22 pages • 44 minutes read
Again Later
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Background
Literary Context: Modern Elegy
As one might expect from an elegy made entirely from a short, automated message, “Again Later” is an unadorned and spare poem; and while traditional elegies tend to be elaborate, modern elegies tend to be spare. A traditional English elegy would likely include most—or all—of the following elements:
a repeated elegiac refrain; a description of the “laureate hearse” decked out in floral finery; an interrogation of the muses who fell asleep during their watch over the (now, unfortunately, dead) subject of the elegy; an enumeration and description of the procession of mourners; and nature’s horrified reaction to the death. . . . Ultimately, the longed-for consolation is often achieved through the apotheosis and objectification of the mourned, frequently through stellification (Connolly, Sally. Grief and Meter. University of Virginia Press, 2016, pp. 7-8).
A 20th- or 21st-century elegy, however, would likely not include many of these traditional elements. Instead, modern elegies are typically bare-bones examples of the genre. As David Kennedy observes, “[M]odern elegists have often opted to simplify where their predecessors chose to trope” (Kennedy, David. Elegy. Routledge, 2007, p. 59.).
Moreover, modern and contemporary poets have done away with the single most important element of a traditional elegy: consolation. “The modern elegist,” Jahan Ramazani writes, “tends not to achieve but to resist consolation” (Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning. University of Chicago Press, 1994, xi.).
“Again Later” fits in with this stripped-down and anti-consolatory modern version of elegy. To someone only familiar with the English elegy prior to 1900, Collins’s poem is almost unrecognizable as an elegy. “Again Later” omits the pastoral setting and profuse descriptions of nature typical of traditional English elegies. The poem also doesn’t offer the reader an apotheosis of the dead—we never get a glimpse of Collins’s husband in heaven, or in a “better place,” or even returned to the earth and a part of the larger cycle of life.
Nonetheless, “Again Later” is a poem of mourning written on the occasion of a death and it includes a repeated elegiac refrain (the phone company’s intercept message). Collins’s poem is sparer, simpler, and sadder than traditional English elegies. It is a prototypical modern elegy.
Authorial Context
Many reviewers observe that Because What Else Could I Do represents a departure from Collins’s earlier work, because the book is more personal and less political than her other books (Bonanni, John. “Martha Collins and the Poetics of Grief.” DIAGRAM, vol. 20, no. 2; Domina, Lynn. “Review of Because What Else Could I Do by Martha Collins.” Lynn Domina, Poet, 18 June 2020; and Sarai, Sarah. “Because What Else Could I Do the Tenth Poetry Collection by Pitt Poetry Series Author Martha Collins.” Heavy Feather Review, 5 December 2019); and “Again Later” is a sort of coda to and extension of Because What Else Could I Do.
That being said, there are some important differences and distinctions between Because What Else Could I Do and “Again Later.” First, Because What Else Could I Do is 55 numbered but untitled sections and most of these sections address the poet’s husband using the second-person pronoun “you.” In 23, for example, Collins writes:
you into my other my love though
not the sonnets I’d meant to write
—but what did you think I would do?
probably didn’t cross your mind I
didn’t cross your mind you were
but now what else can I do?
(Collins, Martha. Because What Else Could I Do. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019, p. 23).
The “you” here is the poet’s husband, the “I” the poet. In “Again Later,” however, the “you” is most readily read as the poet, not her husband, although there are times when the two are conflated—for example, the phrase “your person” on Lines 8-9, 10, and 12 refers at once to the poet and her husband.
Second, in Because What Else Could I Do the word order, or syntax, is broken. The book reads as if, in the act of making the poems, Collins was continually interrupted by her grief. Her husband’s sudden, unexpected death cut into and rearranged her life without warning. Thus, the disruptions to the syntax mirror the disruption to the poet’s existence. The syntax in “Again Later” is similarly interrupted by grief, but also by the fact that Collins is cutting up and collaging back together a pre-recorded message. In this poem, Collins is explicitly doing to the intercept message what her husband’s death did to her life.
Finally, reviewer Barbara Egel wrote that Because What Else Could I Do “reads like a short story with an emergent plot that includes a last-minute twist” (Egel, Barbara. “Because What Else Could I Do.” Booklist, 13 September 2019). Moreover, the fact that the book is structured by untitled but numbered sections suggests a progressive structure—that each poem builds on and advances from the one before.
“Again Later,” on the other hand, is repetitive, not narrative. The poem is a loop, and the fact that it is titled suggests it is also an individual, stand-alone unit.
Critical Context: Cut Ups and Collage
William Burroughs wrote, “[A]ll writing is in fact cut ups” (Burroughs, William. “The Cut Up Method.” The Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania.). In other words, all writing is the scissoring apart, rearranging, and pasting together of other writing. Critics debate whether this is true of all texts; however, “Again Later” is most certainly a cut up. As Collins explains: “The poem is a collage” (Collins, Martha. “Again Later.” Poets.org.).
Burroughs began creating cut ups on paper, but later used sound recordings and a tape recorder (“Cut-Ups by William S. Burroughs.” YouTube, uploaded by QUEDEAR, 21 May 2011.). To create “Again Later,” Collins began with an audio recording and turned it into a work of text on a page. Nonetheless, she is collaging and rearranging, and this method puts her work in conversation with Burroughs’s cut ups, as well as other famously collaged works, like T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Ted Berrigan’s Sonnets, and many songs by David Bowie.
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