Comic materialism

Comic Materialism in Mark Svenvold’s poem “Ceiba Tree, Petac, Mexico”

 

When I first read Mark Svenvold’s poem “Ceiba Tree, Petac, Mexico” in the November 14, 2011, edition of The New Yorker magazine (34), I was enchanted and intrigued. The first reading impelled in me a sense of comedic somberness. The tone was comic, but the undercurrent of thought was dismal. The title had led me to believe that this poem might be homage to the ceiba (also called the silk cotton tree and the kapok), which in Mayan mythology is the tree of life, connecting the earthly life to the underworld and signifying the circle of infinity (“The Ceiba Tree of the Mayans”). But why include Petac, Mexico? To an Anglo ear, the title sounds a bit comic because of both the rollercoaster of plosive consonants mixed with a variety of open and closed vowels, and sounds are important in this poem, as they are in all poems.

I had no knowledge of Petac, Mexico; indeed, I had never heard of it. Therefore, my first task was to research online and find out where and what is Petac. It’s a 17th century Yucatan hacienda transformed into a resort for wealthy but world-weary tourists. The owner rents the hacienda to families or groups up to twelve people. A week’s stay for such a group runs around $10,000 (Travel Marketing Solution). It’s not for the 99% of Americans; it’s for the 1%. The Condé Nast Traveller website has some beautiful photos of the interior and exterior (“Haciendas of the Yucatan”). The hacienda is surrounded by Apocalypto forests and contains a ceiba tree on the grounds. After learning these facts, I had a vision: the poet luxuriating in a hammock, looking at the tree while wondering about his good fortune to be where he was. Comic sounds set the stage, the setting around the tree of life of the Mayan, both serious and farcical.

In his first line, Mark creates a connection between the tree and materialism: “Sunlight falls like cash through the canopy.” The light of the sun is beaming tropically brightly through the leaves of the tree, an excess of light that Mark connects with an excess of money. This is a comic image of coins and bills pouring down through the tree. His next line suggests the Republican, popular “trickle down” theory of wealth creation, which he then dismisses. “One wants to say ‘filters down,’ but really it’s a cascade / of plenty, a rich comedy in which each leaf’s increase / is summoned and rewarded . . .” (lines 2-4). The author reveals his message with the phrase a rich comedy; we are to laugh at such excess. The leaves of the tree are the wealthy who grow plush from the nurturing tree and tropical sunlight, for the ceiba tree is also a symbol of prosperity and everlasting life (“The Ceiba Tree of The Mayans”).

The remainder of line 4 with line 5 creates a comic dialogue. “ . . . Q: Can a leaf be as big as a bus? / A: Yes, it can, in the Yucatan.” I thought of an Abbott and Costello exchange: the straight man with the punch-line comic. How wealthy can a wealthy American seem? In Mexico— where the dollar is nearly ten times the value of a peso—a rich American seems to the peasants of the Yucatan like a tycoon who can command and receive whatever he or she desires. The clichéd line big as a bus indicates something humongous; the juvenile rhyme Yes, it can . . . Yucatan seems to emphasize the comic ease with which the wealthy get their money. And this line is said with a wink. I can see Abbot winking at the audience over the flummoxed face of Costello the chump. (If you are not familiar with Abbott and Costello, view these two routines on YouTube: “Two Tens for a Five” and “It’s Payday.”)

Enter the grackle. Poetically, this bird of the crow family is a great choice as spokes-bird for the materialistic ceiba tree. It is loud, boisterous, loves a crowd, and has uniquely clown-like plumage with its purple head and iridescent bluish, greenish and black feathers. These listed attributes are encompassed in the onomatopoeic name grackle, a great name for a fussy, flashy, noisy critter. Its tail is longer and more triangular in flight than other kindred birds, like a clown’s clothing with giant shoes and flapping coattails. It’s an omnivore, so will eat crops, fruit, road kill, and the detritus of fast-food packages—the perfect opportunist. The poet has the bird enter as if onto a stage: “The grackle struts through its portico. . . .” (line 6) It struts like an actor or comedian. I’m thinking of Vaudeville. (Incidentally, the grackle’s habitat does not include tropical forests [“Common Grackle”], so it is unlikely that Mark saw an actual grackle in the Yucatan, although he could have seen one of its relatives. However, I still applaud the poet’s choice of this bird. Let’s give him license.)

Once the Vaudevillian bird has its audience, it performs its routine, an entertaining flummery.

          Above and all around

          The whistle and hoot, the high glissando, the bell and echo,

          The flatted fifth, the celestial chitter, the honk, the joke note

          On a whoopee cushion, the clarion rising above the clatter,

          The squelch and squirch and screech of a manic communiqué

          (lines 6-10)

Note that all the various sounds are comic; a clown could make all of them with his varied accessories: horns, whistles, bells, trumpets and whoopee cushion. The performance is a manic communiqué, an obsessive-compulsive oration meant only to entertain and gloss over the truth, to distract us from the materialistic reality that engulfs us. It’s marketing fluff.

The next lines bring us to the somber aspect of the marketing barrage, which

          Keeps slipping, like background noise, into the broad cloth

          Of a morning above us and in us, like some momentary shaft,

          Of sunlight on the floating seed of the ceiba tree,

         That hangs like this and like that in the shadows and subaltern greens.

          (lines 11-14)

The manic communiqué keeps slipping[] like background noise because we have become so accustomed to its chatter that we may no longer hear the details as we absorb the message to consume, consume, consume. It slips into the luxurious texture (broad cloth) of our environment, so it has become part of us. Here the poet again connects sunlight with the product of the ceiba tree: a momentary shaft of sunlight—an instant of recognition—that illuminates the dissociated (floating) impact (seed) of the money machine that produces subordinate workers (subaltern greens) that hang amorphously (like this and like that) from the tree of materialism.

The final three lines—“Meanwhile, the doves, who hoard all vowels, / Pass it one to another among the trees: the sky, the sun, / And the great limestone rivers of the dead, are one.”(lines 15-17)—return us to the comic vision of the materialist reality.

Once again, I admire the poet’s choice of bird: the dove. Doves, interchangeable with pigeons, hoard vowels—oohs, ahs, ohs—as they participate in the material world. Like the crow family, pigeons exist all over the earth—just as humans do; in fact, crows and pigeons could be considered cohabitants with humankind. Pigeons were first domesticated around 3000 BCE in Sumer (“21 Amazing Facts You Didn’t Know about Pigeons”). These dupes of the equally sociable grackles pass along the message (it) to consume throughout the material world. The final two lines form a rhymed couplet, a coda for the tale. The conclusion encompasses the farcical material life, so the future (the sky), the present (the sun), and the past (the great limestone rivers of the dead) become one huge joke. (By the way, doves are no more likely to be found in tropical forests than grackles, but I defer to the poet’s license, for the symbolic use of these birds is more relevant and meaningful to us than would be other species.)

Mark Svenvold, I applaud you for creating a masterful poem that reveals the comedy of material life in a fabled vignette of birds within the tree of life. Poets have historically been considered seers and prophets because sometimes they can see an undercurrent reality in a system even while participating in that system. Mark has seen such a vision and transmitted it artfully to us the readers. For that, I am grateful.















Bibliography including works cited



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