Stephen Dobyns’s poem “Uprising” starts off with a repetition sure to please the phantom of Friedrich Nietzsche’s consciousness, “Straitjacket, straitjacket, straightjacket” (1). The voice exclaims, using first-person plural pronouns allowing for an intrinsic intrapersonal connection, that
we are tired of this quiet life, tired of climbing
this mountain of pleases and thank yous.
It’s time to kick a nun in the butt,
time to buy our prick a goddamned bug car
and let the wind frazzle our ears. (5)
In the above lines many undercurrents flow together allowing a deeper intellection of the work. The language, void of forgiveness, gives the diction a metapoetic quality because the voice is speaking of just this type of living: no regrets, no inhibitions, no civility. Call up one’s masculine id to help one kick one’s ego and superego “in the butt”. The language is harsh, but incongruously fresh and unmistakably humorous, especially with the image of someone “kick”ing a nun “in the butt”.
Nice "Stuff"
The voice next takes a swing at another contemporary human infliction, materialism, because it is time we “stop being the property of our property” (7). Delightfully simple and effective. Proceeding smoothly down the page the reader is presented with a litany of modern-day afflictions: repression of love, welcoming “badasses home”, hanging out with over-indulgent Allegories, and general apathy towards social niceties:
And here comes Envy sliding along on greased feet,
and gray-suited Lechery with his little cane,
and twin-headed Vanity winking into his own eyes,
and Anger going Grum, Grum on his little red scooter,
and chubby Appetite panting along behind the rest (13-17).
The nod to the 14th Century poem, Piers Plowman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piers_Plowman, by William Langland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Langland is inimitable here. Piers Plowman is an allegory riddled with social satire and the allusion adds much ferocity to the voice’s age-old need to identify to that which may be considered impolite or unrefined.
Let's Us Get Moving
The poem concedes to a foray with mortality at the end stating that “We’ve got to get moving!” (20). Bob Dylan said, “The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die”. How true Bob and the voice of “Uprising” would probably agree, but would surely add, “Let's march toward our grave scratching and farting, / our own raucous music of shouted good-byes. / Let's make sure they bury us standing up” (23-25). Humans, like the voice of this poem, often struggle with dualistic tendencies and ways of thinking, but maybe we need to remember that being ourselves and letting loose can be just as rewarding as self-control.
Dance or March?
Kurt Vonnegut once told his wife he was going out to buy an envelope and "Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore." Whether we decide to “dance” or “march” remember the words of Dylan Thomas and “Do not gentle into that good night”!
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