Margaret+Wrigley+-+XJ+Kennedy

**X.J. Kennedy**

**The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once** Suppose your life a folded telescope Durationless, collapsed in just a flash As from your mother's womb you, bawling, drop Into a nursing home. Suppose you crash Your car, your marriage -- toddler laying waste A field of daisies, schoolkid, zit-faced teen With lover zipping up your pants in haste Hearing your parents' tread downstairs -- all one.

Einstein was right. That would be too intense. You need a chance to preen, to give a dull Recital before an indifferent audience Equally slow in jeering you and clapping. Time takes its time unraveling. But, still, You'll wonder when your life ends: Huh? What happened?

“The Purpose of Time is to Prevent Everything from Happening at Once” is a poem describing what would happen if your life happened in one second. XJ Kennedy loves regular meter; therefore, this poem is in iambic pentameter except for a few change ups. This sonnet is an octave and a sestet with no rhyming. The whole meaning of the poem is to attempt to get the reader or any person to slow down. By using imagery from important moments in a person’s life, the reader can understand the chaos and the unhappiness this sort of life will lead.

The first line sets the scene for the entire poem. Suppose our lives were foldable, we could collapse the beginning right into the end, into one moment. What if we went straight from birth to an old folk’s home? What if, as a toddler, you crash your car and ruin your marriage? Is a toddler even capable of doing these things? No. You would just be a toddler laying in a field of daisies, then, all of the sudden, you’re in school. You go from free spirited toddler to awkwardly maturing high schooler. You then jump to your first love and the fear of your parents catching you. Wait? I thought I was still a toddler? You don’t know these emotions yet!

The second stanza begins with referencing Einstein, scholar of time and relativity. It was Einstein who said "The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." Kennedy admits he was right; life would be too intense if this was the case. We all need a chance to preen (meaning to pride (oneself) on an achievement, personal quality). Then, the meter changes. Kennedy adds an anapest (soft soft hard) on line 11 and adds dactyl (hard soft soft) and changes the meter to trochee (hard soft) on line 12. This change in meter forces the reader to slow down their reading pace. Not only does Kennedy achieve the message of slowing down verbally in his poem, but the reader is physically forced to slow down. Lines 11-12 are the most important part of the poem. It tells the reader, even if you want your life to speed by, you deserve to give a show, even if your audience doesn’t really care, they will applaud you and mock you equally because they honestly have no idea what you just did because they don’t really care. But that’s OK! Line 14 is my favorite quote in the poem: “time takes its time unraveling.” I think this means let your life take its course even if it seems to be moving at a slow pace enjoy the time you have. Here, the iambic pentameter picks up again. The poem closes with a sort of warning. If you live this “durationless life,” your entire life will have passed you by and you will have no clue what just happened.

This is a blog about a sick pug and it mentions this poem and discusses the shortness of life and the need to slow down. []


 * // First Confession //**

Blood thudded in my ears. I scuffed, Steps stubborn, to the telltale booth Beyond whose curtained portal coughed

The robed repositor of truth.

The slat shot back. The universe Bowed down his cratered dome to hear Enumerated my each curse, The sip snitched from my old man's beer,

My sloth pride envy lechery, The dime held back from Peter's Pence with which I'd bribed my girl to pee That I might spy her instruments. Hovering scale-pans when I'd done Settled their balance slow as silt While in the restless dark I burned <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Bright as a brimstone in my guilt <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Until as one feeds birds he doled <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Seven our Fathers and a Hail <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Which I to double-scrub my soul <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Intoned twice at the altar rail <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Where Sunday in seraphic light <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">I knelt, as full of grace as most, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">And stuck my tongue out at the priest: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">A fresh roost for the Holy Ghost.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">“First Confession” immediately caught my attention because of the title. During the season of Lent, Catholics are supposed to attend confession and I just did last week with my Synthesis class. Every time I go to confession, I get super nervous. The walk across the chapel to the confessional seems like it takes forever and all eyes are on you. Once I get into the confessional I sit down and forget every ritual I was taught in grade school and every sin I planned to tell the priest. The poem quickly and expertly conveys the Catholic views on sin, confession, communion and other rituals, as well as accurately expressing to the reader the apprehension and nervousness that accompanies the main character before, during, and after his experiences.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Kennedy successfully quickens the reader’s pulse and builds up their anxiety in the first stanza. The rhyme scheme matches the blood thudding in the boys ears and his scuffled footsteps, all having a rhythm. I love the way Kennedy calls the priest the “robed repositor of truth.” A repository can be considered a storehouse, a burial place, or a person to whom something is entrusted or confided. From this stanza we see the boy’s growing anxiety but the priests seemingly familiarity with guilty people or sin.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Then “the slat shot back,” and the reader’s attention is going nowhere. “The universe bowed down his cratered dome to hear” the recitation of wrongdoing, the reader is again treated to the character’s inner thoughts, this time concerning the awesomeness of the priest, the endless power he represents. I can definitely relate to the character when he feels like the priest is enumerating his every curse or sin. He will sort of say aloud a few words of the sin you’ve just confessed and you feel really awkward and don’t know if you should keep going or stop because you don’t want to interrupt him… Maybe only I have experienced that but it seems relatable to the narrator. He confesses to stealing a sip from his dad’s beer and his lazy pride, how they envy excessive indulgence in sexual desire. I had to look up what the next part means but apparently he payed money to check out his girlfriends anatomy. Sounds like a great relationship. Not. The boy is now imagining the priest deciding what his penance should be. He weighs the gravity of his sins. The priest gives him a large enough penance to “double scrub” his soul. After he says his penance, he says he is as full of grace as most, a line from Hail Mary. This is very sarcastic and funny. Then he says he sticks his tongue out at the priest which at first I took it as he was already sinning again but then I realized he is taking communion.

**Nothing in Heaven Functions as it Ought**

Nothing in Heaven functions as it ought;

Peter’s bifocals, blindly sat on, crack;

His gates lurch wide with the cackle of a cock;

Not with a hush of gold as Milton had thought;

Gangs of the slaughtered innocents keep huffing

The nimbus off the Venerable Bede

Like that of a dandelion gone to seed;

The beatific choir keep breaking up, coughing.

But Hell, sweet Hell hath no freewheeling part:

None takes his own sweet time, nor quickens pace.

Ask anyone, “How come you here, poor heart?”

And he will slot a quarter through his face—

There’ll be an instant click— a tear will start

Imprinted with an abstract of his case.

X.J. Kennedy’s sonnet “Nothing in Heaven Functions as it Ought” is really interesting in my opinion because he tries to justify that Hell is better than Heaven. He argues that everything we have been taught or all the images of beautiful heaven we've created in our head are false. He makes both places seem horrible, but hell is the lesser of two evils (no pun intended), which is extremely ironic. This poem has an abba cddc rhyme scheme in the octave and an efefef rhyme scheme in the sestet. I read that, in sonnets, the octave is supposed to present a question or a problem and the sestet answers the stated issue.

In the octave, Kennedy proposes the problem that heaven isn’t quite all its talked up to be. He presents the image of St. Peter sitting at the Pearly Gates. Woops, Peter accidentally sat on his glasses and broke them. Immediately, at the entrance of this poem and the entrance of heaven, Kennedy shows accidents happen. Kennedy really doesn’t sugar coat it in line three. The Pearly Gates don’t glide open above the puffy clouds as the sun begins to rise or the first sound of a crowing rooster. The gates harshly lurch wide with the crackle of a cock. When I think of crackle I hear voice cracks and really unpleasant noises. He calls out Milton, the English poet who wrote Paradise Lost, for glamorizing these gates. Kennedy says gangs of the slaughtered innocent people wonder bitterly around heaven. I never have thought about innocent people who were murdered being in heaven and how they may be a little bitter about the early demise… but then again why would I have ever thought about that? These slaughtered people blow the halo off of the priest or historian. He puts the image of a dandelion aka puffy flower on a stick that you blow off to make a wish. Then the blissfully happy choir keeps breaking up like a dramatic boy band or taking a break to cough. These are just unpleasant images. The only line in the first octave that has a regular, iambic pentameter, meter is the line about the dandelion which is the only pleasant line in the octave.

Kennedy responds to the problem in the octave by calling upon Hell. He says hell has no free moving or independent part either. No one takes their time doing things nor can they speed up the process. When you ask someone in hell what got them here they will act like a slot machine. Put the quarter in and then there’s a click and then you get a tear. Then they will be stamped with a summary of their case.

This image is a picture of some guy named Brian who brought Halo 2, a violent war video game, to heaven. I thought it was pretty funny and ironic.


 * Silent Cell Phones **

In airport waiting rooms, owners of cell phones Look wistful when their phones lie silent, millstones That no stream turns. Mindful of their high stations, They squirm and fidget their exasperations, Prisoners starting at a blank cell wall, Their fingers idle on each speechless phone. There ought to be a number they could call To demonstrate to us they’re not alone.

Okay first off if you’re reading this blog you have to agree you have done this. I know I have! I am flashing back to sitting in the airport alone before spring break for about an hour and a half because my dad thought my flight was international when I actually was just flying to Florida therefore we left the house before the break of dawn so I could have hours upon hours to figure out how to get to my terminal. Anyway, I was sitting there rereading my new copy of Hunger Games because my old one broke in half because I’ve read it so many times. I look around and I could see no one else reading in the conventional sense—no books, magazines, or newspapers. Instead their laps were occupied with iPads, Kindles, laptops, and cell phones. Everyone is anxiously waiting for someone to call them and I just wanted to yell “People, its 5 AM. No one is going to call you!” If I’m being honest with you, sure when I’m at the mall wondering around by myself and I get judging glares for 12 year olds I may pretend to be on the phone with my mom but that’s just an insecurity that I need to get over. I’m not the one that is 12 and is trying to look like I’m 25… I really like this poem because this is obviously an experience I can relate to. In the airport waiting rooms is an image everyone can place in their minds, a drab room decorated with tacky art most likely made by 5 year olds and furs that the airport has confiscated and now used for their own decoration. I’m not positive when this poem was written but now everyone is an owner of cell phones. I looked up the word wistful and laughed when I saw the definition was “regretful longing.” These people stare at their phone with regretful longing while their phones just lay there unresponsive. Kennedy uses the word “lie” when it should be “lay” and I believe this is because the phone is taunting the person. This is a heavy weight or burden that no stream, vibration, or ringtone sounds. This person is thinking about their high position and wondering why no one has called them and it causes them to squirm in aggravation. Kennedy says this idea of the phone ringing at any moment has imprisoned this person and they just stare at the blank cell wall that is their black, stationary phone screen. Finally, their fingers are one the phone and this person considers calling someone. The narrator wishes there was a number this person could dial because he or she is starting to feel bad for this restless person. The final line of the poem reiterates why I pretend to talk to my mom on the phone sometimes: he has to prove to everyone else they are not alone.