The Calabash
Having fashioned the first man out of sticks and mud,
God looked at him and thought, ‘Not bad.’ But Man
was of a different opinion.
Equipped from the outset with the twin gifts
of speech and dissatisfaction, Man said,
‘God, be honest, are you really happy
with this bodge, this shoddy bricolage,
this job at best half done?’ ‘What do you mean?’
God asked. ‘I need a mate,’ Man told him,
‘and I need one fast.’ God was flustered;
he’d run out of ideas already; so he replied,
‘If you’re so certain what you want,
tell me how to make it.’ Glancing about,
Man’s eye fell on a plump gourd hanging from a tree:
a calabash. ‘That will do,’ he said.
God nodded and set to work, adding
legs, arms and a head to the lovely roundness,
with other details that would make Woman a match
for the stick-and-mud figure who stood by, watching.
When he had finished, God rubbed his hands, delighted.
But Man was less sure, remembering the pure shape
that had first caught his fancy: both virginal and gravid,
suspended improbably from that scruffy tree.
‘Take it or leave it,’ God said. Man remained
undecided, and Woman, too, had her proliferating doubts.
Christopher Reid was associated early in his career with the “Martian” school of poetry. As the writer of the amusing analysis here explains, defamiliarisation was the nub of Martian strategy. While its origins as literary theory are in Russian formalism, as a writerly practice, primarily based on metaphor, it is ancient and timeless. The technique seemed unusual only because the poets made metaphor central and abundant.
Reid has continued to demonstrate versatility and exuberance in a tireless output of collections. He is not a paid-up Martian any more, if he ever was. Defamiliarisation is still implicitly part of his toolkit, but it is integrated into the quality of his observation, the sharpness of angle, the quirky humour.
This week’s poem is from his 2016 collection, Curiosities, a poetic cabinet of words beginning with the letter C. Why C? There’s probably more to it than the fact that it’s the first letter of the poet’s name. C is visually attractive, a curl, a not-quite-full moon, a well-behaved pet’s neat tail. As C major, it’s a cheerful, beginner-friendly musical key. It’s a word as well as a letter, a double homophone meaning “see” or “sea”. The sound the letter indicates can be hard or soft.
Benjamin Franklin disliked it and argued for its deletion from the truly American English language he envisaged. He argued, not without reason, that its two phonetic functions could easily be performed by S and K. C is indecisive, protean, a mischief-maker; an O that falls happily short.
As a device for generating poems, arbitrary rule-setting, as the Oulipo writers would confirm, produces interesting discoveries – including poems you might have written but somehow didn’t, and poems you might not ever have wanted to write. The exercises can be an arid game – or prompt the creative sap to rise. Sometimes the result, such as Reid’s Curiosities, can be a cache of real fruit.
The calabash is an intriguing subject. I’ve never seen one growing or tasted one: now, having looked into the matter, I think it’s worth saying that, if you should come across a calabash, don’t be tempted to make it into a smoothie. According to Google, at least, there have been fatalities from ingesting its bitter juices. The dark side of the calabash adds, perhaps, a further dimension to the poem.
One of its particular delights is the characterisation suggested by the dialogue. God and Man are pals: God is even willing to accept a little bossiness from his creation. And he appears to be modest, pronouncing his handiwork “not bad”. Man isn’t at all in awe of God, and dares to tell him he has messed up. God takes the criticism on the chin, and is open to suggestion, at least initially: he clearly loses patience towards the end.
It seems that both characters have something of the artist about them. Man, the narrator wryly notes, possesses “the twin gifts / of speech and dissatisfaction”. Man clearly enjoys his gift of speech: he alliterates like a poet, a postmodern one at that: “God, be honest, are you really happy / with this bodge, this shoddy bricolage, / this job at best half done?” When Man suddenly changes tack, crudely declares, “I need a mate” and indicates the calabash, God willingly responds. He’s the impulsive kind of artist, stimulated instantly by a new creative possibility.
The narrator adds the essential spices of wit and focus to the dialogue. I like his sensuous appreciation in referring to the gourd’s “lovely roundness” and his tact about those “other details”. Omniscient, unlike the poem’s God, he’s able to intuit the inside story from the points of view of both Man and his new mate. The description of the “pure shape … both virginal and gravid, / suspended improbably from that scruffy tree” conveys the depth of Man’s loss and the impossibility of the ideal he had secretly nurtured. There is no virgin mother in this particular creation story.
The poem leaves everyone involved at an impasse. God has run out of patience and offers no renegotiation, only “Take it or leave it”. Man “remains undecided” and Woman suffers “proliferating doubts”. These doubts are not entirely self-directed, I think: Woman is probably wondering how she and that bungled stick-man will ever rub along.
We shouldn’t forget that Man is no more happy with his image than Woman is with hers. God really should start again. The poem leaves us, instead, engrained with an image, that “pure shape” of the seamlessly integrated calabash. The actors fade from the scene: in the beginning was (and is) the word.
