Analysis of "Barnes & Noble, 1999" by Jesús I. Valles

 

This poem is written with hindsight in mind, "I was a boy in a bookstore, 'a bathhouse,' I'll joke when I am / older."  I noted in the very beginning line that the reference to "a bathhouse" was to a "gay bathhouse" where men go to hook-up.  But through the comparison, the speaker is looking back trying to make light of the situation, "but then, I wasn't."

The poem continues to go a little explicit along with the pun of hooking up in a bookstore, "I was in a gallery of things to be / cracked open; all their spines & mine."  And so there's this blur of allusions -- hooking up and reading so the innuendo shows a passion for both, "I tell you, I was hungry / pickpocket, plucking what language I could from books & men / who stood hard before me."  

There's a sense of control, a focus on taking and taking.  "This is what it means to be / astonishing; to thieve speech and sense from the underserving."  I'm not sure what this line means.  Is the one that takes so astonishing looking back?  Reading what the poet said about their poem, it feels like astonishing is a more negative connotation than positive.  This sense of "wow, I used to do that,  I used to thieve speech and sense from the underserving". Yet upon first reading, I thought it was more of a positive thinking back on the experience -- being capable and of doing these things.

"I tell you, I was a boy and they were men". Not knowing the age of the speaker at the time, I'm thinking this is more of something based on experience -- the other men having experience and the boy just learning what hooking up and reading meant.  

[...] So all the words I
know for this I made into small razors, some tucked between
my teeth, under my tongue, and when they said what a good
mouth I had, I smiled, the silver glint of sharp things in me
singing, "I'll outlive you.  I'll outlive all of you."  

The speaker is creating a definition of his experience, but not clarifying in the poem.  The speaker is in control of the reaction and the hindsight, but not of the events that happen in that moment.  No, the speaker keeps that language hidden even when seduced.

I also note how the "silver glint of sharp things in me" doesn't cut, but rather sings.  What's happening is that the memory becomes sonic.  The memory is then changed into something the speaker controls by stating "I'll outlive you. I'll outlive all of you."  There is a sense of being above this experience, but just needing it at the time.  This is what coping looks like to me.