• Home
  • Essays
  • Fiction & Poetry
  • Comics & Art
  • Shrapnel
  • About
Blunderbuss Magazine
Columns

You, Too, Dislike It: A Story Slowly

By Alex Howe @alexhow ·

A weekly poem, accessibly annotated.

This week I’ve chosen “Soybeans” by Frank Stanford.

*

Soybeans

The book is full of my father’s eyelashes
He treats the pages rough
like a woman
He pinches the daylights out of them
Mud dries
up between his heel and sole
quick as spit on his thumb
You can still smell
Four Roses bourbon in the morning
through the onionskin
He will not weep He knows
most folks don’t keep their word
Anyway the rain
came through like a hitchhiker

*

Usually I don’t like short-lined poems. The clipped phrases feel like they’re sitting on little unearned pedestals, like small-plate servings in the movie version of a pretentious restaurant.

Here, though, the short lines are of a piece with the overall tone of the poem: there is a rural feeling, a folksiness, like someone is telling a story slowly.

The first line is plainspoken and packed with suggestion; with incredible efficiency, the reader is thrown into a flurry of feelings. The next two lines make me uncomfortable, but the simile is accurate to the character in question. The poem is getting more pungent.

THE ENDING, though, you guys.

“Anyway the rain
came through like a hitchhiker”

Every time I read that, my affection grows. The raincloud, the shambolic wanderer: they stick around just long enough to make you happy when they’re gone. The narrator has shared weighty things with us, violence and alcoholism. Finally he reaches the real story—“Anyway…”—and the real story is the rain. Of course, the emotion of the preceding lines invests the end with extra oomph—a little like a darkening cloud, almost ready to open up. The poem is over; Frank Stanford drops the mic.

It’s worth noting, I guess, that Stanford is something of a cult hero. He died tragically at 29 in 1978, and despite his admirers, he’s never been fully accepted into the mainstream canon. Vote Frank Stanford, you guys.

*

Quick notes: Shout-out to Mike Young, my penultimate poet—I discovered this poem reading his Twitter bio, which is those last two astonishing lines.

The title of the poem? Other than enhancing the aura of rural-ness, IT IS A MYSTERY.

Addressing “treats the pages rough / like a woman” a little further, with the disclaimer that I am a complete amateur: I fear it may be a cop-out to say, hey, that character is abusive, so it’s fine/good for the writer to describe him as such—i.e., rough, which is the way he treats women. As written, the simile can be read more expansively than that: rough, which is the way women are treated. Male artists sometimes use violence against women as a prop for ostensibly lamentable “realism,” when the real point is a patina of (masculine!) “authenticity.” If that makes sense. I don’t know how it affects things that the poem was written decades ago.

*

Poem republished in accordance with principles of fair use.

Painting of four roses, by Aracil German, ganked from here.

You, Too, Dislike It appears every Thursday.

www.simplesharebuttons.comSHARE THIS POST
FacebookTwittertumblrEmail
alex howefrank stanfordpoemsYou Too Dislike It
Share Tweet

Alex Howe

Alex Howe writes poetry and regular sentences. After college, he moved to Vermont for an AmeriCorps service year, then to New York for internships at Men's Health and Business Insider. He would like to gchat with you about @utilitylimb. His email is howeas [at] gmail; his Twitter is @alexhow.

You Might Also Like

  • Columns

    Rhyme & Reason: Sign Language’s Anti-Authoritarian Streak

  • Columns

    You, Too, Dislike It: Rust Cohle Revisited

  • Columns

    You, Too, Dislike It: Line-Babble Expressed

Subscribe

Blunderbuss is going print! Subscriptions are available via our Patreon page:

patreon-button.png

Donate

Donate to Blunderbuss and help support up-and-coming writers & artists.

Keep up with Blunderbuss

Follow @BlunderbussMag
Follow on Tumblr
Follow on rss

Latest

  • In the Opposites’ World

  • The History of Bodies

  • Shots in the Dark

  • Rascal House Blues, Pt. IV

  • After Homecoming

Like us on Facebook

Latest Tweets

Tweets by @BlunderbussMag
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Submissions

ABOUT

We are Blunderbuss Magazine, a web magazine of arts, culture, and politics, an ordnance of fire and improvisation. What ties together these essays, stories, poems, photographs, comics, and other bits of aesthetic shrapnel is a common attitude of visceral humanism. We aim for earnest noise. We want to splash in the mud of lived experience, to battle for a radical empathy, and to provide a megaphone to howling assertions of human subjectivity.

MASTHEAD

  • Editor-in-Chief – Travis American
  • Managing – Niral Shah
  • Fiction – Sara Nović
  • Art Director – Yvonne Martinez
  • Poetry – Sam Ross
  • Art – Terence Trouillot
  • Comics – Ellis Rosen
  • Senior – Alex Howe
  • At Large – Kevin T.S. Tang
  • Pictures – Lauren E. Wool
  • Contributing – Meredith Fraser
  • Web – Hayley Thornton-Kennedy

Subscribe & Support

Blunderbuss has made the jump to print! Subscriptions are available via our Patreon page:

patreon-button.png



Donate to Blunderbuss and help support up-and-coming writers & artists:

SEARCH

© 2014 Blunderbuss Magazine. All rights reserved.