Striking a blow (left hand), and Striking a blow (right hand)
- Striking a blow (left hand), and Striking a blow (right hand)
Striking a blow (left hand)
Plate 343—Eadweard Muybridge
At first, the arm extended out and downward looks as though the man had intended
to lift something. To pull a root from the soil by its hearty green head. And up his arm rises
close to eye level, as though he were holding the earthen thing up to examine his finding,
whether it were indeed a thing of his own toil or whether it were something that, now, must
be heaved away. The fist, clenched tight, guides the torque of the man’s torso as it rises from low
to high and turns, guiding the man’s breastbone upwards to face the sun. Then down again,
the hand seemingly clenched around the stalk of a taproot. His left arm is tucked into a wing
at first, then springs forward as the man attempts to wrest a clutch of soil
from around the imagined bulb. But there is no root here. Only the force and
the echo of that force against the empty studio’s dimensions. The fist, thrust first downward, [End Page 90]
then up and back to complete its distance without any heavy opposition. Without any weight to pull
the body towards the ground other than the man’s own weighted purpose. His own urgency to bring the fist back
to conquer his original pose. His original rapture. [End Page 91]
Striking a blow (right hand)
Plate 344—Eadweard Muybridge
With the breastbone facing out, the man’s right arm is cocked back forming a V from his shoulder joint
to his elbow, to his wrist. Imagine the arm like birds in a chevron. The elbow pointing downward as if
to navigate the flock towards its nesting ponds. But the will of the flock is to move in another direction.
The will of the flock conspires to bring it forward to some new place. And so, winds. Winds from the speed
of the fist bend the air. The man’s back is towards the camera now, and the once orderly flock is now
a sentence in a physical language. It is an easy language to learn, loud as anything there is. Louder than
a flock of geese overhead and with everything that is loud, so too, the loudness of the thought to counter
the noise. The man’s arm, now extended to a straight shaft of bone and skin. Angled at such a height that he
would strike a chin of an opponent were he facing one. And slowly, down, the knuckles of his fist move, slightly
at angles ever decreasing. His unseen foe, perhaps staggered back. Perhaps having made contact
with an opposite wind, the force of it causing his arm to recoil. The birds, having lost their way, returning
into a formation so tightly, so sure that they understand now the way to go. The geography of the familiar land
so easily traversed. The man’s arm wrenched back into its previous pose. [End Page 92]
Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry: Names Above Houses (Southern Illinois University Press, 2001), Furious Lullaby (Southern Illinois, 2007), Requiem for the Orchard (University of Akron Press, 2011), and Post Subject: A Fable (Akron, 2014). He co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry (Akron, 2012), and serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. His work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as American Poetry Review, Tin House, the Southern Review, and Poetry Northwest. He teaches in the MFA program at Western Washington University and in the low residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.
