"Saturday Night As an Adult," by Anne Carson
Let's gather and learn about prose poems and how form affects content (and vice versa).
Happy Thursday everyone and thanks for gathering, reader. If you are wondering where yesterday’s post is, I used Substack’s new Notes feature. Check out the home page and the Notes tab to see some short form posting.
Now! Back to regularly scheduled programing! Without further ado, a poem by Anne Carson.
Saturday Night As an Adult
By Anne Carson
We really want them to like us. We want it to go well. We overdress. They are narrow people, art people, offhand, linens. It is early summer, first hot weekend. We meet on the street, jumble about with kisses and are we late? They had been late, we’d half-decided to leave, now oh well. That place across the street, ever tried it? Think we went there once, looks closed, says open, well. People coming out. O.K. Inside is dark, cool, oaken. Turns out they know the owner. He beams, ushers, we sit. And realize at once two things, first, the noise is unbearable, two, neither of us knows the other well enough to say bag it. Our hearts crumble. We order food by pointing and break into two yell factions, one each side of the table. He and she both look exhausted, from (supposed) doing art all day and then the new baby. We eat intently, as if eating were conversation. We keep passing the bread. My fish comes unboned, I weep pretending allergies. Finally someone pays the bill and we escape to the street. For some reason I was expecting snow outside. There is none. We decide not to go for ice cream and part, a little more broken. Saturday night as an adult, so this is it. We thought we’d be Nick and Nora, not their blurred friends in greatcoats. We cover our ears inside our souls. But you can’t stop in that way.
You may have noticed right off the bat that there are no stanzas in this poem, no line breaks, no enjambments or really any structure that points to this poem being a poem at all. This is a prose poem, a poem written like a paragraph in a piece of fiction, a short story. Prose poems, in their construction, become a big block of text on the page. They are intimidating. Flipping the page or opening this letter and seeing a block of text like this immediately does something to you as the reader, something similar to opening a textbook and seeing how small the font is. There’s a sense of dread that accompanies a poem like this.
I find that when a poet chooses to make a prose poem, it really meshes with the content of the poem. In this case, Carson takes us step by step through a Saturday night gone wrong—well I guess not necessarily wrong but unexciting? Unfulfilling? Mundane?
I love this poem (I also love Anne Carson, she is my favorite poem, and I am obsessed with probably everything she has ever written, so I am super biased about this poem). I’ve heard from people who really don’t like this poem because it’s not beautiful, there is nothing grand or special, no shining nugget in the middle of this poem. This poem is bleak. Look at the imagery. Carson describes her environment with lines like “dark, cool, oaken” and “our hearts crumble” and “he and she both look exhausted.” We know from the first lines that this night out takes place in the summer but the entire poem feels like it’s happening in the dead of winter.
There’s no light in this poem. There aren’t meaningful conversations. There isn’t space to breathe and enjoy the night. Everything is crowded, too loud, exhausted, slumped over and just trying to go through the motions.
In my adult life, I feel this way a lot. Going through the motions of an interaction, “neither of us knows the other well enough to say bag it.” It feels like there was always so much excitement about growing up and being like Nick and Nora and feeling the energy of the world. But instead, a lot of adult life is this block of text about a dreary night. I take this poem as a reminder that it doesn’t have to be like this–that life can be exciting and vibrant, and maybe to be bold and stop passing the bread and speaking in “two yell factions” and instead finding the elements of this life that bring us joy.
I hope you find something in this poem you like, something that inspires you to live a life unlike this block of text. Put in stanzas, include white space and rhyme, enjamb a line and add some flair. Live your life unlike “Saturday Night As an Adult.”
If you enjoyed this poem… you can read more by Anne Carson here. And if you want to try reading a collection of hers, I HIGHLY recommend The Beauty of the Husband.
If you want to read poetry as a group… gathering is planning on book clubbing a long form poem so vote below if that is something you are interested in participating in.
If you want to try writing poetry… write a prose poem. Set out with the expectation that this poem will be a prose poem and see what subject matter comes to mind. See how you write differently.