The Limits of Metaphor
- The Limits of Metaphor
When you think about it, a lot of thingsused to get made in America, but now they're not:bowling balls and bowling pins,wire hangers, the machines that mix milkshakes,the enormous bits mining drills use.
Somewhere, probably in the vicinity ofDanbury, Connecticut, there was once a factorythat made whistles, the metal kindwith the little balls inside.
And it's closed now, or else it's becomea warehouse, or some ultra-chic mini-mallthe local economy can't really support.
There were people who worked there,and now they don't. Some of them were lovers.Some of them liked the work, and some of themdid not. A few tried to make itmore interesting than it must have been:
See, this is the part where the igloodives into the mountain, and this is the partwhere great tropical birds come flooding into the skyat the hour of the setting sun . . . .
Love is like that —The cracked sidewalks, the supermarket aisles,product testing and market share.The elm trees dying in the city parks.
The suspicion that somebody is making somethingbetter, something cheaper, somewhere else. [End Page 1]
G. C. Waldrep's third poetry collection, Archicembalo, won the Dorset Prize. His fourth, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts — in collaboration with John Gallaher — was released from BOA Editions in April 2011. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and teaches at Bucknell University. He also serves as editor-at-large for the Kenyon Review.
