Greg Sendi
Nineteen Footnotes on a Poem About My Marriage

1 Repair: The poem’s title spotlights concern throughout with two kinds of “repair” or “re-pairing,” both the literal act of fixing broken things, but also efforts to reestablish kinds of pairing or coupling that may have been lost or interrupted.

2 In this, our chapter on enamelware: Le Creuset (“the crucible”) is a French cookware maker best known for producing enameled cast-iron Dutch ovens featuring characteristic T-shaped handles and designed by the Italian industrial innovator Enzo Mari.

3 waffle towels: Waffle fabric has raised threads that form small rectangles. The name derives from the resemblance of the surface texture to a waffle, a feature which enhances water adherence and absorption, allowing air to flow through the fabric and therefore making it faster-drying after becoming wet. See Phyllis G. Tortora, Ingrid Johnson (2013), The Fairchild Books Dictionary of Textiles. p. 292.

4 adjutant: Adjutant is a military appointment given to an officer who assists the commanding officer with unit administration, mostly the management of human resources, correspondence, and other secretarial functions.

5 homeward things: Cf. Milton’s “Lycidas,” (“Look homeward Angel now and melt with ruth: / And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.” (lines 163–164); and the Thomas Wolfe novel Look Homeward Angel (1929) whose title is taken from the same line. While Wolfe’s novel is understood as a classic in both content and prose style, it has also been viewed as an undisciplined mess by many literary critics.

6 her greyloaf darling of hinges and knobs: “Greyloaf” is a reference to “Graubrot,” a kind of German bread made from the mixture of wheat and rye flour with sourdough or yeast. It is also known widely as Mischsbrot (“mixed bread”) or as “black bread” in southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

7 But here’s the truth of it: Untellable truths or reversals of truths previously untold appear as a motif in the poetry of virtually all cultures and time periods. In Chaucer’s The Romaunt of the Rose (c. 1360), he describes love as:

The thing that may not knowen bee,
Ne wist ne shewed in no degree,
Thou maiest the sooth of it not witten.

Cf. also Tom Waits, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” (1978) for an example of a true sad story presented as a reversal of a false happy story (“I don’t have a husband / he don’t play the trombone”).

8 when it’s unkind: A general invocation of both the common contemporary sense and the widely used archaic sense of “unkind” as “unnatural” or “contrary to the ways of one’s kind.” Cf. also Shakespeare Sonnet 120, “That you were once unkind befriends me now.”

9 I fear I feel I’ll fail: The sequence is an example of what is sometimes referred to as an “epistemic chain” in which one way of thinking or knowing connects to others in sequence.

10 the cord of what needs fixing: A reference to Ariadne’s thread (created by the Minoan craftsman Daedalus) that facilitates the exit of Theseus from the Labyrinth following his slaughter of the Minotaur. See also the “willful cord” from Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Book I, Canto V) used by Sthenoboea, the daughter of a Lycian king whom Spenser presents as having choked or hanged herself after her rejection by Bellerophon.

11 measliness: Initially, the word “measly” (first documented in 1598) was used to describe a pig infected with measles.

12 always untouched, always untouching: Cf. Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Love Song” (“Liebes-Lied”) (1912) which provides an alternate perspective suggesting the absence of touch (rühren, anrühren) is actually unimaginable.

13 Still other times in grace: The theme of reluctantly received grace is frequently included in the poems of seventeenth century English Protestant poet George Herbert. Of Herbert’s engagement with this motif, Stanley Fish notes that the poet, “rather than resolving conflicts, re-enacts them and confirms their durability.” See The Living Temple: George Herbert and Catechizing (1978) pg. 136.

14 relapse / of some kind, or, let’s say, reversal: A reference to the concept of περιπέτεια (peripeteia, “reversal”) and ἀναγνώρισις (anagnorisis, “discovery”) from Aristotle’s Poetics. In Oedipus Rex, Oedipus’s realization that he had killed his father and married his mother (anagnorisis) brought about his mother’s death and his own blindness and exile (peripeteia).

15 river run: The first word of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is also its first multi-layered embedded pun (not including the title) on the French word “reverons” or “reverant” (“we dream” or “let’s dream” or simply “dreaming”).

16 announced her course: Here the piece briefly imitates and unwinds the tradition of wedding poems or epithalamia. Of particular relevance are Edmund Spenser’s “Epithalamion” (1595) and E. E. Cummings “Epithalamium” (1923) each built carefully on a complex interweaving rhyme and metrical form.

17 the pompish Zeppelin of May: Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 and the rapid evolution of aviation technologies during World War II brought about an end to widespread interest in Zeppelins, though a descendant company of Zeppelin’s original Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG) conglomerate continues to produce and operate airships today.

18 might all uproot the fairy ring: A fairy ring (also sometimes known as a “fairy circle,” “elf circle,” “elf ring,” or “pixie ring”) is a naturally occurring ring or arc of mushrooms found mainly in forested areas, but also sometimes appearing in grasslands or rangelands. They are often seen as hazardous or dangerous places, linked with witches or the devil in folklore, although sometimes also connected with good fortune.

19 reins our days in place: See note on “river run” and Finnegan’s Wake above. The phoneme “rn”—including the words “ren,” “rain,” “rein,” “rann,” and the bird “wren”—play an important role throughout Joyce’s most impenetrable book. See also Desdemona to Othello (Othello, Act II, Sc. 1):

The heavens forbid
But that our loves and comforts should increase,
Even as our days do grow!

Greg Sendi is a Chicago writer. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared widely and have won or been shortlisted for the Lazuli Literary Group’s annual competition, the Tennessee Williams Poetry Contest, and the Driftwood Press Adrift story competition.