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Beans |
September came like winter's
ailing child but
left us
viewing Valparaiso's pride. Your face was
always saddest when you smiled. You smiled as every
doctored moment lied. You lie with
orphans' parents, long
reviled.
As close as coppers, yellow beans still
line Mapocho's banks. It
leads them to the sea;
entwined on rocks and saplings, each
new vine recalls that
dawn in 1973 when
every choking, bastard weed grew wild.
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D.P. Kristalo's "Beans" came to our attention in November of 2006. It has since been heralded as one of the top poems of our time in three genres:
Beans as an acrostic:
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The first letter in each line spells out the name "Salvador Allende", the Chilean President murdered by General Augusto Pinochet's U.S.-backed junta on September 11th, 1973.
Beans as a curgina:
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"Beans" may look like a free verse acrostic but it is, in fact, a rhyming metrical poem: iambic pentameter with a ABABA-CDCDA rhyme scheme. To wit:
September came like winter's ailing child
but left us viewing Valparaiso's pride.
Your face was always saddest when you smiled.
You smiled as every doctored moment lied.
You lie with orphans' parents, long reviled.
As close as coppers, yellow beans still line
Mapocho's banks. It leads them to the sea;
entwined on rocks and saplings, each new vine
recalls that dawn in 1973
when every choking, bastard weed grew wild.
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Among the poem's many technical merits is the skillful use of anadiplosis, where a word or form of a word from the end of one sentence is repeated at or near the beginning of the next sentence. Thus, we see:
Your face was always saddest when you smiled.
You smiled as every doctored moment lied.
You lie with orphans' parents, long reviled.
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A lulling consonance of "l" sounds runs through stanza #1. Note, too, that all of the disyllabic words are trochaic until the last one, "reviled". This, along with the form, helps break up the metronome.
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Stanza #2 starts out with the strong "c" alliteration and two pairs of "oh" sounds, one stressed and one unstressed: "close...yellow" then "Mapocho's". Then we have two more assonant pairs, this time "aw" sounds: "on rocks" before "recalls...dawn". These vary the pace of the recital, slowing it down before the poet spits out those harsh sounds and sentiments in the final line.
Beans as a political poem:
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To appreciate the subtlety of "Beans" one might compare it to efforts like Carolyn Forché's "The Colonel". "Beans" begins by establishing the setting: we are dealing with troubled times south of the equator, where September is springtime. Immediately thereafter the author strikes on the ambiguity that characterizes "Beans": Valparaiso is the birthplace of both the coup and its principle victim, Dr. Allende. As such, it is a town revered by supporters of both Pinochet and Allende.
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The next sentence ranks among the most poignant we'll see in modern poetry:
Your face was always saddest when you smiled.
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Did Dr. Allende's pie-faced smile really make him look sadder or are we observers projecting our own sympathy, knowing what fate awaited him?
 
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Next we see "doctored moments", a reference to Allende's original profession as a physician. This play on words captures the duplicity of those around him. How can anyone refer to the other victims of the slaughter that followed the overthrow without losing the poem's core ambivalence? By sticking to the fact that many of these people left behind families.
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In the second stanza the poem seems to meander slightly, like beans along the Mapocho river that runs through Chile's capital city of Santiago. Why beans? Perhaps the name of the country is a clue.
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In the first line of Stanza #2 we see a reference to "coppers", as in pennies, but this could allude to the co-operation between police and military plotters. In any case, it almost certainly refers to Allende's nationalization of the copper mines, which was one of the reasons for the U.S. backing the coup.
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The poem ends on a bitter note as DPK repeats "when every choking bastard weed" three times for effect. Who are the "choking bastard weeds"? A supporter of democracy and Allende will assume that it is a reference to the military that ran wild, murdering thousands of innocent civilians and setting up an illegitimate government. Coup supporters may see the phrase as a reference to the Allende government choking the economy. The reason for this elegy's ambivalence will be apparent to anyone who considers the dangerous polemics of Chilean politics in the years after Allende's fall. This might also explain the choppy ("tortuous", said one commenter) linebreaks, especially in Stanza #1; the speaker pauses to carefully consider the choice of words and expressions at the beginning of each subsequent line.
Beans as a video:
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To see the video, click here. It takes a while to load. You'll probably need to turn your volume up.
Conclusion
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Unlike most political poems, "Beans" isn't overwhelmed by its subject, nor does it trivialize it with bathos. If we can forgive the oxymoron, "Beans" is a modern classic.
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