St. Louis Woman - Notes

The first stanza is really nice and a very solid image. In the second stanza, the images move quickly and become more personal. On the third stanza, the details about Arlene seem to center the poem and where it the poet is at his most confident. Some symbolism is presented to the reader, and life and death seem to be the likely code to decipher. It seems to parallel with the ‘The second Child/He's the reason’. Whatever the case, I feel a balance is trying to be played, between a personal observation and deeper philosophical insight. To thread these concepts together can be difficult I give credit to the poet for trying his hand at such a difficult endeavor. 

—Kent Walker, my writing coach

a. Richard upon hearing of her death, suggested that Arlene was ‘a flame of exuberance’. Arlene’s voice struck some listeners as ‘unattractive’ or ‘pushy'. So full of life, she would burst out of her skin. A force of nature, she had a joy in her, a love of life with the confidence to exploit it.

b. ‘Drew’ has two meanings: pull and draw (Arlene was an artist)

c. Richard strongly objected to the ‘stares’ personification of the loose-knit top in ‘Your loose-knit top/Stares me in the face’. I kept it for the rhyme 'face-cage' and because they still are staring, I mean. Bettany Hughes in Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore 2005, describes Helen's as 'perfect milky white breasts'. 

d. ‘Catherine D. Snow’ has been interpreted by some as cocaine.

e. ‘Child’ is a Tarot card. Arlene died from ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease (Lou Gehrig was his mother’s second child). ‘He’ refers indirectly to Lou Gehrig’s disease. Lou was Arlene’s first husband, father of Arlene’s only child, her daughter Jamie.

f. Thoughts in the last part of the poem anticipate Arlene’s impending death. The poem suddenly becomes a horror.

g. She was a numerologist who would drop everything for a ringing phone.

h. There are 3 x references to Baseball: St. Louis, ‘cards’, and Lou Gehrig who played with the Yankees in the 1926 WS against STL.

i. ‘Morning’ is used instead of mourning to effect a double meaning (read or spoken) and force the reader to stop at the turn of the poem.

j. ‘They’re here’ relates to Streetcar when they came for Blanche. ALS is coming for Arlene. Or the angels.

k. Concrete images are mixed with the indefinite. Often a single image in a poem bears more weight than all the others put together. ‘Child’ is a possibility.

l. Kindablue jazz club she would frequent. An early version of the poem was read there, thanks to Larry Fuchs, proprietor, and words from the poem were incorporated in the St. Louis Blues played by Curt Landes on keys. Hence the name. Woman was also read at BB's Jazz Blues & Soups.

m. Arlene in a trailer, shot guerilla-style in the lobby of the Kranzberg. Richard, Ken (camera) and myself are the others.

n. During the last months of her life, she didn't have the stamina she once did. She was working on a drawing for me, Woman with Hat (2022), adding a few details and then she would need to rest. I find its incompleteness poignant, indicative of her love and commitment to painting.