"Heart, you bully, you punk..."
Eights have a bull-in-the-china-shop
quality. At their best, they can be a rock for others. Driven by the need for
excess, however, they feel it's their responsibility to direct situations, and they
pursue power aggressively. They greatly value justice – as self-defined!
They have the reputation of being controlling, because it's difficult for
Eights to
acknowledge vulnerability. In my poem,
Veteran, I imagine their
strength counters a feared
sacrifice:
...You seek her belly,
need her nipple, want
to turn into
the Earth
of her,
be guarded
as
she lulls you,
rocks you,
croons, and eats
your
soft heart.
Many people fail to sympathize with Eights, not
realizing there was typically no safe place to be a "sissy" when
they were young. Gary Gildner's football coach in
First Practice made this message clear to the young men on his squad:
...he was Clifford Hill, he was
a man who believed dogs
ate dogs... and
if there were any girls present
for them to leave now...
The Eight's key characteristics
are stereotypically masculine, making it particularly difficult for females
with this style to find acceptance. Sharon Thomson is an outrageous
performance poet who can fill a room with her passion and her profanity. In
Pigeons she gives us a glimpse of how early this relationship to the
world develops:
when I was a girl
a sultry sunday
about 3pm in mid-august
was the best time to hunt pigeons
it was then they felt safe
to swoop from the roofs
scrounging...
I aimed straight for the eyeball
black staring back at me
dumbly before I fired
In a poetry workshop Thomson
admitted the pigeon scene
had never actually occurred. But as a metaphor her poem tells us a lot about
a
need to be strong and fearless, as well as an impatience with weakness -- at times
Eights
seek out others' weakness in order to feel strong (the pigeons' eyes staring back at
me dumbly).
Behind this gruff, tough exterior is an untended child who
learned early, as depicted by Luis J. Rodriguez in
Cloth
of Muscle and Hair, that soft things can become creatures of clawed
meat:
Pink, oily bodies hang on a line
like cloth of muscle and hair.
Flayed in rapid order with a delicate slice
of pelt, they are held by their feet...
...The five-year-old girl wept, having held
these same rabbits only a day before,
gathering them close, fur to face, stroking them
and sensing their pulse beneath her fingers...
...speaking to her of how soft things can lose
their mild yielding, how they can become
creatures of clawed meat, become objects
that invade wretched memory when something,
anything, pushes out the soft white sheath
of innocence.
Both male and female Eights – when healthy
– are sought
out by others for nurture and protection. Teresa Noelle Roberts introduces us to
this strong character in
Apotheosis of
the
Kitchen Goddess II:
There is a goddess and I know her. Her hands are not
clean,
And she is large and strong and not too young...
...I know the truth, because her calloused hands turn earth
To things good to eat, and green, and lovely.
Paul Zimmer's
The Great
Bird of Love is a more fanciful depiction of the Eight's often endearing tough love.
In the early part of his poem we see a longing to release the huge burden of
responsibility, to fly above the troubles of the land:
I want to become a great night bird
Called the Zimmer, grow intricate gears
And tendons, brace my wings on updrafts,
Roll them down with a motion
That lifts me slowly into the stars
To fly above the troubles of the land...
The last verse of Zimmer's poem shows the sweet side of the
Eight's strength – the wish that simply to see his silhouette will assure us
we're safe:
People will see my silhouette from
Their windows and be comforted,
Knowing that, though oppressed,
They are cherished and watched over,
Can turn to kiss their children,
Tuck them into their beds and say:
Sleep tight.
No harm tonight,
In starry skies
The Zimmer flies.
Eights love a good fight, but even then they hold a hand
pressed close to the heart for protection: What a great battle you
and I have fought, writes Anna Wickham in
The
Marriage...
...A fight of sticks and whips and swords,
A one-armed combat,
For each held the left hand pressed close to the heart,
To save the caskets from assault.
How tenderly we guarded them;
I would keep mine and still have yours,
And you held fast to yours and coveted mine...
Were they not afraid of opening their hearts, the
couple in Wickham's poem could have found an Eight-ish truce:
Could we have dropt the caskets
We would have thrown down weapons
And been at each other like apes,
Scratching, biting, hugging
In exasperation...
An Eight's biggest battle is internal.
Bound by a war mentality, they fight the fear that their hearts will rule them if not
locked up. Marie Ponsot, in
One Is One,
offers perhaps the most succinct lines ever written on these opposing forces:
Heart, you bully, you punk, I'm wrecked, I'm shocked
stiff. You? you still try to rule the world
– though
I've got you: identified, starving, locked
in a cage you will not leave alive, no
matter how you hate it, pound its walls,
& thrill its corridors with messages...
The cost is great with an Eight's
determination to do something others are determined not be done, as Marge
Piercy writes in
For Strong Women – how Her head hurts from
always trying to butt her way through a steel
wall:
...People waiting for
the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong...
A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed...
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness...
Seamus Heaney's
Doubletake
is indeed a double take: Eights' drive for justice is a projection of their own suffering. When unhealthy, their
so-called justice is self-defined and rationalizes revenge. But developing Eights can hope
to be loved equally for their strength and their weakness:
Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted and endured...
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells...
Other Poems
by Published Poets that Illustrate this Personality Style
Homage to
Calvin Spotswood (Kate Daniels)
To Kill a Deer (Carol Frost)
Unwritten Law (Louise Glück)
The Stranger (W.S. Merwin)
The Meadow Mouse (Theodore Roethke)
