Commentary by Rebecca Foust, Poetry Editor
Today’s poem combines two classic sonnet forms. Its octet uses alternating rhyme [abab cdcd] and thus looks Shakespearean, but its sestet follows Petrarchan form in using interlocking rhyme (efgegf) in place of the third alternating rhyme quatrain followed by a rhyming couplet we expect to see in Shakespearean sonnet sestets. As expected in a Petrarchan sonnet, a volta or turn happens in line 9 with its new sentence and change in action and scene (from sitting with a drink to getting up and moving out of it towards the restroom). But a volta also happens where we look for one in a Shakespearean sonnet, in the last two lines, a reversal accomplished in the surprising twist of meaning in the quoted graffiti. Like many contemporary sonnets, “Sunday Morning at the Caffe Mediterraneum” borrows elements and inspiration from the tradition of classical form but bends its to its own ends.
I enjoy how the opening lines capture the colorful, free-spirited street scene in Berkeley, from the misspellings in the restaurant name deliberately preserved in the poem’s title to the pageant of passersby: “the students, the panhandlers, the waiting / dogs, the cotton-robed Krishna-chanting girl / hawking poems,” all communicated with economy, precision, and an eye for authenticating detail. (I was not at all surprised to read that the poem captures an actual incident from the author’s life.) What I like best, though, is the unexpected wisdom found in the graffiti at the poem’s end.
From the beginning, the speaker’s tone is unmistakably ironic, with her fully aware that “Caffe” and “Mediterraneum” are misspelled and the city of Berkeley reduced to its most cartoonish street stereotypes. The irony verges on bitterness in the speaker’s comments about the futility and terrible destruction of war followed by “the sad / simple fact for the rest is discerning / that growing up means knowing you’ve been had.” In these lines, we detect disappointment in human existence and its limited possibilities. “Life is just one big con,” the speaker seems to say—a jaundiced view. But the greatest irony of all is reserved for the last two lines, which recapitulate graffiti encountered inside a restroom stall: “I wish I could be what I was when / I wanted to be what I am now.” What a wonderful bit of stumbled-upon wisdom this is, itself a found poem!
It takes a bit of unpacking. The graffiti writer is saying that she, now, wishes to be what she was in the past, back when she thought she wanted to be what she is, in fact, right now. The idea is surprisingly complex and profound, and it casts doubt on everything we’ve seen in the poem so far. Until this point, the speaker has been looking outward; these lines turn the shot into a selfie so that the speaker is looking instead, and critically, at herself.
Several interpretations are possible. One is the simple irony that when we are young we wish we were older and when we are older we wish we were young again. Another is the old idea that we all wish we could enjoy the idealism and vitality of youth at the same time we have the wisdom and experience of age. Yet another is that we are always longing to be something “other,” and in so doing make two mistakes: not enjoying the instant, the moment, and forgetting that each stage of human existence offers advantages as well as disadvantages.