How Poems Change Us
I think of a poem’s shifts or transitions as tectonic. That is, they are gliding plates that adjust and change the ground one stands on but with the acceptance of an embrace. They are something gradual and inviting. It’s movement such that a transfer of description to metaphor here, a resonance of image with idea there, finally results in a realignment of understanding that carries us to a new landscape, though our feet never left the ground. This occurs even in the briefest poem. Such a simple poem as Charles Simic’s “Watermelons” exemplifies:
Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.
The title serves as a tenor in a metaphor whose vehicle is the first two lines of the poem. The delight of seeing those round fruits as the bellies of Buddhas is humorous, something playful that brings a smile to the face. But the concluding two lines are more than humor. Eating the Buddha’s smile and spitting out the teeth renders a confluence of perceptions that lingers and expands. It is humor with profound consequences.
One of the primary tenets of Buddhism is nonattachment. But here, a Buddha becomes the means of a primary attachment, and one so extreme as to be carried to the point of consumption. In fact, its conclusion is transformation on the basic physical plane. The eaten watermelon is assimilated into the body of the one who eats it. That mysterious smile of Buddha carries a deeper irony now: for if nonattachment is based on the illusion of reality (another primary tenet of Buddhism), then nonattachment is part of that illusion as well. Both concepts dissolve in the act of eating, breaking the dualism inherent in the metaphysics. As the Zen expression goes, “Before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry.”
As the reader of this poem, I now carry in mind its overlap of meanings related to watermelons, Buddha, and concepts of nonattachment. The poem, though brief, changed my perception of experience on multiple levels by its transfer of significances. This is how that tectonic quality of poetry works. The longer the poem and the greater the number of metaphors, ideas, and images interlocked through it, the greater the tectonic shifts.