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"The Fate of Pleasure"*

By Peg BoyersUpdated Tuesday, June 23, 2009, at 6:42 AM ET

Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Peg Boyers read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

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Hardly native and far from naked, these dignified
loungers by the Hudson stroll in their Sunday best,
white as the lilies in the foreground, white
as the sails on the little boats below
navigating the river, white as the scentless smoke
pluming up from the passing steamboat. In this Sunday idyll

the mill's emissions across the way seem to our idle
onlookers harmless, improbably elegant, dignified.
Such feathery streams of benign smoke
are sure signs of a singular prosperity. All the best
families know this. No need to consider what below
the smoke burns, what beneath the river's crisp white

crests gathers and congeals. Above, the white
surface and the complacent sense of an afternoon idyll
in the park where leisure reigns are all that matter. Below
the presiding sycamore a boy crouches, rather undignified
but engaged in addressing a cat trying her best
to look like a dog. Why notice the forbidden smoke

from his Southern cousin facing the tree? Discreet with his smoke,
he turns away so it dissolves without a trace into the white
clouds above. His father is fresh from Havana with cigars and sugar, the best
available. New cargo will replace the old: runaways enjoying their newfound idyll
make easy marks. He lures them with lies, promises of protection, a dignified
life. He'll keep a few, chain the rest. The catch of the day he'll stash below—

necessarily confined to reside below
in the dank, unlit hull, their skin darker than smoke,
dark as their master's satin top hat, upright and dignified
on his proud Southern head, dark even as his patent boots. His white
masterly jaw under a full, black mustache stays clenched against all idle-
ness, though today he'll spend with his Yankee wife the best

afternoon hours, strolling without purpose among the best
families of the faultless town. His mind strays to the cargo below,
the price it will fetch in Charleston; he smiles at the way his idle
son hides his new habit, blowing into the sycamore the smoke
from the puro he stole from the Havana cache, his white
shirt immaculate, his wiles instinctual, integral as his gloves to his dignified

Sunday best. Though it is the Sabbath and the mill across the river below is idle,
its spindles still, our languorous strollers ignore the anomalous smoke
spreading—relentless, white—across the sky on this dignified day of rest.

*After Outing on the Hudson, c. 1850, by anonymous, 19 x 24 inches, oil on cardboard, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection, Williamsburg, N.Y.

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Peg Boyers is executive editor of Salmagundi magazine and author of Hard Bread and Honey With Tobacco. She teaches creative writing at Skidmore College.

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COMMENTS

A brief look at the painting that apparently inspired this sestina left a lot to be desired, even if it is more than 150 years old. It seems to me that much of what the poet pours into this piece comes completely from her own imagination, the exceptions being the lounging of the characters in the painting and the race and class of the same.

The poem is as much about class as it is about race, although the constraints of a sestina may make the class issue less clear.

In any event, the painting seems harmless enough. There is no evidence of imperialism, no evidence of slavery, no evidence of evil that I can see. It is the picture of idyllism, if you will.

It is to the poet's credit, I think, that she extrapolates from this an imagined under-the-skin, beneath-the-surface evil, indolence, sloth, corruption of spirit. How did this scene come to be so lily-white, after all, and wherefrom did these people gain the wealth that allows them to enjoy these casual strolls along the river?

Before looking at the painting, I imagined that the characters in the poem (and therefore the painting) were dressed in white, such is the insistence of the poem (and a sestina is apt to do this, isn't it?). This was reinforced by the stereotype of the southern white slave trader, typically seen dressed all in white (although the poet, I know, does reference a black top hat).

Instead, there is nary a white-suited soul in the image. Instead, clearly, the poem's references to white are to skin color. There is, then, the clear message about race and imperialism being made (there are no native "red" men in the picture either). But the repeated use of the word dignified reminds us that this poem is also about class. And class is evident indeed in the painting.

Whether we like the politics, the message, or the manner by which the message is delivered, the poet has done a very good job, in my opinion of turning a rather pedestrian folk painting into a much larger statement. The poet has taken a banal piece of folk art and made of it an emotional, a charged, statement about American history.

If you have not tried writing a sestina, incidentally, you cannot know how easy it is to turn even the most meaningful work into something farcical and/or forced simply in the effort to go by the rules. The poet, again, does a wonderful job of avoiding succumbing to farce, illogic, or droning repetition.

Kudos to the poet.

-- Soccerfreak
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