… has a couple of poems in this month’s Poetry Magazine.

Here’s one of them, and it’s a fine example of what a modern lyric poem can do as it snakes through the thoughts of a person observing a particular scene, and observing himself responding in certain ways to the scene…

But like all good poems, it’s also linguistically interesting. In this case, look at how Hudgins playfully repeats a strong G sound.

I mean, yes, it’s playful; the writer’s having fun with language. Yet as we begin to discern his theme, the Guh, Guh, Guh thing he’s got going begins to look, er, grave.

For the poem unsullied by UD‘s blue-colored commentary, click on the link at the beginning of this post.

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Grand Expensive Vista

[On first reading, we think this is Grand Expansive Vista. But no.]

As we sipped and mingled,
regaled
with oldfangled
canapés and beguiled,
or entertained at least, by gargled
oldies, I disengaged

[So the speaker’s at a party it seems, standing around drinking, and nibbling canapés.  The narrative begins right away:  He breaks from the gathering, disengages…]

and angled
across grass tenderly groomed,
past where electric tiki torches gleamed,
and, alone, gazed,
now truly beguiled,
at my hosts’ grand
expensive vista, mortgaged,
yes, and, yes, remortgaged.

[His friend has gone into debt in order to buy the view at which the speaker now marvels.  There’s nothing wild here; the grass is “tenderly groomed,” and one can assume the view too is just so…   I mean, it’s telling that the speaker’s first response to the view is to consider how expensive it must have been to get visual access to it.]

A low gold
moon glowed
against a plush black sky gauzed,
even filigreed,
with stars. Gowned
in old-growth oaks glazed
with moonlight over their autumn gilt,
the hills glowed
in concord with the golden moon.

[This description of nature isn’t exactly Coleridge.  The words – plush, gowned, gilt – suggest something bought, fashioned, groomed, humanly bejeweled.   There’s something a little too organized, something a little stagey,  in the “concord” of the hills with the moon.]

I lingered,
glad—discomfited and glad—
at what my friends’ greed
for beauty afforded me.

[Having done his description, the poet now turns to his consciousness.  How does this scene make him feel?  What does it make him think about?  Well, it’s complicated.  He’s both happy and uncomfortable.  Who could be unhappy at having the good fortune to be present at such a glowing night scene, such glorious earthly concord?  Yet we don’t find the poet in accord at all; he’s unsettled.  He doesn’t mince words:  This exquisite scene is a product of “my friends’ greed.”  Greed for beauty, to be sure.  But nonetheless greed.]

I argued,
self against self, what they’d gained
and lost, and me with them, entangled
as friendship entangles.

[Wrestling with himself now, the speaker goes back and forth on the perennial question of human grasping.  Does the fact that his friends have been greedy for the sake of beauty make them less unpalatable from a moral standpoint?  And what of the speaker’s own collusion in this greed?  He, after all, is their friend, and seems a willing beneficiary of their greediness.]

I nearly groaned
aloud with want before my friend grabbed
my elbow.

[I want this! Forget the moral crap, says the speaker.  I share the same infantile grasping for goodies that my friends have!  I want!  I want!]

“Gorgeous, eh?” I grinned
and agreed,
my voice greased
with hidden envy.

[Pretty little poem, eh?  Greed.  Envy.  This beautiful view seems to take one quite far from concord.]

From behind us, grilled
sirloin, pedigreed

[Greed and pedigreed.  Clever.]

meat sublimating on embers,

[A nice way of capturing in an image his smooth exterior sublimating – my voice greased – what is actually burning envy.]

triggered
another hunger.

[Yum.  The carnivore’s mouth waters at the aroma... We’ve been animals all along in this poem, going Guh, Guh, Guh…]

Life was not just good,
but too good:

[So here, as the poem ends, we get the moral kick.  It’s discomfiting to be in a world too rich.  By capturing, purchasing, and grooming the world, we make beautiful things kind of ugly.]

aged beef, aged wine after bourbon. We hungered,
and all the way back to his engorged
glass table, hunger was our guide.

[Read Wallace Shawn’s brilliant little book, The Fever. This poem shares with that book an interest in the way the glowing gold gauzy glaze of our greedy-for-beauty world diminishes us.]