Analysis of "Pathetic Fallacy" by Charles Bernstein

 

The first thing that pops up when I look up "pathetic fallacy" is this:

Pathetic Fallacy Definition and Examples

I'm trying to see the emotion in the inanimate, and it doesn't look like this poem deals with this concept, so I think the title, like the poem, separates the definition.

Pathetic: 

1: having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity

2: marked by sorrow or melancholy : SAD

3: pitifully inferior or inadequate
the restaurant's pathetic service

4: ABSURD, LAUGHABLE

Fallacy:

1

a: a false or mistaken idea 

popular fallacies
prone to perpetrate the fallacy of equating threat with capability—C. S. Gray

b: erroneous character : ERRONEOUSNESS
The fallacy of their ideas about medicine soon became apparent.

2
a: deceptive appearance : DECEPTION

b: obsolete : GUILE, TRICKERY

3: an often plausible argument using false or invalid inference

This seems to fit the idea of the poem more as we get to the first idea with:

Never mind there's

no hole so deep

you don't get banged
when you hit
bottom [...]

The first lines cover the idea of a fallacy. This is another way to see a slippery slope fallacy and how things go out of control if one step happens.  I've seen this used many times like "if we let the homosexual marry, then bestiality is next."  Well, no.  Gay marriage still exists, and I don't see people marrying animals or fight for that right.

There is a bottom point.  There are repercussions. Bang.

[...] or that 
the zombies have
overtaken the Capitol--

I like the allusion to January 6th with the line, "overtaken the Capitol" which is bottom point, but this image isn't necessarily just an allusion on January 6th.  "Zombies" is doing a lot of work here because it can mean January 6th and/or also be a critic of politics in the Capitol, but you fall to the trap of a slippery slope of dehumanizing people.  This is not what the speaker wants to focus on.  

I still hear nightingale songs
every time I see pigeons
nosediving in early
morning hale, whose
icy spitballs remind me
of paradise 

We start out with an auditory nature image of nightingale songs -- different from "zombies" overtaking a capital or non-endless holes to fall into, but of something pleasing and probably intimate to the speaker in a positive way.

Then the next image after pigeon's nosediving is one of morning hale which is then compared to as icy spitballs which the term lowers the philosophical and stiff tension in the first part with the silly language and comparison.

Note that the word "remind" is important here as the image is just a reminder, not the actual.  That in the idea of something simple existing then there's the idea of paradise, but not actual paradise.  The poem feels like it ends hopeful with the idea of paradise, but isn't this also a fallacy?  One thing is good that means paradise exist, and conversely, something horrible happened are we are in a apocalypse?