Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Ron Padgett’s "High Heels" is a playful, surreal exploration of artistic aesthetics, desire, and the absurd intersections of fantasy and reality. Known for his whimsical blending of high culture with everyday life, Padgett uses this poem to juxtapose grand artistic movements like Cubism and Constructivism with mundane, even risqué, domestic scenarios. The result is a humorous yet thought-provoking piece that highlights the fluid boundaries between art, desire, and the unexpected consequences of imagination.

The poem opens with a lofty statement: “I have a vision in my head of Cubism and Constructivism in all their artistic purity.” Cubism, known for its fragmented, geometric representation of subjects, and Constructivism, with its emphasis on art as a tool for social and political purposes, represent high modernist ideals. Padgett’s invocation of these movements suggests a deep engagement with the intellectual and formal aspects of art. However, the phrase “joined with a decorative attractiveness that exceeds deliciousness” immediately introduces a playful, almost sensuous tone. The idea that these rigorous, often austere artistic forms could be fused with something “delicious” hints at the poet’s intention to blend the serious with the frivolous, the highbrow with the lowbrow.

This fusion of high art and sensual pleasure quickly transitions into a more personal, imaginative fantasy: “even more to be desired than becoming a milkman in a white suit and hat delivering milk to the back door of a white frame house on a street lined with elms.” The shift from abstract artistic concepts to the concrete image of a milkman situates the reader firmly in a nostalgic, mid-20th-century American setting. The white suit and hat, the white frame house, and the elm-lined street evoke a sense of idealized suburban life, a picture-perfect scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Yet, Padgett doesn’t linger in this wholesome imagery for long.

The fantasy takes a humorous, erotic turn as the milkman is “invited inside by the curvaceous, translucent lady of the house, not once but many times, too many times, perhaps.” The description of the woman as “curvaceous” and “translucent” blends physical allure with an ethereal, almost ghostly quality, suggesting that she is as much a figment of imagination as she is a symbol of desire. The repetition of the encounters—“not once but many times, too many times”—adds a comic exaggeration, emphasizing the absurdity of the scenario while hinting at the inevitable consequences of overindulgence.

These consequences arrive in the form of the woman’s husband, who returns home “with a sledgehammer in his hand.” The sudden appearance of the sledgehammer introduces a jarring, almost cartoonish violence to the narrative. The tension between the milkman’s innocent deliveries and the implied threat of the husband’s return mirrors the tension between the poem’s playful tone and the darker undercurrents of its narrative. The sledgehammer, a blunt and destructive tool, contrasts sharply with the delicate, decorative art forms mentioned at the poem’s beginning, suggesting that fantasies, no matter how beautifully constructed, can be shattered by the harsh realities they ignore.

The final lines of the poem take an unexpected, surreal twist: “the pink hand with light blue fingernails, oh you have colored the wrong picture! You were to put the pink and blue on the beachball on the next page.” Here, the threatening image of the husband’s hand is undercut by the absurd detail of his light blue fingernails, transforming him from a figure of menace into something more ridiculous. The sudden shift to a meta-commentary about coloring “the wrong picture” introduces a childlike, playful element, as if the entire narrative has been a misstep in a coloring book. This final twist not only diffuses the tension built up in the previous lines but also reinforces the poem’s central theme: the unpredictable, often absurd nature of our fantasies and the ways they collide with reality.

Structurally, "High Heels" is a single, flowing paragraph that mirrors the free-associative, stream-of-consciousness style typical of Padgett’s work. The lack of line breaks or stanzas allows the poem to move seamlessly from one idea to the next, reflecting the fluidity of thought and imagination. The language is conversational and accessible, yet rich with vivid imagery and unexpected juxtapositions. This blend of high and low, serious and absurd, invites the reader to engage with the poem on multiple levels, appreciating both its humor and its deeper commentary on the intersections of art, desire, and reality.

In "High Heels," Padgett invites us to consider how our aesthetic ideals and personal fantasies are intertwined, often in surprising and contradictory ways. The poem’s playful tone and surreal imagery highlight the absurdity of our desires, while its underlying structure suggests that even the most chaotic or nonsensical thoughts can form a cohesive, meaningful narrative. By blending artistic purity with decorative attractiveness, domestic fantasy with absurd consequences, Padgett creates a poem that is both entertaining and thought-provoking, reminding us that life, like art, is full of unexpected twists and turns.

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