"Not Guilty" by David Rivard

Wednesday's poem is from David Rivard, an American writer from Massachusetts with a history of publications and awards.

Key terms for students: enjambment, ode, image, free verse

Not Guilty

The days are dog-eared, the edges torn,   

ragged—like those pages   

I ripped once out of library books,

for their photos

of Vallejo and bootless Robert Johnson.   

A fine needs paying now

it’s true, but   

not by me.

I am no more guilty

than that thrush is

who sits there stripping moss   

off the wet bark of a tree.

A red fleck, like his, glows

at the back of my head—a beauty mark,   

left by the brain’s after-jets.

I would not wish for the three brains   

Robert required

to double-clutch his guitar

and chase those sounds he had to know   

led down

and into a troubled dusky river, always.

Three brains did Johnson no earthly good,   

neither his nor Vallejo’s 4 & 1/2

worked right exactly—O bunglers,

O banged-up pans of disaster!

Crying for days, said Cesar, & singing for months.   

How can I be so strong some times,

at others weak? I wish to be free,

but free to do what? To leave myself behind?   

To switch channels remotely?

Better to sing.

Not like the bird, but as they sang,   

Cesar & Robert—

with the shocked & seeded   

sweetness of an apple

split open by a meat cleaver.

Today's poem seems like it'd be an interesting one to read aloud for the competition, but I'm pretty in the dark about what it might mean. Robert Johnson was a famous blues musician from the 1930s. There is an air of reverence with which the narrator speaks about Johnson in this poem; there is a secondary respect for Cesar Vallejo, a Peruvian poet (Better to sing. / Not like the bird, but as they sang, / Cesar & Robert-). After I learned who these two men are, the poem reads almost like an ode -  the men are monsters in their own fields, Johnson set the precedence for blues music and Vallejo is hailed as one of the greatest and most innovative poets of the 20th century. The poem seems almost like a meditation on the art of music and poetry and it feels like the narrator wishes not to be tied down with "brains" that "worked right exactly" but rather have an opportunity to "sing" - there's some sort of paradox there, thought I'm not quite sure what it means. The whole poem is fascinating, it seems so intimate and personal, and I really have only the slightest grasp of what it might be saying. The last two stanzas are beautiful. The image of a mutilated but crisp, sweet apple cut in half with such a huge weapon... really interesting. 

http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/171369