Review of "To a lady bedspacer I once knew, wherever she may be"

A review of the short story "To a lady bedspacer I once knew, wherever she may be"

Emmanuel Torres’ poem is one in which a second-person speaker does the talking meant for the ears of a certain “lady bedspacer.” The word “bedspacer” was not to be found in all the six six-line stanzas, but it can be construed from the phrase in its title that addresses “a lady bedspacer I once knew.” This supposition of the identity of the addressee is made stronger by the first-person’s description of the addressee.

The first stanza establishes the setting of the poem: the environment of the “lady bedspacer.” The apartment is “ramshackle” (i.e. “falling to pieces”), constricted (“narrow constant corner” means a small space and explains the stay of the bedspacer in one corner, for there is no room to move about). The speaker shows admiration of “you” (assumed as the lady bedspacer). “To stretch out arms and legs in your bed set in your narrow constant corner of this ramshackle bore of an apartment F… Is to be bold enough.” He displays awe at how the lady bedspacer can act quite at ease in such an environment. The first difficulty is the unlikely comfort of a person who lives in a narrow place that is falling to pieces (e.g. ramshackle).

The speaker sounded somewhat didactic for a swift moment: “The rapture of the body spreadeagled, so, could arouse many carnal eyes.” This could simply be an observation, or a sheer reminder, as the speaker does not state any upfront argument against the lady’s arousal of carnal eyes. “So say ‘Amen’ to whatever aisle or catwalk you tread.” The narrator seems to give a brotherly advice. “Amen” is a word of affirmation. The aisle may represent the church (for marriage) and family, while the catwalk of fashion, may refer to a career. The narrator, then, seems to encourage the bedspacer to choose one and focus on either a family or a career. The narrator continues to advise her to be careful, “…Managing steps like a trespasser, though what is passed over is only shadow which cannot hurt…” He tells the lady to be careful at all times, even if nothing appears to be a danger: “Which cannot hurt, unlike your nails catching loose splinters.” The narrator adds, “Learn grace of cat to break a fall in time—though there’s not much space to fall through...”

The fourth stanza buttresses the poor and higgledy-piggledy quality of living of the bedspacers. “Chaos…” You think of your ‘things’… as movable as the knockabouts you share…” seem to be reprimanding the disarrayed lifestyle of the bedspacers, and asserting their unpredictable (“movable as the knockabouts”) life. And with the number of people caught up in this unruliness, not-so-common occurrences (e.g. getting pregnant) will not be unpredicted: “…How long before something raw, personal, is heard sobbing out in shame?”

The narrator sees the lady bedspacer as a secretive character: “Smiles mask your innerlife. Others cannot paw its secrets…” She is one that is said to be modest and seems to keep things to herself. In the sixth stanza, the lady bedspacer sighs, “All this shall pass, this makeshift me, this present of small change.” The speaker who was a mere observer and narrator, becomes an omniscient narrator as he enters the lady bedspacer’s thoughts and dreams. She is said to have a dream that “raves for a room that locks out the busybodying world”, a place unlike the apartment F; a place where she can move actually move freely and be comfortable without anyone noting how she stretches her body comfortably that she arouses carnal eyes. That place she dreams of is one where she can be her real self, with no one to meddle in her life. That place is an “empty brightness” where she can be “naked in” and “relish the ruthless calm” of being herself—the opposite of her bedspace. The bedspacer has hopes in finding that place; she knows that her present apartment F is temporary.

The possibility of the enjambed poem being classified as a “lyric” does not come up to scratch as the poem does not have the chief ingredient of a lyric poem which is a songlike style (i.e. “musical”) nor does it express subjective thoughts and feelings. That leaves the poem to be either narrative or dramatic. If it were dramatic, the poem should have consisted of more thoughts or statements of the characters. Thus, the poem is most apt to be classified as a narrative. It tells the story of a fraction of the life of the lady bedspacer in the apartment F. It is told by a narrator, not the character but an audience, who goes omniscient and shares the thought of the lady bedspacer only once, in the end of the poem.