Hatred - Gwendolyn Bennett

HATRED



I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.

---Gwendolyn Bennett



Gwendolyn Bennett's Hatred:



With all the poems I've featured that centered on love, you had to expect I would eventually balance them out with a poem or two about something not as pleasant. I don't enjoy turning toward pessimistic and negative topics, but such detours are sometimes refreshing, and other times they are downright necessary. If you're asking why hatred or anger are necessary, then, by all means, let me explain why. Think for a moment of the man who bottles up his anger, never letting even the smallest smidgen of disapproval or disgust seep from his tightly controlled body. Or consider the woman who puts on a happy face every day, even though her daily life is plagued by inequities, degradations, and abuse. Believe me, I could provide you a long list of examples, but that's not what's important. We all face moments that prove how severely unfair life (and the people in our lives) can be. To deny that these moments exist is wrong, just as it is wrong to deny that moments of sheer brilliance and love exist. In fact, a lifetime of denial only clears the way for a monumental, and sometimes deadly, explosion. The raw emotions contained in anger and, yes, hatred are direct relatives to the similarly powerful emotions that accompany love. It goes without saying that love and hate are intertwined, but Gwendolyn Bennett offers today's poem as further proof.

"I shall hate you / Like a dart of singing steel / Shot through still air / At even tide." Never has hatred been more poetic and beautiful than in those initial lines from Gwendolyn Bennett's poem Hatred. Working against our expectations, Bennett eschews our typical ideas about hatred being a snarling, unrefined emotion. Sure, the venom is still present in abundance, but Bennett presents a notion of hatred that is polished and premeditated. The dart she compares her hatred to is made of "singing steel" rather than rugged, rough metal. When the dart is "Shot through still air / At even-tide" the poet has, indirectly, become a calculated sniper with her hatred, aiming and firing away at the "you" character the poem is addressed to. Still, this represents just one incarnation of her hatred; she has more in her repertoire than deadly force. Her hatred will also be doled out "solemnly / As pines are sober / When they stand etched / Against the sky." For some the violent hatred might be the most frightening, but for others this stoic hatred that resolves to grow regardless of the elements around it is far more terrifying. This second hatred is resolved and thought-out in a manner that indicates a change-of-mind is nearly impossible.

Just when I said it was impossible for Bennett to reverse her hatred for the "you" character this poem is addressed to, she threads the needle and draws the first stitch towards forgiveness when she asserts that "Hating you shall be a game / Played with cool hands / And slim fingers." Her joy in hating this person is actually, I believe, a good sign. That she can derive some happiness from this activity is indicative of the depth of her emotional connection with the person…or it's indicative of how horribly she was wronged by the person, which, come to think of it, would be a very bad sign for any chance of forgiveness. This indecisiveness is a nutshell example of why this poem is excellently constructed, and a further example of the poem's brilliance is on display when Bennett reasserts her dominance: "Your heart will yearn / For the lonely splendor / Of the pine tree / While rekindled fires / In my eyes / Shall wound you like swift arrows." She will decide how this hatred will arrive upon him and what brand of hatred it will be. You can bet that Bennett will opt for the most painful and lingering form of hatred.

If you're like me then by this point in the poem you were chomping at the bit to find out what it was that this person did to Bennett. I promise I'm not a gossip hound, but with these tour-de-force descriptions of hatred it's hard not to wonder what generated them. Bennett employs a technique common in come of the best horror and suspense films ever made: she doesn't show us the root of her hatred, instead offering just enough to let our imaginations run ferociously wild. "Memory will lay its hands / Upon your breast / And you will understand / My hatred." These lines essentially say "You know what you did," and while some readers may view this as a cheap ending, I'm not one of those readers. It is a private ending to a very public poem, but by turning inward Bennett opens the poem back up to her audience. We all have ghosts traveling with us from past indiscretions we'd rather forget. These reminders can be suppressed, but they always find a way to break free, whether it is a familiar scent from that moment or a word that was spoken that day. Our present is not immune to our past; if we were wrong, someone still possesses a memory of it, even if you are the one with the memory, even if you are the one unable to forgive…yourself.