Kevin Young, "Resume"

Kevin Young's poem, "Resume," presents a location: "past the gully or gulch / or holler or ditch // I was born." A location tied to significant themes, but a place with its own peculiarities. A train that roars through, shaking everything; homes with outhouses; people nourished by "flour, butter- / milk, grease fires." Young renders an origin in unsparing language. I can't help but picture rural poverty, as well as the incredible character of those who build a life despite it.

As I read his verse, what struck me was an implicit but reimagined Biblical story within it. He opens with "Where the train once rained / through town / like a river," giving us an image to chew on. I thought of flooding and rain initially, but then I wondered how that might come from a train. Not just that the train affects everything in town, but that the train itself might carry everything. That it might be an ark, echoing Noah's story and covenant. To this end, a hidden rainbow rests in later lines: "where the heavens opened // & the sun wouldn't quit."

I want to meditate on how the story of Noah, whether Young intends to allude to it or not, might shed light on one of the primary themes of "Resume." The poem is not shy about life emerging from dirt. Worse than dirt, truth be told. Note the ending: "& someone's daddy dug / a latrine so deep / up from the dark // dank bottom springs a tree."

The question of how life and disgust relate is not trivial, though the classical treatment is dismissive. A youthful Socrates confronts Parmenides with his theory of forms, thinking he can best the theories of the old master and avoid a number of paradoxes about being. Socrates falls apart because he is not willing to admit a form of dirt. There are forms of marvelous things and many common things, but he does not want to link knowledge or being to things which could be ignoble. Since Parmenides eventually schools Socrates on extremely technical grounds, Socrates' rejection of the disgusting has been forgotten. The truth is that we don't only want life to be perfectly clean and properly categorized. We want this of knowledge, too. And perhaps life and knowledge do not really work that way.

Resume
Kevin Young (from Stones)

Where the train once rained
     through town
like a river, where the water

rose in early summer
     & froze come winter—
where the moon

of the outhouse shone
     its crescent welcome,
where the heavens opened

& the sun wouldn't quit—
     past the gully or gulch
or holler or ditch

I was born.
     Or, torn—
Dragged myself

atop this mountain
     fueled by flour, butter-
milk, grease fires.

Where I'm from
     women speak
in burnt tongues

& someone's daddy dug
     a latrine so deep
up from the dark

dank bottom springs a tree.

Noah's Ark is too clean a story in its Biblical telling. The Nephilim and their wickedness are simply washed away. All the animals of Earth are paired on the ark for 40 days and 40 nights and no words describing anything animals actually do are in the text. "Resume" consistently pushes against this unreal cleanliness. If the train roars like a river, it leaves a legacy of noise. Maybe the poem means the moon of an outhouse door, but it also could be saying that you wouldn't see the moon without seeing the outhouse. Grease fires, burnt tongues, and a latrine with a tree deep down do not let you think anything is clean, especially not birth. "I was born. / Or, torn..."

But you probably want to know what the link between Noah's story and birth is. If we speak of origins, would it not make more sense to talk about Genesis? I believe Noah's story, though, is about rebirth. Not so much the terrible destruction of the Nephilim, which results in the rainbow, the promise not to flood the Earth again. More the idea that our origin is a continuation. Noah wasn't the first human, but after the flood, his family was an origin and a continuation. Each of us, properly speaking, is not the start of anything. We are in the mess of other people, if you do not want to be harsh and say we are the mess of other people.

A lot of life is being far more careful with disgust. You go from playing in the dirt to being paranoid around your friends to sheltering yourself in the norms of your family. There's some give and take–we generally lighten up as adults–but we don't fully realize how much our artifice holds us back. What are we doing with bulldozers to tent cities? Why do we refuse to give people homes? Why do we stigmatize addiction? Why would we rather kill than help? Disgust is important for giving us standards that better all of us. As a way of exerting sheer power, though, it can be cruel and deadly.

The tree within the latrine is a radical, unsettling image. I think it is best to talk about it at length later. It forces us to confront what we call shit and ask what it truly does. Right now I'm curious about the "burnt tongues" of the women of this region. Real prophecy, a genuine encounter with the spirit, burns. It scars as well as enlightens. I think that's something those of us who want a more rational world have to consider. We deal with health influencers and anti-vaxxers who preach pseudoscience, who proclaim a natural purity which could fix everything if only we would let it. This is the promise of the rational world used against the rational world. It is the mysticism of immediate utility and simplified solutions. As I work on my research, I find myself writing out why I'm interested in certain questions more and more. I don't treat my quest for knowledge as impersonal. It's important to be messy when cleanliness isn't just empty, but a lie.