Marcin Świetlicki, "Photograph"

Hi all --

While at my parents' home, I see news differently. During the school year, I'm constantly searching for what my students need to know. That means I gravitate to explainers with a requisite amount of depth, like this one on how Texas politicians claim they spend $15,000 per pupil in the public school system, but the actual number is nowhere near that. I'm not reading from a print newspaper because I need online sources and videos. Nor am I watching TV because not every segment can be found on YouTube.

So The New York Times' Sunday opinion section from a week ago was lying around the house. I opened it and realized critiques of the Times often don't go far enough. Usually we're treating NYT columnists as "main characters" on social media because they do things like politely interview white nationalists. Questing for "clickbait" is obviously terrible, but then there's the cumulative effect of the op-ed section. I read about "The Tragedy of Joe Biden;" another piece said Hunter Biden's and Clinton's grifts set the stage for Trump (no. They are bad, but this completely discounts any knowledge we have); much handwringing, implicitly or explicitly, about what some call "woke" or "elite." The only things worth a damn were Nicholas Kristof saying that we have spent far too much money on bombs (he was pleading for Yemen, but the logic extends to other areas of U.S. foreign policy) and Jamelle Bouie pointing out that conservatism in America has romanticized certain despots over the years.

I think what has me up-in-arms is the bubble the op-ed page has created. How would I explain the existence of a community college to the editors and columnists of the NYT? How would I explain extremism and gross corruption? How would I explain that some people are being treated like dirt because of who they are? They're pretending to be in a world where there is some mythical middle ground of political rightness (you might say "political correctness") we could have if we gave up on things like "priorities," "facts," "rights," and "equality."

There are fiercer critiques of the Times. Parker Molloy has an excellent commentary on how the NYT and media like it have helped stoke panic against vulnerable populations. Outright bigotry is certainly at work. But there's also a desperate attempt to create a middle ground out of nothing, which can pull some readers far away from reality. Elite opinion is clearly not taking seriously how others are hurting in the current moment.

Marcin Świetlicki, "Photograph"

My parents' home is filled with photographs I half-remember being taken, if I can remember them at all. It is not the easiest thing to revisit these pictures after Dad died. They remind me how imperfect our means of capturing a moment are, how selective we are without meaning to be. Like ghosts don't just haunt some photos, but have control of the camera.

In a vein not necessarily as weighty, I'm staring at the first line of Świetlicki's "Photograph:" "[i]n the corner of the street an apparition." Ghostliness goes with a correspondingly confused action. I read this poem the following way. The speaker looked at a photograph and saw "an apparition," "a small fraction of blizzard," in the corner. And then a feeling gripped them, "miseries went astray." For a moment, they were hopeful or mournful about that "apparition." Someone left their place once, and they remember. So they opened the window and leaned outside, replicating the photo, seeing "a still flurry" where the ghost in the photo was.

Photograph
Marcin Świetlicki (trans. Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese)

In the corner of the street an apparition – as if
a small fraction of blizzard – as if
miseries went astray – went searching for someone
I opened the window – and so it remains
in the corner of the street a still flurry
me leaning forward and anticipating
and the harsh features of a winter sun

Our previous discussion of Creeley's "patient small agony" can be relevant to this poem. Maybe someone left Creeley's life–maybe he has regrets–but he's buried them and can claim to be happy. However, he can not or will not move beyond that claim. Here, I believe Świetlicki has done a marvelous job bringing us to those moments of hope when we think about someone who left us. You could say that "leaning forward... anticipating / and the harsh features of a winter sun" is only a sad act, that "miseries went astray" and hit him. But you could also say that he opened the window out of the most naive hope–"maybe they're still there!"–and had to confront what the photograph really means. And I think that Świetlicki is pointing the way to a more mature hope in having "a still flurry" from the present correspond to the "small fraction of blizzard." It is not a loss to recognize how you remember and how you love.

My reading entails engaging that feeling of hope coming from "they're interested in us again!" Truth be told, there are those who are incredibly selfish and only want others back in their lives to tell them they were right all along. Other people are nothing but proof to them. I'm prone to believe Świetlicki gives us a narrator we can be more generous with. One who took the time to let his memories grace his life, one who looks for points of correspondence between past and present. One who waits in anticipation and accepts the harshness of the winter sun. I get it: these may not add up to a portrait of anything resembling self-improvement or openness. But knowing what we know about incels and PUA culture, this is far more meditative. And it doesn't sound as delusional as much as innocent.

Madeleine Cravens has this poem, "The Photographer," which feels like it is about a breakup. Here are the last lines:

Soon you would travel to another state
to take pictures of a famous dancer.
You think it’s about honesty, you said,
but it’s not, it’s about staging,
also light. Behind you, two floors up,
I could see into my room. The little vases
on the windowsill looked pathetic, girlish,
so carefully arranged.

Note the last 3 lines where she peers into her room and pours contempt on her vases on the windowsill. "Pathetic, girlish, / so carefully arranged." This is part of rough growth, a toughness about romance. "You think it's about honesty... / but it's not, it's about staging." I see Świetlicki or his narrator aiming for something simpler but also leaning towards growth. How is the person leaning out the window different from the one who took the photograph? A certain tenderness is needed to address that question, one Świetlicki's poem seems to have.