Of the soldier who put a spear through Christ’s side on the cross
(and by some accounts broke his legs),
whose name was Longinus,
it is said
that after that he had trouble sleeping
and fell into a hard mood,
drifted out of the army
and came west,
as far as Provincia.
Was a body’s carbon not simply carbon.
Jab hook jab.
Slight shift and we catch him
in a moment of expansion and catastrophe,
white arms sporting strangely in a void.
Uppercut jab jab hook jab.
Don’t want to bore you,
my troubles jab.
Jab.
Jab.
Punch hook.
Jab. Was a face not all stille
as dew in Aprille .
Hook.
Jab.
Jab.
Hello and welcome to words that burn, the podcast taking a closer look at poetry. This week’s poem is Shadowboxer by Anne Carson and is the first episode of a special two parter looking at the work of Anne Carson. The second part will be available next week.
This poem comes from Carson’s collection Men in the Off Hours1 and the collection does exactly what is says on the tin, so to speak. Carson uses the assembled poems to analyse masculinity in every form she has encountered it in. There is patriarchy, toxic masculinity, Feminine masculinity, patriarchal time, men in grief and men in anger.
Today’s poem is a combination of those last two. It would be remiss of me to claim that I understand all of the poems within the collection. I’m not sure anyone understands all of Carson’s work; she is, after all, considered a poet’s poet. Someone is lauded by other poets, but one who can often be seen as obscure by general readers. Though this in itself is a reductive perspective for Carson’s writing. A lifelong student of classics and now foremost professor in Greek Classical studies, 2 Carson’s poetry possesses an ornate use of language and a real gilded beauty. On top of that it is, paradoxically, incredibly modern. Carson has a wonderful ability to infuse the oldest of stories with the most relevant of details.
Upon first readings these juxtaposed poems can be a little daunting but soon come to represent an insightful interpretation of ancient , and often inaccessible, worlds.
This poem is a prime example of that. Anyone raised in the Christian faith is at least passingly familiar with the crucifixion of Christ, those who paid a little more attention know he was pierced in his side but those who spent time digging in the footnotes, know the man that did it was called Longinus. Well that’s not strictly true, there is no mention of the Soldier’s name in the gospels proper. We get this name from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, not considered canon in the Christian faith. 3.
In the story of his life after the crucifixion and his actions there, Longinus suffered a tragic punishment; he was trapped in a cave, where day after day he would fight a lion, naturally losing and becoming mauled in the process. Each night he would heal and be forced to do battle all over again.4
This Sisyphean punishment mimics that of Prometheus from Greek mythology, with two notable exceptions: firstly, for Prometheus it was an eagle that ate his liver daily. Secondly, Prometheus was bound and unable to fight back.5
Longinus wrestled with the lion in his story daily. I believe Anne Carson takes that to a metaphorical wrestling with Demons here.
The life of the man who crucified Christ is never given much thought but here the toll his actions took on him are laid bare. It is very clear from the first section of the poem:
Of the soldier who put a spear through Christ’s side on the cross
(and by some accounts broke his legs),
whose name was Longinus,
it is said
that after that he had trouble sleeping
and fell into a hard mood,
drifted out of the army
and came west,
as far as Provincia.
Was a body’s carbon not simply carbon.
Anne Carson’s tone here from the beginning, reads almost like a footnote, mimicking the characters portrayal in history;
Of the soldier who put a spear through Christ’s side on the cross.
The calm way in which the speaker describes the violent action of crucifixion and the brutality of breaking his legs, softened even more by the parentheses only serves to reinforce that detached academic tone.
This is the longest line of the poem, from there it shortens itself again and again, seeming almost to run out of steam by the end. It coincides with Longinus' doubts and we can see he is full of them.
They seem to cause the soldier a great deal of hassle; trouble sleeping, hard mood and a listlessness that eventually leads him to Provincia. We might be forgiven for thinking, in light of his actions towards a son of god, that this was some kind of divine punishment. To me, the cause is much more human; each of these things is a sign of a guilty conscience.
Carson’s own thoughts on organised religion back this reading. When asked about here idea of god in an interview, she responded:
‘’I don’t have an idea of it any more at all. Maybe I once did, at least an idea of unknowability as a divine atmosphere but I don’t even know that that’s solid in me any more.’’ 6
Her own notions of mutability around faith, explain the inclusion of apocryphal texts like The Gospel of Nicodemus.
Those feelings of guilt instantly make Longinus more relatable to us. Struggling to come to terms with something we regret is common. In this soldier's case it is an act of violence. It is not any kind of divine judgment plaguing this man but trauma.
We notice that the structures that Longinus may have pinned his identity on, the army, hold no value anymore.
Anne Carson’s love of antiquity remains in the lines as she weaves details from Longinus' actual tale into her new contemporary take:
drifted out of the army
and came west,
as far as Provincia.
That loss of purpose, a rudderless existence, is underlined in words like drifted. That first section ends with a kind of desperate self reasoning, one that I’ve taken to be Longinus rationalising his action; Was a body’s carbon not simply carbon.
This is a question without its question mark, a typically punctuation devoid characteristic of Carson’s.
It is one of the only glimpses of Longinus’ inner dialogue. He is plagued by the notion that he has committed a great sin, and that guilt is maddening. He is possibly wondering if his actions are going to constitute a spiritual judgment, more than that if there is a spiritual price to be paid for taking a life. He is trying to convince himself of the opposite; carbon is just carbon.
From here Carson moves from a clear internal conflict to a show don’t tell style of poetry:
Jab hook jab.
Slight shift and we catch him
in a moment of expansion and catastrophe,
white arms sporting strangely in a void.
Uppercut jab jab hook jab.
Don’t want to bore you,
my troubles jab.
Jab.
Jab.
Punch hook.
Jab. Was a face not all stille
as dew in Aprille .
Hook.
Jab.
Jab.
Here Carson shows off her mastery of technique, creating a contemporary second section. It also showcases the poet’s penchant for anachronism; adding disingenuous modern moments to historic events, causing a jarring experience for the reader. Here we are surprised as readers to be transported to a boxing match, something we may not have come to expect from our thus far biblical narrative. This anachronism is something that Carson has always used to make sure modern audiences can access ancient texts, it has drawn praise and criticism in equal measure.7
In discussing her use of it, Carson has said:
I have cast my net rather wide and have mingled evidence from different periods of time and different forms of cultural expression–in a way that reviewers of my work like to dismiss as ethnographic naïveté. I think there is a place for naïveté in ethnography, at the very least as an irritant.8
I think employing that anachronism as an irritant, is what makes the reader pay a little more attention in this second section. As mentioned at the beginning of the episode. Here the poem shortens line by line, imagery coming in rapid, repetitive succession. The verbs jab and hook are employed to create an informal rhythm that directly mimics the action being describe; Carson is shadowboxing.
Carson departs from the classical lion-fighing Longinus, making use of her irritant and instead shows us a man locked in combat with his own shadow, in other words; himself. The notion of divine or mystical punishment is sidestepped once more in favour of the much more relatable wrestling with your own conscience. The poet is crafting a poem that subtly investigates the ways in which men deal with their trauma, which seems to be not at all.
The frenetic pace of the verse here is transformed to a stream of consciousness and movement.
The absurdity and impotence of this self-punishment is highlighted in the lines:
Slight shift and we catch him
in a moment of expansion and catastrophe,
white arms sporting strangely in a void.
Boxing is a visceral, powerful sport, but slowed down here it becomes absurd. A near perfect image for Longinou’s torn self. That moment of expansion and catastrophe is turmoil itself, whilst the white arms in the void make it clear the former soldier has no power over his guilt.
Carson very subtly hints at a possible solution. Throughout the poem, Longinus has been completely solitary each and every action taken alone. With two simple lines, Carson confirms that the soldier will not seek comfort or help; Don’t want to bore you, my troubles jab.
It is an incomplete thought, rattled off between punches as though reading from a script. Here Carson is drawing attention to the withdrawn way men deal with uncomfortable emotions. He repeats the dull, dead mantras of men before him, in between an impotent form of violence. It is tragedy itself.
The lines grow shorter while the blows increase, adding to the sense of frustration coming from Longinus. The more he retreats the more he leans on violence. Until the shadowboxing is interrupted by another anachronism:
Was a face not all stille
as dew in Aprille .
Carson is quoting and reworking a lyric from a rather famous middle English poem from the 14th century, I synge of a mayden. 9The song itself has an anonymous author and seems to exist to celebrate the immaculate nature of Christ's conception. The stillness in the original lyric is a reference to the calm that came upon Mary during Christ's birth and the came he brought to the world with it. In changing the lyrics however, Carson removes any such Christian fantasy.
Her choice of was to start her middle English lyric reflects the earlier line on carbon creating a mini refrain. In mimicking that line, it mimics it’s tone; one of doubt and uncertainty. Here, I think, Longinus hopes that Jesus would take his death with the same calm and forgiveness as was present at his birth but the doubt he feels eats away at his optimism. He has caused pain to another and now seeks a way to find forgiveness. But instead of confronting his own emotions, he continues to seek physical and violent resolution and so is forced to continue his relentless shadow boxing: hook, jab jab
The entire collection Men in the Off Hours is Anne Carson’s musings and observations on men as a whole. It’s important to not that there doesn’t seem to necessarily be an aim or agenda to the poems contained within it. Carson merely lays out what she sees and allows the reader time to draw their conclusions.
Here toxic masculinity is given its very own biblical parable. Although to relegate it to a religious text is a waste. Carson uses a remarkably brief poem to explore something I think a lot of men experience: an inability to express their more difficult emotions or more simply a lack of emotional intelligence. Carson’s Longinus is a man plagued by the actions of his past, which are admittedly horrific. There is no old testament punishment, no ferocious lion, only a man’s relentless conscience and inability to seek help.
What did you think of the poem? I'd like to point out, as always, that this is my interpretation and as such very much up for debate.
You can find the show notes for the episode in the description below
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Join me for the second part of this special on Anne Carson next week. Where we’ll be taking a look at her poem Hokusai.
Carson, Anne. Men in the off Hours. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000.
Anderson, Sam. “The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson.” The New York Times. The New York Times, March 14, 2013. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/magazine/the-inscrutable-brilliance-of-anne-carson.html
Ehrman, Bart D.; Pleše, Zlatko (2011). "The Gospel of Nicodemus (The Acts of Pilate) A". The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. Oxford University Press. p. 419
Ehrman, Bart D, and Zlatko Pleše. The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 523
Dougherty, C. (2006). Prometheus. Abingdon: Routledge.
Wachtel, Eleanor. “An Interview with Anne Carson.” Brick. Brick Mag, January 9, 2020. https://brickmag.com/an-interview-with-anne-carson/.
Passin, Laura. “The Anachronist: Anne Carson.” The Toast. The Toast, October 26, 2015. https://the-toast.net/2015/10/26/the-anachronist-anne-carson/.
Passin, Laura. “The Anachronist: Anne Carson.” The Toast. The Toast, October 26, 2015. https://the-toast.net/2015/10/26/the-anachronist-anne-carson/.
Laura Saetveit Miles, The Annunciation as Model of Meditation: Stillness, Speech and Transformation in Middle English Drama and Lyric in Marginalia, Vol. 2 – 2004–2005 Cambridge Yearbook (Cambridge, 2005).