Sheridan follows him and says, “I spoke too hasty.” He puts his hand on Frank’s shoulder and begins talking about the Confederate army. “They burst out of the woods on us, keening that wild wolf yell. Half the time we had to turn our backs to them and run. More and more artillery blame near didn’t stop’em!” “We was mean fightin boys!" "Four mortal years! You ragtail scarecrows held the mightiest army in the history of warfare! You held us Johnny to the last razor edge! Swords and bayonets blunted, hearts and the union broke!” "If we'd had a couple more corncobs we woulda whipped ya!" "I almost believe you would! Now let’s have a look at that shoulder.” Sheridan calls his doctor over and the doctor examines Frank’s wound. “This operation is butchery!” “The brigade surgeon didn’t have nothin more than an old hog knife and some throw away doctor tools.” The surgeon says they can repair it so Sheridan makes arrangements for Frank to be transported to Galveston Base Hospital and signed in as one of Sheridan’s special veterans. Sheridan says, “I’m carrying out the last order of my wartime commander in chief! Bind up the nation's wounds!"
            This story was written by Cyril Hume, who wrote the screenplays for The Forbidden Planet and most of the MGM Tarzan films.
            The powerful performance of Frank Blandon's character was by renowned character actor, Royal Dano. His son, Rick Dano is also an actor and was lead singer of the Dano/Jones band with Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols.