Response to Poem

For the sake of my friends' privacy (and my livelihood) the friends I have sent this poem to will be known as Jack and Jill in this post. I did not intend to have such a poem sent to Jack and Jill. I have never been the poetic type, so I went for the knee-jerk reaction and chose the sadly predictable theme of friendship. To be honest, I did not expect much, no disrespect to the great poets out there intended. Needless to say I was excited to find the poem "After The Movie" by Marie Howe. What makes this poem so special is that there is nothing about the lovely perks of friendship, no hand holding, no skipping around the park singing wonderfully innocuous songs. This poem was different. It described the complex relationship between Jack and Jill perfectly. Without giving too much away, Jack is infatuated with Jill, but Jill does not return the favor. Jack and Jill are my best friends, and used to be best friends too.

The poem is about a conversation between the narrator and Michael. Michael believes that a person is capable of both loving and murdering someone. The poem ends with "we both know the winter has only begun." This signifies the shift in their relationship - the beginning metaphorical frost that has sprung between the former bosom buddies. Although murdering might be pushing it a little (I am pretty sure that Jill is not the murderous type), she is oftentimes frustrated by my Jack's open infatuation with her. Being the cold type, things can get pretty frosty when Jack becomes too bold with his infatuation.

I sent the poem to Jack. He replied almost immediately. The first word is too graphic for an English blog, so I am not going to write that down here. He then makes light of the whole matter and thoughtfully observed that Michael is the name of Jill's ex-boyfriend. I asked him if he's aware of his infatuation for Jill, because what he is feeling is definitely not love. His surprising answer was that he knows this already, thank you very much. But he cannot help his desire for her. I told him that's really sad. I wish I could have seen Jack's expression, but I can only summarize his verbal response. Jack also said that Michael is nuts, and that only poets can come up with these things. He is also interested in what movie they saw, because as according to him, the plot is "sicko." Jack also points out the line in the poem "Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at someone you want to eat and not eat them." and cries out in disgust, "OMG, a Twilight reference!" before I told him that the poem was written before the immensely popular vampire novels were published.

I wish I could say that Jack had some sort of epiphany about this futile infatuation, and said something insightful and maybe even poetic. However, as you probably know by now, my friends are not wired for poetry.