"It Isn’t Me" by James Lasdun

It Isn’t Me

by James Lasdun

It isn’t me, he’d say,

stepping out of a landscape

that offered, he’d thought, the backdrop

to a plausible existence

until he entered it; it’s just not me,

he’d murmur, walking away.

It’s not quite me, he’d explain,

apologetic but firm,

leaving some job they’d found him.

They found him others: he’d go,

smiling his smile, putting

his best foot forward, till again

he’d find himself reluctantly concluding

that this, too, wasn’t him.

He wanted to get married, make a home,

unfold a life among his neighbors’ lives,

branching and blossoming like a tree,

but when it came to it, it isn’t me

was all he seemed to learn

from all his diligent forays outward.

And why it should be so hard

for someone not so different from themselves,

to find what they’d found, barely even seeking;

what gift he’d not been given, what forlorn

charm of his they’d had the luck to lack,

puzzled them—though not unduly:

they lived inside their lives so fully

they couldn’t, in the end, believe in him,

except as some half-legendary figure

destined, or doomed, to carry on his back

the weight of their own all-but-weightless, stray

doubts and discomforts. Only sometimes,

alone in offices or living rooms,

they’d hear that phrase again: it isn’t me,

and wonder, briefly, what they were, and where,

and feel the strangeness of being there.

James Lasdun (born 1958 in London) is a English author, poet and academic, who currently lives in upstate New York and is married to writer Pia Davis, with whom he co-authored the travel book Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria. Lasdun was one of the judges for the 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize.



Alienation

One of the things I think about in being a poet is alienation. I think of a poet just standing there outside of the group of human beings, civilization, culture, the group and looking in and seeing what some of us inside don't notice, see or want to see. The poet doesn't have a membership card and doesn't want it or couldn't if he or she wanted one.

I read a while back a study done in the 1970's of who went into anthropology as an occupation. The conclusion was that most people who ended up in the field were those who had one foot in one ethnic culture and a foot in another such as the American who had one parent who was Jewish American and another parent was was not or someone who was of mixed Native American background. That reminded me of the poet who by the very nature of being different could be like the anthropologist outside of the so-called norm could see things, be outside of things so that what was to many people invisible stood out in all of its clarity to the poet.

The artist, poet, writer would wander sometimes alone or in very small groups such as the Beat Generation and know he or she were of a different group and see so much more than the average person of the larger group. They were alienated from the whole. "It Isn’t Me" seems to be about that process and like any good poem about so much more.

The voice in this poem is saying that the norm is not him. He has some choice in the matter or it seems like a choice. Or is it? Later he said he wanted to get married, has some children and lived in the neighborhood like everyone else but it wasn't him. The neighbors just looked at him and wondered why he wasn't like them as they set about in their lives doing what they did, having the children, working their jobs, buying the groceries, the boat, the barbecue in the backyard, going to the PTA, having the mistresses or lovers, the dog in the backyard, the pool, the second mortgage, the television sets, the computers, the new cars and they would hear or see him doing his own think and chuckle and talk about him over get togethers, reunions, parties, whatever maybe seeing him in the paper or not.

His advisers in school, college, at the university would fine him jobs, great jobs in advertising or plastics press cards in his hands and push him towards the doors to those really large companies or corporations. They have futures, ERAs , great savings plans and a chance to be a CEO maybe. No, he would reply. He just can't do it. They look at him, their talents not as great as his and they don't quite understand why he says no. Inside, maybe they feel anger. They would have grabbed such opportunities for they don't come very often.

Later, those same friends, neighbors would wonder why they were so different and why he got away from sitting in front of the television day in and day out, seeing the page rip off the wall month after month, year after year, and grey line added to grey line and lawn mowed after lawn mowed and kids yelling and screaming and leaving and doing drugs and saying fuck you and telling you that you don't matter anymore. He got out of that. He doesn't have to see his wife grown old and fat, see the supposedly permanent job show you out the door and you sit there collecting Social Security not having anything to do and festering in the lemons that seem to surround you now. What the fuck happened? Was he so wrong as supposed?

The poem talks about what others feels towards him. What does he feel about himself? It does not address that. That is what I am most concerned about. The voice of the poem is outside of himself looking in at himself. He sees himself as special when he is really just hiding from the fact that he is in the school yard and none of his playmates want to play with him. I feels alienated, alone and miserable:

"Oh yeah! I am better than you. Look at this poem."

I think this poem is valid and correct, but it is full of pain too. It is full of the pain of the poet who can't get into the marble circles of his friends and sees that he is left out. He is the poet who can't belong anywhere. I remember being in a writer's group in which the most successful poet was one who was just clever with her words, not a good poet, but just clever. She said she was never unhappy as a child and had a great husband and family. It is almost by necessity that poets are unhappy and then take that unhappiness and make something with it. There is that tried old saying of making lemonade from the lemons life gives you. Poets make poetry from the unhappiness that life gives you. There are a lot of unhappy people in the world and they don't always write poetry. Poets do. Lonely poets write great poetry and see things the rest of us don't always see.