Bruce Smith’s "After Millay" was published in the TLS of March 17–23, 1989, and was later published in his collection The Other Lover (1999) under the title “After St Vincent Millay”. It's a nicely executed slice of bitterness, in which the speaker's pretensions and Romantic hyperbole are bathetically stripped away by the final snarling couplet. The poem is a sonnet, but the rhymes range from the full-blown identity rhyme of “me”/”me” to the Muldoonish ghost rhyme of “foot” and jolted”. That combination of form and freedom characterizes much of Smith's work, which often draws on jazz and other music for inspiration, subject matter, or rhythm. For example, Mercy Seat (1994) begins with a lyrical interrogation of the new physics, seeking a defining moment when Newtonian determinism (”we went to the funeral in 4/4 time / to the slow Napoleonic drums and the urge of Rome”) is replaced by the quirky indeterminacy of quark and chaos (”but returned in 2/4 to Didn’t He Ramble? / to hold ourselves and scuffle and tremble”). The music of the spheres turns out to be jazz. Smith’s collections also engage stimulatingly with American history and society, but “After Millay” does one simple job, and does it very well.

After Millay

When I saw you again, distant, sparrow-boned
under the elegant clothes you wear in your life without me,
I thought, No, No, let her be the one
this time to look up at an oblivious me.
Let her find the edge of the cliff with her foot,
blindfolded. Let her be the one struck by the lightning
of the other so that the heart is jolted
from the ribs and the rest of the body is nothing
but ash. It’s a sad, familiar story
I wish you were telling me with this shabby excuse:
I never loved you any more than
I hated myself for loving you.

And about that other guy by your side
you left me for. I hope he dies.

BRUCE SMITH (1989)

To read last week's Poem of the Week, "Moving House" by Elizabeth Jennings, click here.

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