objectification and the long-short line 269and dry up on the surface of things right away no matter how dry the host must
manage his own ears
listen intently nod sigh smile pour fresh tea show that he’s taking it all in
this excites the conversationist who expertly uses labiodentals rounded vowels and
nasals
as if correcting a night school student’s homework here drawing a red line
writing? somewhere else and at the end the assessment says the theme still lacks
profundity
the rain is still falling something starts to seep through never mind the conversa-
tion must once more transfer to a new topic
communication starts to be difficult luckily this room is dry so we converse on dry
things
dry furniture dry marriages dry extramarital affairs and wages dry washrooms
dry tvs and magazines dry weekends dry holidays spent in dry placesThe conversationist, or the one “making conversation” (䇜ⴔ䆱ⱘ),
is reduced to a free-floating mouth that produces linguistic structures
such as syntactic patterns (if.... then and if only....) and sounds that con-
form to the phonology of the language used (labiodentals, vowels, na-
sals). To call this metonymy would be problematic because what Yu
does to the mouth is to make it autonomous: it no longer represents or
substitutes for the conversationist. The poem makes the employment
of the if only.... pattern in a well-behaved conversation look meaning-
less, in contrast to its imagined use as representing an impossible situa-
tion that would be truly significant (if only the rain fell toward the sky then all
would be well this would mean rescue), unlike the inconsequential chatter
that goes on between the speaker and the visitors.
The clichéd nature of language usage is also manifest in the predict-
able patterns of dialogic interaction. If only to postpone the visitors’
exit back into the rain, the social desirability of harmony overrules
semantics that should really lead to disagreement. Impending con-
flict signaled by the conjunction but.... is quickly averted by more tea,
cigarettes and the awkward clearing of throats: gymnastics of conversa-
tion possessing the order and beauty of music. The protagonists opt for
compromise over confrontation, and there is a good deal of sarcasm in
phrases like well put fascinating there’s always someone to point out the crux
of the matter and the host show[ing] that he’s taking it all in, while what is
happening is no more than the mechanical operation of empty struc-
tures. The speaker likens these things to the rules that govern formal