The Job Interviewer, “You Will Be Hearing From Us, Shortly”
The interviewee is present in the poem as well, but provides only ambiguous replies of a few words. The real star here is the human resources representative who asks questions that can, at first, seem relatively innocuous:
“What qualities do you feel you
Personally have to offer?”
But which grow increasingly more intrusive and insulting:
“Of your education? Were
You educated? We mean, of course,
Where were you educated?”
St. George, Dragon, Maiden “Not by Best Side”
“Not by Best Side” is structured so that each of its three stanzas represents a first-person response to their portrayal in St George and the Dragon, a Renaissance painting by Uccello. Two of the figures in the painting are St. George and the dragon he mythically slew. The third figure is an unidentified maiden saved by George. The reply from St. George wins the gold here as the highlight, right from its beginning:
“I have diplomas in Dragon
Management and Virgin Reclamation.
My horse is the latest model, with
Automatic transmission and built-in”
Gertrude, (Hamlet’s mother), “Mother-in-Law”
Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, mother to Hamlet (and husband's brother's wife) is bemoaning the loss of a nice young girl that her troubled son had taken up with and seemed destined to marry following the young woman’s unfortunate suicide. By poem’s end, Gertrude is just another mother who can only hope for the best since, as she muses, “I seem to be the only woman left around here.”
Alison, “Casehistory: Alison (head injury)”
The poem begins with the line:
“(She looks at her photograph)”
What follows is Alison speaking longingly of how much she wishes she could have known the woman in the photograph (herself) whom she describes as “My husband's wife, my mother's only daughter.” It is a deeply elegiac portrait of the devastating effects of traumatic brain injury and serves to make Alison one of the poet's most unforgettable characters.
The Donkey, “What the Donkey Saw”
Not just any donkey, mind you, and what he saw was not just any sight. The titular donkey describes one night when his stable became unusually crowded with unexpected visitors. There was man and woman with a new baby and some shepherds and three guys calling themselves magi. Still, despite the intrusion and lack of room, the donkey asserts that he did what he could to make everyone feel wanted. After all:
“I could see the baby and I
Would be going places together.”
