There
are apparently three different types of people in the world: those who love big
cities, those who hate them, and then those who find the beauty within the
chaos. Mary Karr, an American poet was born and raised in Texas. She had a
difficult life, dealing with a failed marriage, alcoholism, and drug-abuse. She
ultimately turned her life around, not only writing this poem, but writing
numerous critically acclaimed novels as well as a trilogy of memoirs (The
Liar’s Club, Cherry, and Lit). This accomplishment alone
makes one curious about her outlook on life. A Texas-grown woman, Mary never
had the chance to fall in love with a big city, but through her writing in the Perfect
Mess she really seems to be within that group of people that finds beauty
out of desperate situations, hence her ability to rise above her own personal
faults in life.
Perfect Mess is a poem based in New York
City. Instead of highlighting the elegance the city does enthrall, it
instead focuses on ordinary scenes, but portrays them in the way that makes
them seem favorable to the eye. Movies and television often give big
cities a light that makes tourists believe the cities to be overwhelmingly
beautiful. From my personal experiences, I would have to agree with
Karr’s portrayal, not the interpretation given off in films. I have traveled to Paris, France, twice,
and although I am in love with the city, it was not exactly what I had
anticipated. All the architecture, the buildings, monuments, bridges,
they were all beautiful, but amongst all the historical beauty were homeless
people everywhere, dog poop on the streets, and garbage floating about freely.
The whole feeling of Paris was somewhat dirty. I was surprised by
this, because in films, Paris is often depicted to be the city of love, such a
romantic place. Try kissing someone on a bridge while you step in dog
feces. Although this seems disturbing, and kind of disappointing, I took
it for what it was. I took in Paris for its good and its bad, and simply
thought “Well this is it”. Not that this takes away anything from one the
greatest cities in the world, but puts gives it a more realistic expectation.
Within this analysis and creative critique I will focus solely on how
Karr takes New York City for what it is and creatively uses rhetorical devices
to put the pretty back into the ugly.
First, we have to compare the
different angles of New York City. If we jump into the mind of a tourist
we may think of the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Empire State Building,
and Time’s Square. The tourist attractions are often very cleanly, and
extremely stunning. The lens of a tourist is often the same lens we view
through when watching films or television, like I stated prior. When
drawing a picture of NYC, directors often focus on these same attractions: giving an aerial pan of Central
Park, the skyline, Ellis Island and the infamous woman statue, or the hustle
and bustle of well-dressed bystanders making their way through the busy Times
Square. But, as a resident or a frequenter of this particular city, we
would tend to bypass these tourist destinations for the sole sake of time and
repetition. So, as we forgo the beauty within the famous sights, we find
ourselves amongst the everyday, true marvels of NYC.
When dwelling into the poem we
find ourselves amongst many different, yet ordinary scenes: piano movers
hauling a grand piano, ballet dancers smoking cigarettes outside a casting
call, old women, and subway rats. Karr
even uses Hell’s Kitchen within this poem, which is a part of Manhattan known
for its gritty reputation, warehouses, and overall non-pleasing
aesthetics. The focused scenes, in
conjunction with creative rhetorical devices, cause readers to ponder these
regularly unpleasant scenes as possibly agreeable.
Take for instance the
scene of Hell’s Kitchen. To any tourist
or visitor of NYC, this probably is not first on the list of things to see, yet
it becomes painted into a beautiful spectacle through Karr’s use of exemplum. “…in one instant every black umbrella in Hell’s
Kitchen opened on cue, everyone still moving.
It was a scene from an unwritten opera, the sails
of some vast armada”. This exemplum
exemplifies the splendor found in a stark place. There is often a strong use of similes, “…the
sky bulging black as a bad water balloon and in one pinprick instant it burst. A
downpour like a fire hose.” The similes
offer comparative properties that cause a sense of relativity to the audience.
One thing that I
found appealing about this poem is the use of personification. I think this is very fitting within a poem
about a city, especially New York, because we often use personifying titles in
everyday speak, for example—the city that never sleeps. Karr puts a twist on this popular nickname
giving the city even more human characteristics: “the city feeds on beauty,
starves for it, breeds it.” As well as, “for
a few heartbeats, the whole city stalled, paused, a heart thump, then it all
went staccato,” and “I heard a tenor exhale pure longing down the brick
canyons, the steaming moon opened its mouth to drink from on high”.
Two of the most
memorable passages from this poetic piece are that of the ballet dancers and
the piano movers. “I passed next the
crowd of pastel ballerinas huddled under the corner awning, in line for an open
call—stork limbed, ankles zigzagged with ribbon, a few passing a lit cigarette
around”, and “Today I loved the unprecedented gall of the piano movers, shoving
a roped-up baby grand up Ninth Avenue before a thunderstorm. They were a grim and hefty pair, cynical as
any day laborers”. Within the
description of these dancers and piano movers we see uses of appositives, asyndeton,
and expletives. I feel as if the use of these
rhetorical devices offers a sense of realism of these subjects. They really come to life, and I get a great
sense of imagery. This could not be
accomplished simply by saying, “The ballerinas dressed in pink, shared a
cigarette”, or “The piano movers angrily hiked a piano up into a New York City
apartment”.
Through
the brief analysis of particular rhetorical devices we find that even the foulest
of places hold attractiveness, and sometimes it only takes language to bring
them out. Karr does a great job exemplifying
specific scenes within New York City that wouldn’t perpetually cause tourists
to stop and take pictures, yet with rhetorical devices we find that New York
City may be the most fitting oxymoron of all: a perfect mess.
Hannah K.
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