Courtship

When I read Mark Strand’s poem Courtship, I was very surprised at the combination of reactions and emotions I had that were polar and yet seemingly simultaneous. Strand opens the poem with a shocking statement regarding explicitly sexual information about the speaker of the poem. The section that read “There is a girl you like so you tell her your penis is big,” was both shocking and comical to me. Obviously the bluntness caught me off guard, but the realization that some men actually so this caused me to laugh out loud. At this point into the poem my reaction was, well, although this is a misguided way to go about it, it is cute that he is trying to impress the girl he has a crush on, but the “aww” factor pretty much stopped there.

The fact that immediately this act of a male peacock showing off his plumes (metaphorically speaking of course) turned into a very inappropriate scene that I felt slight discomfort reading, and was obviously embarrassing for the girl . The reader’s immediate switch to the far end of the spectrum when he sees that he was upset the girl, however, led me to believe that he in no way wanted her to feel uncomfortable. I do, however, perceive him to be dangerous. This is because he violently changes his story to fit what he thinks the girl wants to hear. First he is bragging about the size of his male member, and then he immediately switches to claiming to have none at all. Throughout the poem he is a manipulator and I, as the reader, genuinely fear for her especially when he reaches for her panties all the while apologizing. He continually contradicts himself in this poem and that causes him to lose all credibility and respect by the reader. His volatile nature makes me view him as a threat and his regression back to primal instinct (signified by the howling) heightens this.

What surprised me after reading this poem for a second time, however, is that I get the impression that it is a sort of “time lapse photography” that takes an adolescent from the beginning to the end of Courtship by using common themes and exaggerated instances pieced together from their entire relationship. At the beginning of a relationship the male is always trying to impress the girl and lure her in, but he plays with how forward is too forward. The female’s reaction depicts the actions of the male because he wants to see her happy. He then will compromise a part of himself to make her happy and to evoke her sympathy. The male gets closer to the female by any means possible and as they become closer his ability to control his natural sexual urges become more and more difficult so he pushes the boundaries. When he is assured a conquest there is a sense of eruption, of fire and urgency. However, my question is why he decides that this is the woman he wants to marry. Is it because Is it because of his lustful desires coupled with impatience to wait to have sex until the two are married or is it that he wants what he seemingly cannot have?