“Tantalus”

                                                                                           “It’s strange. You never start out life with the intention of

                                                                                                       becoming a bankrupt or an alcoholic or a cheat and a thief.

                                                                                                Or a liar.” – R. Carver

Cosmic Errors and Classic Pain:

Desire and Consequence in Michael Easton’s “Tantalus”

A title is a title is a title? No, not really. A good title adds to the poem, either by presenting a new image or idea, setting a mood, or finding a unique way to summarize or interpret the work. The title of Michael Easton’s “Tantalus” helps provide a roadmap into the nature and depth of the pain the speaker of the poem is facing.

A quick look at the Tantalus myth can be very revealing. Tantalus is most famous for the way he was punished in the afterlife. He was Zeus’s son, and one version of the myth states that after being allowed to dine with the gods and listen to them talk, he gave their secrets to men. Another version holds that Tantalus offended the gods by insatiable appetites, always wanting more so he would have a life like a god himself. As a punishment, Tantalus was placed in water up to his chin with delicious fruits suspended over his head. When he reached to eat, the fruit withdrew so he couldn’t reach it. When he stooped to drink, the water withdrew. He was forever hungry and thirsty and forever surrounded by what could heal his hungers, yet he was forever unable to grasp what he so deeply desired.

Our speaker compares him- or herself to Tantalus. (For convenience, let’s assume the speaker is male, although it could be a woman.) The fruits in the myth are replaced by balloons that float overhead. The balloons are filled with people shaking hands and laughing. “Something that could be called/a function,” the speaker says. As any little kid can tell you, playing catch with balloons is tricky. It looks like they would be easy to catch, but if you get your hands on them, they just slip away. Also, you can’t carefully cut into a balloon to get what’s inside of it. You have to destroy it, and if what’s inside is fragile, you could lose it forever.

Poets mention colors for specific reasons. In “Tantalus,” the balloons are silver and white. One might note that these are often colors associated with weddings, the commitment that innocence (white) makes to a shining future (silver). The speaker appears to believe that both innocence and a bright future are things that he once had but are now lost to him for eternity, just as Tantalus once dined on sumptuous banquets but is cut off from food and water as a punishment.

The colors of the balloons also present an effective image because they would make the view of whatever is inside hazy, indistinct, and dreamlike. These balloons contain relationships with people and with the wider society. The contents are also “function(s),” a word that brings to mind the ability to function in that wider world. The speaker seems to be feeling that the simplest relationships with people, such as shaking hands, and even the ability to “function,” are hazy and beyond his grasp.

The speaker tells us as much outright. He tells us the balloons come from a place where he would not be accepted or feel comfortable. (Have you ever felt comfortable coughing?) Instead, similar to Otis Reading, he’s sitting on a bench and can’t even grasp his thoughts well enough to have them to hold onto. His inability to function in social settings and to grasp and hold onto his own thoughts have left him in true isolation.

The title prepares us for the experience of desiring something that is forever beyond reach. But it also tells us that the speaker’s situation is a form of punishment for some sin he has committed on a cosmic level.

What is the sin? We aren’t told. The speaker says only “you don’t need me anymore.” But what does this mean? Is the speaker speaking to a lover he has driven off somehow? Since inside the balloons are dreams of social ease and function, is it society that no longer needs the speaker? Is there anything we know about the poet and/or the poetry collection that influences our answers to these questions?

I have some ideas, but I would like to hear what you think and open a discussion. Remember, there is no right or wrong. What you see is what you see, and it is as valid as what anyone else sees. We are NOT attempting to read Easton’s mind. Only he can tell us what really prompted the poem. We’re just playing with it, so join the fun.

                                                  -- Deb Okey

On the Bench: Individualism vs. Conformity in Easton’s “Tantalus”

-- by moori001

Earlier this year I decided to take some time from work and travel through Europe to get some perspective.  I took  many books with me to read and to ponder over.  A friend included in my stack this book of poetry.

I sat on the Spanish steps in Rome one afternoon and read these poems. It was as if the same questions I had been asking were being contemplated in these poems.  What  do we know? What is truth? What is real?

I was a science major in college and I have spent the  last few years of my life smothered by my work in research.  I am just beginning to rediscover my love of  words and I am interested in logian verbal _expression. My literary background is mostly based on reading I have done for my own enjoyment and less about any formal study.  Having said  all that ..thanks for a website to discuss these raw and edgy poems.

As for my take on Tantalus....I see a man uncomfortable and confused with his individualistic spirit. I think the balloons do represent those things in society that have been termed as good, necessary and proper.  The balloons are over his  head ...he cannot connect (understand) with this or how to get this. 

"Where people applaud one another " I see as conformity and acceptance.  He feels the person he is would not be accepted.  The thoughts that get away seem to be his struggle to understand why he feels the way he feels ....why doesn't he conform?   The coughing  during speeches  represents his disagreement with status quo. He can't get a hold on these thoughts to understand why he  seems to be  different from everyone. It seems he is  pondering why can't he just do what others do and think like others think and then he could be at these functions...laugh...shake hands..and have someone applaud him.     Yet he chooses to be a loner.... sitting on the bench.  How can he  obtain what he  needs without sacrificing what he wants?   To stay on this bench or to at least try to grab on to a balloon?  He knows the  longer he sits on the bench..... indecisive...the more the things in life he wants may slip through his hands. 

This was what I got from the poem.....I also realize that my interpretation may be  highly influenced by my own experiences.

Oooo, that’s an interesting interpretation and one I hadn’t thought of, which is strange because I’ve looked at quite a bit of literature that deals with that contrast. One of my favorites is a novel by Joyce Carol Oates titled Expensive People. It is written from the perspective of an 18-year-old looking back on his 11-year-old self and the difficulties of living with a mother who cannot choose between individualism and conformity. She is a writer who leaves the family three times to pursue a bohemian lifestyle in the 1960s but comes back to their upper-class home, which represents safety. Interestingly, the first time I taught this novel in my fiction class was on 9/11 about an hour after the Pentagon was attacked. Another way to term the contraries is freedom vs. safety. An individualist is free, but his or her role as an outsider leaves him or her more vulnerable. People absorbed by institutions of various sorts are at the other end of the continuum. The institutions keep them safe, but they have no freedom, and individuality is sacrificed. With the shadow of tightened security upon us on 9/11, our entire society was facing this choice, so it made for an interesting discussion.

Moori001 did a great job pointing out the aspects of the poem that supports this interpretation. There are some external aspects that would support it, too. I once submitted a message to Easton via Josi Kull’s Michael Easton Corner Web site asking him about his love of Bukowski, who is very dark, and his reference to the Icarus myth in the title of two of his screenplays. Bukowski’s darkness and the myth of the flight to the ultimate light make an interesting pairing. In his response, Easton stated that he loved Blake, a British Romantic poet and artist who dealt a great deal with contraries and maintained that life was comprised of contraries and the search for balance. A great example of Blake’s exploration of this concept is illustrated in Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience. Each poem in Songs of Innocence would be suitable as a nursery rhyme. Most have a direct corollary in Songs of Experience. One of my favorite pairings is “The Lamb” and “The Tyger.” In “The Lamb,” which is very rhythmic and heavily rhymed, the speaker states that God, who took the form of the lamb, had made the lamb. There is certainty in the statement. But in “The Tyger,” there are only questions. “Did he who made the lamb make thee?” At any rate, perhaps Easton’s readings influenced this poem in its discussion of contraries.

There are also hints in other poems in Whiskeys that the poet recognizes the contraries as a matter of conscious choice. In “23,” for example, there is a fairly clear implication that the speaker has chosen an individualist lifestyle as contrasted to the life of conformity that his friend has chosen. The friend apparently believes that because the speaker had not followed the path to career, home, and family laid out in “the American dream,” he had done nothing with his life. But the speaker tells us that he has NOT done “nothing.” Since the two men are friends, there is an implication that the speaker could have chosen the conformist route and succeeded.

The rewards of conformity are contained in the balloons in “Tantalus.” So are the costs. The speaker states that he would not be comfortable there, that he would “start coughing/during speeches or introductions./Not even able to hold it,/until they finished their talks/and begin clapping.” Conformity means sacrifice of self, the requirement that we “hold it.”

This particular interpretation means a lot to me due to my experiences, too. Born to a good but poor and uneducated family, I was an outsider who wanted to conform. I spent a lot of my life proving to myself that I could have what was inside those balloons. Now, at 49, I have left a tenured faculty position and cashed in my retirement fund to return to school. I’ve decided that if it comes to it, I could head for a warmer climate and be homeless on a beach. What I can’t do is pour myself into a mold, sacrifice my values, and lose my self in order to have what others think of as “the good life.”

Thanks, moori001, for an interesting interpretation. I loved this poem the first time I read it, and this added interpretation makes me love it even more. -- Deb

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