Review by Abena Ntoso
“Easy Weekday Rhythm” by Wesley Kendall elevates the quotidian and makes it poetic and musical without romanticizing it. This is a difficult stance to take, and Kendall's use of figurative language and his rhythmically realistic recounting of workday routines convey poetry's power to reveal beauty in the everyday while still representing it authentically.
The title "Easy Weekday Rhythm" calls to mind the monotony of work ("easy" and "weekday") while also recognizing the music ("rhythm") that can be found in the repetition of a weekday pattern. The poem opens with the lines "On my way up the street / the wind knocks me back and tosses me," establishing a struggle in the sense of trying to get somewhere but being challenged by forces that work against the speaker. The speaker then takes this struggle and makes a meal of it with the simile, "tosses me / around like a few spinach leaves / goat cheese and balsamic vinegar." The motif of making meals reappears throughout the poem, as the speaker describes working as a cook--"I crack a few eggs throw down / a few things from the fridge I work very quickly / wiping up my messes then making them again"--and later in the evening describes making dinner for himself at home--"dinner goes on the stove, vegetables on / the cutting board..."
Kendall uses simile throughout the poem to weave together words and images that cycle through motifs of food and mysticism:
"I get tossed around / like a fresh cut summer fig"
"Things turn inside me like rotten / fruits"
"We close down the kitchen / like waving a magician's wand"
"I plot point this / emotional body like a nautical superstar"
The speaker returns home to an abode full of imagery that reflects both the everyday and the celebratory:
At home the plastic disco ball throws dark yellow
sunlight all across the walls
and there are fruits in the basket for every morning
like day of the week underwear.
Amid the recitation of the speaker's daily experience, the speaker also acknowledges the struggle of writing poetry:
I get on my way with reflecting,
wallow about unearned unsuccess, I write a few
lines that ashame me, then take my ashame monster
into the shower and scrub its back with an acrylic loofa.
These lines not only reflect the feelings of guilt and shame that stem from feeling that one's work as a poet is unproductive, but they also take that shame, label it and embody it in the form of a monster that is then referred to in third person. This "ashame monster" is distinct from (and dangerous to) the speaker, and it is a way of externalizing and labeling a feeling that would otherwise do damage to one's psyche.
The economic reality of work also enters the speaker's thoughts: "I daydream about money because / what else is there to think about?" Here again Kendall reminds us that while working is poetic, it is not necessarily romantic; it is rooted in economic necessity.
As the speaker describes preparing an evening meal, this time for himself, it is not fancy, but it is regular and rhythmic, and it does give the speaker a "sense of pride." Each step of the meal--the the preparation, eating, and cleaning up afterward--is described with language that creates a sense of movement:
Dinner goes on the stove, vegetables on
the cutting board, into my mouth, my fork
goes into the sink and back, clean, to the cupboard.
The music of the speaker's evening routine takes center stage as dance and song emerge in the evening's activities and are celebrated both physically and through language:
The cosmic dance is not lost on me.
I am engaged, willing, I sing along to the radio
when I haven't heard the song in years.
It feels mainly coincidental, the material
being language, or the body being enacted by flesh
bone and bile.
Here Kendall refers directly to the music of poetry, using "the cosmic dance" and the speaker who is engaged and moved to "sing along" with the radio as a reflection of the sense of freedom experienced through preparing meals and preparing the music of poetry, "the material / being language, or the body being enacted by flesh / bone and bile."
The song and dance of language gives way to the speaker's eventual end to the evening, and several metaphors reflect the working class tempo of life, recalling the ambivalence of making one's way through life as a worker:
I lullaby my forklifts
for the night, I set down my shovels
and take off my hardhat.
As the evening draws to a close and the speaker prepares for sleep, the imagery of everyday sights becomes more surreal, with lines such as "even the crosswalk signal puts on his makeup / and evening gown." These surreal images reflect the dreamlike state the speaker is finally entering, a state in which mundane elements take on a fanastical quality:
the pot holes
all have big smiles, and my AC unit
keeps spitting out snow.
"Easy Weekday Rhythm" is impactful because it shows us how to capture the poetry that can be made from the motifs present in our everyday lives. The metaphors and similes are drawn from the influential elements of the speaker's weekday life, yet the mixture created from them is both delicious and melodious, and it transports us beyond the mundane, into the realm of the poetic.
Summer 2022