{"id":5929,"date":"2024-01-04T16:19:29","date_gmt":"2024-01-04T05:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=5929"},"modified":"2024-01-05T10:26:48","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T23:56:48","slug":"poetry-spotlight-the-difficulty-with-honesty-in-the-long-term-relationship-the-consequences-thereof-by-ali-whitelock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2024\/01\/poetry-spotlight-the-difficulty-with-honesty-in-the-long-term-relationship-the-consequences-thereof-by-ali-whitelock\/","title":{"rendered":"POETRY SPOTLIGHT: ‘the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship & the consequences thereof’ by Ali Whitelock"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The first poetry spotlight of the year shines on Ali Whitelock’s poem ‘the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship & the consequences thereof’ from her latest collection A Brief Letter to the Sea About a Couple of Things<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Post written by Polly Grant Butler<\/pre>\n
Michael tells me to write about my cats, but I\u2019m worried I\u2019ll be perceived as a cat lady, still reeling over a comment Maddy recently made after I told her I love riding horses: \u2018Ohhh, of course you\u2019re a horse-girl. Makes complete sense.\u2019 What did she mean? I asked my partner for clarification: \u2018Do I give off horse-girl vibes?\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 he said without hesitation, suggesting I\u2019m someone who would rather be alone with an animal, out in the open wind, than be around other (human) people. (\u2018You know, the nobody-understands-me-except-for-my-horse type of person.\u2019) Yes, well, I suppose that\u2019s true, but maybe I don\u2019t want to hear it.<\/p>\n
Ali Whitelock knows about \u2018the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship\u2019. Her poem, aptly titled \u2018the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship & the consequences thereof\u2019, explores this very idea. In typical Ali form, the poem is a concrete slab of stream-of-consciousness, in which the speaker\u2019s blunt response is an offence to her partner\u2019s leading question. There is something masochistic in this desire we have to force our partners into a corner, hoping they insult us, hoping we have an excuse to get angry (or is that just me?).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet Ali draws attention to the parallel problem that exists in such arguments. By using the magnifying mirror as metaphor, she interrogates the honesty rather than the question. The suggestions of peeling \u2013 the sheets, the simile of a banana \u2013 mirror the kind of unpeeling that occurs in an intimate relationship, where typical social conventions are stripped away, and people say what they mean. Actually, there is something quite beautiful about that idea, even in spite of the consequences.<\/p>\n\n
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The first poetry spotlight of the year shines on Ali Whitelock’s poem ‘the difficulty with honesty in the long-term relationship & the consequences thereof’ from her latest collection A Brief Letter to the Sea About a Couple of Things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[792,80,315,855,8],"tags":[864,856,46,862,858],"class_list":["post-5929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian","category-for-fun","category-poetry-2","category-poetry-spotlight","category-we-love-books","tag-australian-poetry","tag-poems","tag-poetry","tag-poetry-spotlight","tag-poets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-1xD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5929"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5972,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5929\/revisions\/5972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}