Kay Ryan – Terrible Portents: Guest Post by Don Raymond, Jr.

That Vase of Lilacs & Blue China Doorknob

Poetry is a highly personal thing.  Every once in a while, you find a poem that clicks, and the hairs stand up on the back of your neck; you get that strange feeling like someone’s just walked across your grave, like the poet “sat behind a million pair of eyes and told them how they saw” as David Bowie said about Bob Dylan.  It’s exhilarating, that connection between two strangers.  It can also be a little frightening.

The first time I read “That Vase of Lilacs,” I got a world-class case of the screaming heebie-jeebies.  Kay Ryan frightens the heck out of me in ways that Stephen King can only dream of.

Strangely enough, it frightens me not because it clicks, but because it doesn’t; I have no idea what “Lilacs” is about, in the sense of a deeper metaphorical meaning.  But there is one, I’m sure of it – it teases, it insinuates; it reaches out, taps me on the shoulder, and whispers its hidden message … but it’s in a foreign language.  That’s part of what’s frightening about it, that hidden depth.  The other reason is that it describes some of the more existential portions of a panic attack.

The first time I had a panic attack, I ended up running down the street in my sock feet, trying to escape the nameless, formless doom that was chasing me.  Hours later, the world still seemed filled with sinister shadows.  It still does.


During a panic, the mind becomes convinced the body is in imminent danger, either from internal failure, or by some outside threat.  Without a real danger present, though, the mind begins to look for menace in its surroundings.  The kitchen clock ticks like the trump of doom; the pots and pans take on a sinister aspect.  Or

           

            … that vase

            of lilacs: who goes

            near it is erased…

The sense of depersonalization is the single most frightening part of panic disorder: heart attack, stroke, lightning strike, and hungry leopards are nothing compared to the feeling that your self-identity is slipping beyond your control -

            other purples also

            leave us vacant

            portals, susceptible

            to vagrant spirits…

As one patient said in my therapy class: “I’m afraid I’ll go crazy, and I won’t come back.”  A vacant portal, erased.

The world after a panic attack can never again be the same as it was.  You can never quite escape the feeling that at any moment, everything may turn topsy-turvy; that what you think is real may only be illusion.  Never again walk through a door without thinking,

           Rooms may be

           using us.  We

           may be the agents

           of doorknob's

           purposes…

            as she says in “Blue China Doorknob.”

I keep coming back to these two poems, not because she has seen through my eyes, but because I don’t yet know what she saw when she did.  Beyond the terrible portent of the panic attack itself, there is another portent hidden in the poem, another layer of meaning to be determined.  It’s there.  I can sense it, but I can’t find it – yet.

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You can find more about Kay Ryan here.
To hear the poet read That Vase of Lilacs go here.
To full text of Blue China Doorknob is available here.