Y: Jane Yeh

Walrus

Jane Yeh is another contemporary poet who I conceptualise as being part of a conversation I want to join, like Bryony Littlefair, Tom Sastry and others from this series. She writes in a kind of absurdist/Surrealist tradition that I find exciting. Her poems are both deadly serious and extremely playful, profound but also silly. I’m so interested in the treading of that line. I especially like her animal poems, where I think she often seems to entirely lean into the notion that its impossible to be neutral when observing something. There is a whole history in English poetry of very serious animal poems, some of which we’ve looked at in this series (Ted Hughes, Pascal Petit etc). The unspoken agreement in animal poetry can often be a kind of Romantic attempt to get into the blood and bones of the animal, to observe its animal-ness as something outside of our humanity – but I feel like Yeh’s animal poetry tries to remind us that we are always projecting our human-ness onto animals.

The poem today is ‘Walrus’ from her collection “The Ninjas” – I can’t find it anywhere online so you’ll just have to imagine it stitched back together – my intercessions are going to be at every stanza break as a reflection of this. You can buy “The Ninjas” here, though, and I would recommend that you do. The Ninjas

Walrus

His grotesque tusks are half
Broken off,
Result of a long-lost territorial
Tussle. A little brilliantine
Would surely work wonders
On his bristles,
The disorderly stubble

This opening is kind of what I meant in the introduction about Yeh’s refusal to pretend that she’s an impartial observer of the walrus, or to attempt to get at some sort of Romantic ‘animal-ness’ within. The poem is about the speaker just as much as it is about the subject – that judgemental ‘grotesque’, for his tusks, that strange fashion advice about using the brilliantine to soften him. The walrus is being described semi-disgustedly, semi-affectionately, figured here as a kind of old warrior, but not in a heroic way. He’s knackered, clapped-out, with his half-broken tusk and his ugliness, and the speaker’s focus is on the unpleasantness of looking at him. It’s hard, here, with the old-fashioned-ness of ‘brilliantine’ and the bristly stubble, not to see the walrus as an old man. Why pretend, Yeh seems to be saying, that when we look at a walrus we can see or access its walrus-ness impartially?

That sprouts around his mouth. Dozy
Old relic, earless
Wonder, his phenomenal wealth of blubber
Comes from a lifetime’s sucking up
Of delectable molluscs, raw, neither
Of his flippers is enough
To keep him upright underwater

The insults continue – again halfway between serious and playful. The speaker is disgusted, contemptuous, but in a kind of affectionate way, and also strangely impressed. Perhaps this is because what the speaker sees is halfway between walrus and human – part of his ugliness and his wonder lies in the way in which the speaker sees an old man and a walrus at the same time. So he eats like an old-fashioned gourmand, with a ‘phenomenal’ wealth of blubber, but what he eats is raw molluscs, so their delectability is slightly gross. His earlessness, normal in a walrus, is still a ‘wonder’.

Yeh also continues the framing of the walrus’ age meaning he’s at the end of something – his flippers don’t keep him upright any more, and his eating has already taken him a ‘lifetime’. There’s a sense of faded grandiosity in him that is absurd but also kind of noble and tragic.

So what do we have here with the walrus, at this point? The fundamental strangeness of his appearance, and the sense of pathos in a creature that is still powerful but whose power is beginning to wane in a way that makes him slightly ridiculous. It feels like this is a poem about masculinity and aging, observed with a kind of horrified fascination from the outside by a speaker who is neither of those things.

Now. Tremulously
His whiskers twitch, sift the dirt
On the ocean floor, feel for more
Shells to slurp meat from. He won’t last
Another year 
In the colony. Poor pinniped
Without a harem to rule, fat bastard

I feel like there’s a turn here – after Yeh continues examining the walrus’ eating habits, with that tremulous twitching and that ‘slurp’ keeping up the slightly disgusted/disgusting vibe, there’s almost a jolt of surprise for us in that line ‘He won’t last/Another year’. I suppose it’s a logical progression from the imagery of fading power from the first two stanzas, but this is a brutal assessment and maybe explains the ‘concern’ the speaker had in the first stanza about the walrus’ need to smarten up and appear younger. Not only that, but the half-broken tusk also now feels more significant than on a simple observational level. The walrus’ fading power and age is no longer an abstract weakness but a pressing concern to his continued survival. There will be no dignity in old age for this creature. But what’s not changed, seemingly, is that ambivalent speaking voice – so again we have that balance between sympathy and mockery – “poor pinniped” juxtaposed with “fat bastard”.

So if we’re continuing to consider this as a poem about masculinity – which I think Yeh seems to want – then what else do we have? “Poor pinniped/Without a harem to rule, fat bastard” seems like kind of a wild change in attitude if we’re just thinking about a walrus, but if we’re thinking about an aging patriarch, perhaps the tone makes more sense. The reminder of his ‘ruling’ of the harem means that the speaker’s initial sympathy, if it’s there at all, becomes a natural reaction to be overcome? Like, the ‘poor pinniped’ could be just straightforwardly sarcastic, but if it’s not, then perhaps it’s a comment on the natural human reaction to look at someone whose power is waning and have a kind of instinctive sympathy, until we remind ourselves of the controlling and oppressive ways in which they wielded their power when they were in their prime? I don’t know if it’s always helpful to do context too specifically, but it feels significant that Yeh wrote the poem around the #MeToo – do we see the likes of Weinstein here? Is this how we might react now after the release of the Epstein files? I can’t help but see this week’s fascinating photo of Sir Prince Andrew’s terrified expression in the police car.

Upholstered in barnacled skin, he levers
Himself out of the sea by his tusks; the others
Ignore him. He cuddles up
To a convenient
Rock, his immobile bulk an obstacle course
Of wrinkles. Soon the ice pack
Will break up

Because of the turn in the previous stanza, I think the focus on the walrus has changed now, moving out from the fine observational physical detail and now placing him within his context – cuddling up on a rock, ignored by the others. Again, see how he’s an object that is both strong and weak at the same time – he’s ‘upholstered’, but with ‘barnacles’, he has tusks, but they are now just levers for movement, he has ‘immobile bulk’ but it’s an ‘obstacle course of wrinkles’.

And at the end of the stanza, we’re back to that brutal assessment of his immediate future – he’s an outcast within his pack, and ‘soon’ the rocks he’s cuddling up to will break and he’ll be left stranded.

And strand him. It’s almost comical
How unaware of the future he seems – 
As if the answer
Lies under the black Atlantic
Waters around him. The waves
Bob glossily off
In the distance, the clams keep breathing

Quietly through their shells. They open
And close like hands, waiting
To measure out their applause.

I do love this final image of the walrus’ lack of awareness of ‘the future’. If he’s some kind of faded patriarch, I can absolutely see that almost comical blankness in the expression. I think you see it in Trump’s face, and maybe it’s why the Andrew photograph was so shocking, because it’s so rare to see the powerful unaccountable man’s mask slip into something as ordinarily human as fear for his future. The unawareness feels like something inherent and deliberate, and feels related to the maleness and the power and the aging.

I also like how the speaker is still leaning into a kind of low-key triumphalism in the depiction of the walrus’ bleak future – his facial expression is ‘almost comical’, and that not-very-comforting ‘black Atlantic’ presumably *will* provide the ultimate ‘answer’ to the walrus’ fate.

What are those clams doing at the end? I think it’s a great move from Yeh – she’d referred to them in passing earlier in all that delectable slurping, and I suppose by shifting focus right at the end to these clams now having agency rather than just being food, Yeh is again pointing to a shift in power as the walrus’ own agency wanes? The clams are the ones now that will ‘keep breathing’. I love that phrase “measure out” for applause, but what are they applauding? The walrus has spent a lifetime gorging on them, and they ‘wait’, so they aren’t applauding *yet* - so are they waiting to applaud his imminent downfall? Is the applause ironic? I think it’s again really hard not to see this as political, and a statement about the meek inheriting the earth (or in this case the sea?)

It’s a really brilliant poem, isn’t it, and, to me, it’s doing something quite fresh with animal/nature poetry. I’d recommend any of her collections, but particularly The Ninjas.