Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

James Schuyler's poem "Foreign Parts" is a vibrant and surreal exploration of dislocation, cultural collision, and the idiosyncrasies of travel. Schuyler’s playful language and fragmented imagery evoke the sensory overload and occasional absurdity that can accompany the experience of being in a foreign place. The poem captures the strangeness and the unexpected beauty found in moments of cultural confusion and linguistic play.

The opening lines—"Meat-eater, salt-licker, piped spring / dribble-sucker"—establish a visceral tone, grounding the reader in the physicality of consumption and the body’s relationship to the environment. These lines suggest a connection to primal needs and a return to basic instincts, which contrasts sharply with the sophisticated setting hinted at later in the poem. The reference to "an exiled Bolshevik’s / villa at Viareggio" introduces a layer of historical and political context, bringing to mind the image of a displaced revolutionary in an Italian seaside retreat, far from the turmoil of Russia.

Schuyler then shifts to a more whimsical and cryptic tone with lines like "The beach sheep / shit crumby money, munificent marks, / lire, dollars." This imagery conjures a surreal economy where the mundane and the absurd coexist, reflecting the often bewildering nature of foreign exchange and the fluidity of value in different contexts. The playful alliteration and internal rhymes—"Dolorous Daintyfoot, / Proudass, Chinadoll, a three-way clut- / ter, the piazza pizzeria"—enhance the poem’s rhythm, creating a sense of movement and disarray that mirrors the experience of navigating unfamiliar places.

The figure of "Mrs. Smith-Jones, rich, gonged aground a pissoir" introduces a character who seems out of place, stranded in an incongruous situation. This image encapsulates the clash between wealth and the mundane or even the crude, emphasizing the discomfort and disorientation that can accompany foreign travel. The poem's tone is both humorous and critical, as Schuyler pokes fun at the incongruities and pretensions of the traveler.

As the poem progresses, Schuyler continues to blend the mundane with the surreal, as in the line "At three the imprisoned poisoner’s tea / tells her rice-cake fortune, it is it." This could be interpreted as a commentary on the rituals and superstitions that travelers might encounter or adopt in foreign lands, adding to the sense of otherness and mystery that permeates the poem.

The poem's later lines—"You yew alley ewes knew / goatsuckers in Swedish horse-hide hid / the boathouse key, locked the oarlock"—are rich with wordplay and alliteration, contributing to the poem's dreamlike atmosphere. The language here is dense and elusive, suggesting hidden meanings and secret codes, much like the experience of trying to understand a foreign language or culture. The phrase "Sin Fleet, at / night. Night, ketchup cup, pepper-pot" juxtaposes the banal with the poetic, creating a dissonance that captures the strangeness of the foreign parts the poem explores.

In its conclusion, "Foreign Parts" returns to the surreal with "bid bound Belinda break her bracelets: / the dirty photographs apostrophize mon- / soons. Swimming snakes shake the lake." These images reinforce the poem's themes of confinement and liberation, as well as the blending of the exotic and the familiar. The allusion to "dirty photographs" and "monsoons" suggests the intrusion of foreign and potentially unsettling elements into the narrator's consciousness, while the "swimming snakes" evoke a sense of danger and unpredictability, typical of the unknown.

Overall, "Foreign Parts" is a poem that revels in its linguistic inventiveness and its ability to evoke the oddities and dislocations of travel. Schuyler's use of fragmented imagery, playful language, and surreal juxtapositions invites the reader to experience the bewildering, disorienting, and sometimes humorous aspects of encountering a world that is at once foreign and familiar. Through this poem, Schuyler captures the essence of travel as an act of discovery, not just of new places, but of the self, revealed through the strange and unexpected landscapes of the mind.

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