When analyzing a complex poem, discovering its major emphasis can be a difficult task. Denise Duhamel's "Delta Flight 659" is a good case in point. Written as a "mock sestina" (focused on Sean Penn as an imagined partner in conversation), it alters the sestina's expected form by ending each line with variations on the word "pen."
Allowing this alteration to guide the poem's composition, Duhamel weaves elements of time, voice, detail, structure, and social relevancy into an intricate tapestry of thoughts and experience that speaks beyond the limitations of its chosen words.
Brief Overview of Structure
As with any poem of substance, "Delta Flight 659" defies simple explanation. On its surface, it is a humorous poem about actor/director/celebrity/activist Sean Penn. Presented as an internal conversation, the poem reflexively integrates into its own content because Duhamel represents its musing development as the device on which her narrative builds. Beyond that, formal structure also plays a role.
Her modification of the sestina centers on its requirement for a pattern of words placed at the end of each line. Traditionally, this is a revolving six-word set reordered in a sequence of six sestets followed by a three-line tercet (envoy) in which each line contains two of the words. Rather than employing the six word restriction, Duhamel ends each line with words that contain the syllable "pen," doubling her usage in the envoy.
Varying her restrictions, Duhamel creates a structural element that speaks to the semantics of the poem as a whole. In other words, the poem's rhetorical structure explores alternative perspectives on media-generated perceptions of celebrity and current events, while the pen(n) variation of its formal structure gives rise to an alternative sestina, reflexively composed by both poet and speaker.
Linking "pen" and "Penn," Duhamel adds multiple dimensions to a poem that similarly addresses multiple dimensions of its specific addressee. Considering "pen" as a synonym for writing, she also complements that depth by linking to her motivation for re-thinking the actor's public persona: past exposure to a poem he had once "penned."
Is the Pen(n) Mightier than the Sword?
Beyond these reflexive attributes, Duhamel also creates complexity and tension through the application of other devices. Chosen words such Penelope, penumbra, and pentagon carry extended references relevant to their contextual placement. An interwoven structure of past and present time frames in the sestina's main body contrasts beautifully with the ambiguously implied future hope of its closing envoy. Even the previously mentioned relation between "Penn" and "pen" hints at a contextually relevant topic: the impending invasion of Iraq.
How? A dimension of Penn's celebrity, indirectly addressed by the poem, concerns his anti-war activities prior to the U.S. invasion. In an unsuccessful attempt to forestall the war, Penn made a highly-publicized visit to Iraq in which he controversially refuted the Bush Administration's arguments in favor of war. Considering the outcome, this might lead us to ask: is the pen(n) truly mightier than the sword?
Rather than answering that question, Duhamel explores the conflict between public and private persona, the difference between "truth" and manufactured perception, and poetry's relation to a complex understanding of social phenomena and human worth. In this context, a more relevant question might be: how does this relate to public perceptions manufactured by a political war machine?
Conversations with Poets
Writing about her internal conversation, the poem's speaker takes great pains to convince her imagined addressee that her motives are not of the conventional sort. She is not fascinated by 'lifestyles of the rich and famous,' but rather intrigued by an overlooked aspect of Penn's more complex personal character - the fact that he'd once written a poem. While this detail provides common ground between their dissimilar lifestyles, it also frames the poem's overall context.
In the third stanza, the speaker refers to the previous night spent with other poets, in Pittsburgh, from where she has just departed. While only mentioned briefly , this reference foreshadows a later elaboration in stanza six. Detailing a meal shared among poets, she relates a conversation (still churning through her mind) that had focused on "poetry, celebrity, Iraq, the penitentiary / of free speech."
She explains how she'd brought up Penn's name, a factor relevant to each of the four stated topics. In brief: 1) he had once "penned" a poem, and the speaker had read it in Frank years before; 2) a celebrity at the time of its publication, Penn was regular tabloid fodder - the husband of Madonna, a puncher of photographers; 3) at the time of the conversation, Penn was an anti-war activist, exploiting his celebrity as a means of drawing attention to his political views; 4) the ensuing controversy led conservatives to criticize him for parlaying celebrity into a leftist soapbox.
In a sense, we can say that each of the four topics in the Pittsburgh conversation relates directly to what the poem as a whole wants to explore. But, like many successful poems, its interwoven threads go beyond their immediate context, creating a vivid portrait of a distinct moment in history that illuminates our contemporary political condition.
Speaking Beyond the Limitation of Words
Poetry seeks to mine the complexity of life, expanding beyond its words to uncover perspectives that shed light on relevant experience. In the poem's envoy, we're left with a penumbra of hope, metaphorically expressed as the sun breaking through clouds like "a child's first stab at penmanship." But, contrary to hope, the imagery of its final line seems to indicate a deepening sunset.
Penetrating Duhamel's pen(n)umbra of ambiguous meaning (perhaps the penultimate task depicted in this poem) is pointedly left to the reader. Ultimately, however, it is the process of interpretation itself that comprises the skeleton on which the poem's meaning is fleshed-out.
Like the poet on the plane, we as readers are led to think, converse, and modify structures of conventional perspective as we develop our own relevant understandings. Frankly, in the context of "Delta Flight 659", this is what good poetry is supposed to do. Shouldn't it be talked about?
Denise Duhamel's Smile: an online collection of poems
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