Black Jackets Comments

It is written as follows: … now lost in night … the slogan Born To Lose.

One of the truly fine poems of the twentieth century. Its subject matter, its tone, and its vernacular language definitely reflect the culture of the modern age, yet its form is a masterful variation of the traditional quatrain with a strict rhyming scheme: ABAB. The image of light (flickers reflected from the black leather jeckets) is one of the most memorable of his era - classical, yet with a brand new context and interpretation, then developed with a metaphor comparing this light to lights reflected off the San Francisco Bay. This image is the perfect embodiment (TSE would say 'dobjective correlative') for the thematic statement that follows, its wording elegantly simple: 'The present was the things he stayed among.' Curiously, the last four rhyming words precisely embody the balance achieved in both the form and the content of the poem: rites / knights = classical traditions vs. tattoos / lose = modernistic irony. Two ironies - one direct and forceful, the other more subtle (again tradition vs. the modernistic) - tie the whole poem together. A motorcycle gang of the twentieth century choosing the ritual and the nomenclature of medieval chivalry AND tattoos which are designs meant to be permanent, to last forever, convey the message of impermanence, of the ravages of Time: 'Born to Lose.'