Contributor’s Marginalia: Juliana Gray on “Concourse” by Maryann Corbett

Probably I should never be allowed to teach poetry again.

There are lots of reasons for this. Just ask my students. But I shouldn’t be fired because I dislike descriptions of things running up or down or across various spines. It’s not, as the students might say, because I mock emo abstractions like “the eternal nothingness of the soul” and forbid the word “crepuscular.” All of that is pedagogically legit. Studies will back me up on this.

No, I should be banned from the classroom because I forgot one of the basics, one of those truisms that I repeat ad nauseam to my own students: pay attention to the damn title.

In my defense, this oversight was Maryann Corbett’s fault. When I first read Corbett’s “Concourse,” I’m sure my eyes skimmed over the title, but I immediately forgot it. As soon as I hit the third word, “presto,” the spell was cast and I was swept away by the rapturous imagery of the scene Corbett describes. We leave the real world and cross over into another realm, wonderful and strange. The “crush of lost souls” gives way to light and golden color, the floor “flashing with inlaid marble,” wide open space and splendor.

Then Corbett really gets going. Now we are immersed in a lavish bazaar, rich clothing “in shades the real world cannot bear,” jewels, sexy perfumes, glistening chocolates.

Fancy gourmet chocolates, people! Can you really blame me for now thinking I was reading a poem about heaven?

Yes, you can, because I forgot that very important thing: the title. “Concourse” means not only a gathering of people, but also the broad, mall-like walkway of an airport that Corbett so lusciously depict—and so deviously fooled me into forgetting. So entranced was I by her description of color and luxury, the very riches of the afterlife, that I forgot we were really trudging through the man-made hell of DTW or ATL, rolling our bags past Starbucks after Starbucks, shouldering through slow-walkers and selfie-takers, shuffling aside to admit the beeping carts bearing the elderly and disabled like heroes in a sad parade.

It’s that simple. I forgot.

Only in the last line did I remember. I am not dead and in heaven; the opulence on offer is not mine for the taking. Here I am, back in the world. I have a plane to catch, a pre-selected seat to claim and buckle myself into, an armrest to protectively lower. Farewell, sumptuousness and choice. Hello, pretzels and tomato juice.

So write to my university if you must. Sign the petition—I’m sure the students already have one started—demanding my dismissal for incompetence. But first, read Maryann Corbett’s “Concourse,” and see if you don’t also forget where you are, the constrictions and recirculated air of your real world. See if you don’t think, for 17 lines, that you’ve died and gone to heaven.