Contemporary Poetry

: a web symposium  |  Spring 2006

Bad Boats by Laura Jensen
Ecco Press, 1977

Often, poets address reality as something to be understood, and this becomes the driving force behind their poetry. In Bad Boats, Laura Jensen takes a much different approach to poetry. Instead of attempting to deliver an elaborate solution stating how to understand reality, Jensen focuses on embracing the confusion and frustration produced by one’s existence. To Jensen, the most one can understand about reality is that one is constantly frustrated by the occurrences of everyday life. Jensen’s voice develops to show that a common reaction to this state is a disturbed, unsettled mind.

Jensen’s Bad Boats, at first glance, is a structured work. The reader is presented a table of contents that reveals the book’s division into four sections. Jensen uses the four sections of Bad Boats to create the illusion of structure: as the year has four seasons, every month four weeks, every fourth year an election, so Jensen prepares the reader to find some stability in the four parts of Bad Boats. What she reveals in Bad Boats, however, is a voice that is far from stable.

After creating a sense of stability, Jensen shows her reader that the book’s structure is only an illusion. In Bad Boats, Jensen shows that the only consistent characteristic of reality is its ability to evoke frustration in anyone trying to understand it. To analyze this, one must look at the four parts of Bad Boats and ask questions about it. Why does confusion not dissipate although structure is present? What causes frustration, and why does it last throughout the book without any solution? To answer these questions, one may look more deeply into the structure of the book.

The structure of a poetry collection is important to an accurate portrayal of the poet’s voice. One must recognize that the poems are organized in a particular order for a particular reason. One proceeds to realize, in a book structured in separate parts (like Bad Boats), that the most influential poems of the selection are found in two places: the first poem of a section, and the final poem of a section. Because of the first poem’s placement, it attracts the most attention. The final poem of a section must give the section a sense of completion, causing the reader to prepare for something new. Thus, the reader’s focus should lean towards these poems when attempting to understand a collection. A complete understanding of Jensen’s Bad Boats begins with the following poems: “The Red Dog,” “After I Have Voted,” “Sleep in the Heat,” “Subject Matter,” “The Poorsoul,” “The Cloud Parade,” “Heavy Snowfall in a Year Gone Past,” and “Tomorrow in a Story.” Each provides significant insight into Jensen’s voice.

An introduction to Jensen, however, must be more specific in its focus. To appropriately address all of these poems would become an overwhelming task. Ultimately, two poems in this collection deserve the most attention: its first poem and its final poem. These are the reader’s first glimpse and last glimpse of the Jensen’s voice. Bad Boats must be viewed as a transition from the first poem to the final poem, completely revealing Laura Jensen’s style and voice to readers seeking to understand her poetry.

In the event that a work contains a title poem, the reader finds another element of the collection that must be given a heightened amount of consideration in relation to its overall theme. Jensen’s Bad Boats is this type of work. Coming upon the title poem, one realizes that Jensen must have a significant reason to title the collection Bad Boats, and, because of this, the reader must address “Bad Boats” as a poem that provides significant insight into the poet’s style and voice.

Thus, this analysis of Bad Boats focuses on what a reader can determine, with this logic, to be three poems that are an apt portrayal of Jensen’s style and voice: “The Red Dog,” “Tomorrow in a Story,” and “Bad Boats.” These poems provide significant examples of Jensen’s style and voice, and an understanding of these poems is vital to understanding Bad Boats. Each poem takes a step in developing Jensen’s voice, portraying the frustration and confusion present in her existence to give the book, as a whole, an unsettling tone.

The main element of Jensen’s style that emphasizes the frustration present in life is her ability to establish expectations for the poem and then deny the reader any satisfactory fulfillment of these expectations. Jensen shows that frustration is a reflection of one’s lack of a capacity to understand the world. One must spend life battling one’s frustration with the world. This battle, ultimately, leads to the unsettling tone of Bad Boats.

In “The Red Dog,” Jensen’s title immediately establishes expectations. One is certain that the poem will focus on a description of a red dog (and, possibly, a childish poem describing a pet). After reading, “You know he is going to die” (line 1), the expectations for a joyful, childish poem about a red dog disappear. The poem focuses on death, taking a completely different path than the reader expects. On the page, the poem appears simple, with no stanza breaks. This, combined with the title, causes the reader to let his or her guard down before reading the poem. The reader’s expectations are denied after reading the first line. Questioning ensues. How could this happen? Why is the dog dying? Has it been harmed? Reading the poem with questions developing draws the reader into a more intense experience of Jensen’s poetry.

“The Red Dog” becomes a poem of fear and frustration. The poem’s speaker is afraid of death, feeling that the dog must die sometime. To emphasize this, everything moves away from the speaker. Geese float, like one would imagine a soul floating away. The dog chases them and seems to be disappearing, as only its head is visible above the water. The speaker’s repetition gives the poem a sense of nervousness when the first line is repeated, followed by two more repetitive lines. “You know that he is going to die / this is the time for it / this is the best time for it,” Jensen writes. An unsettling feeling of unavoidable death develops, and the reader is left pondering the hopeless fate of the dog.

“Bad Boats” takes on the unsettling feeling of “The Red Dog” and furthers its degree. This time, Jensen establishes expectations for the poem in its visible form. An experienced reader recognizes a fourteen-line structure, opening with elaborate metaphors, and expects a sonnet. “Bad Boats,” however, remains a sonnet only in its fourteen-line structure. Instead of embracing the song-like feel of a sonnet, Jensen removes herself from traditional expectations by creating an ominous poem about the pitfalls of mankind. To open the poem, Jensen deliberately compares the boats to women and men. “Bad Boats” becomes a poem of criticism. The boats “cannot wind their own rope / or guide themselves” (9-10), making them relatively useless. “In their egomania they are glad” (11) and the boats become despicable. They are finally described as “bad boats and they hate their anchors” (14). Trusting the speaker’s judgment of the boats, and understanding their comparison to living beings, the reader becomes displeased with the human character. Jensen has shown extreme flaws in the boats, and one is forced to realize these flaws in one’s self or in the surrounding world. This realization leads to frustration. Why is existence so flawed? Jensen provides no answers, creating a confusing aura in the poem. Her voice consistently becomes more critical of the world, and “Bad Boats” takes this unsettling air to frustrating heights when one recognizes the numerous flaws present in everyday life.

The unsettling nature of Jensen’s poetry reaches its pinnacle at the end of Bad Boats. “Tomorrow in a Story” completes Jensen’s collection, and it takes the unsettling tone of her poetry to its highest level. “Tomorrow in a Story” is the most ambiguous poem in Bad Boats. The poem begins “Needing more darkness” (1). Its opening ten lines and its closing fourteen lines focus on completely different subjects, neither of which is developed thoroughly. The reader must transition from the first mention of “everything / he thought he could never reach by morning” (9-10) to the story of a woman previously unmentioned in the poem. The man and the woman are ambiguous focal points, and Jensen develops the poem around them.

“Tomorrow in a Story” essentially reads as a fusion of two separate parts composed of the first ten lines and the final fourteen lines. Each has no concluding element. Both parts finish in a subjunctive tense (“he thought he could” and “she would free), leaving the reader with nothing definite. Jensen provides no comfort in this poem. Everything may happen, but nothing is guaranteed. Her final stanza, if written in a different tense, would show promise:

She would look for baskets, a good market
for snow, for time zones, hillsides, and cities.
She would but the bulbs and the yellow bird;
she would free the cage and step inside.

But, in reality, the reader is provided no confident conclusion when reading this poem. Everything appears to have undesirable consequences, and this is Jensen’s unsettling voice at its best. Jensen’s voice has become so unsettling that the final line in Bad Boats ends “Tomorrow in a Story” on a significantly discouraging note. The reader is left with the line, “she would free the cage and step inside.” Is Laura Jensen stating that any step towards freedom involves a fall into confinement? Can one avoid falling into the caged world of the unsettled mind that develops in Bad Boats?

Jensen provides no answer. She only develops the unsettled voice that raises questions in her reader’s mind. Any further steps—and conclusions, if one may make any—are left entirely to the reader. This, above all else, makes Bad Boats a worthy collection. It is completely dependent on an actively participating reader. Thus, one must think with Laura Jensen, see with Laura Jensen, and sink into her unsettled mindset. Once this happens, the world of Bad Boats becomes a new reality, a reality of unsettling themes and ambiguous images. It is now the reader’s job to escape the cage.

Further Reading

Commentary on Laura Jensen from the University of Washington:
http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/sense/part5%20pages/comms/commjensen.htm

Stumpf, Jason. (2006). “Bad Boats Recovery Project.” Octopus Magazine, Winter 2006, No. 7.
http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue07/html/recovery_project.htm

Witte, John. (1992). Dialogues with Northwest Writers. Eugene, Oregon: Northwest Review Books.