Sign Inventory, Week 8

"The Age of Adam" by Dan Albergotti

As historical record, the early chapters of Genesis are,
at best, spotty, passing over the most important details.
We have the idea, for instance, that Adam was created
an adult, but no age is registered. This glaring omission
creates a world of questions. Take hair, for example.
Was this man given the amount of hair one might grow
between infancy and adulthood? Or was he shorn?
What of the face? Was he formed clean-shaven? If so,
why? If not, why not? Pubic hair? No pubic hair?
And while we're in that region, how could the man
have even been given a working penis, if God, unsure
of the final product, had not yet decided upon Eve?

I have my own ideas. I say Adam was made eighteen
and God fashioned from his rib an attractive older woman--
say nineteen to twenty--with full, round breats. I say
God gave her a tight, cream, v-neck sweater to insure
procreation. I say there must have been a '57 Chevy
parked somehwere in that lush garden, one with plenty
of leg room in the back. I say there are certain ingredients
necessary for paradise, certain things that make life
rich and sweet enough to be worth throwing away.

• free-verse
• after reading through the poem, the reader can refer back to the title and see how the writer might be playing around with the idea of "age", cutting up slices of postmodern irony--tossing in gusto.
• In the first stanza, the final seven lines all end with interrogative sentences. Interestingly, by way of using repetitious, back to back questions the author seems to be employing a kind of "hammer to a nail". By this, I mean that it appears by purposely hounding the reader with question after question for seven lines must be of some great significance to not only the piece as a whole, but also to the stanza following. As for the poem as a whole, the chain of questions suggest the narrators concern with the lack of questions asks and looked over in regards to the creation of Adam, "passing over the most important details" (32). In relation to the last stanza, the reader may extract a reading that centers around the narrator: after so many questions, the narrator now gives the reader a very upfront, firsthand account of the way he envisions the Genesis of Adam and Eve. One might also look at the author, and try fitting the end puzzle piece of the last stanza with the top puzzle piece of the title, and see how they might join together. As a dialogical reader of the text, I see the last stanza and the working title joining together in the fact that both incorporates ideas of a new age, a new way of thinking--a more modern way of looking at the story most are all familiar with, but in a more traditional manner, a manner that does not ask questions, rather just accepts them.

• The last sentence of the poem, "I say there are certain ingredients / necessary for paradise, certain things that make life / rich and sweet enough to be worth throwing away", is sort of quirky to me.I tend to find the last snetence borderline offcentered from the rest of the piece, but at the same time I feel that it's abscence would leave the poem slightly barren. The last line definitely sparks a tingling sensation of what is sacred, what is necessary for living in a life of paradise--in a life that is "rich and sweet enough to be worth throwing away".