Boy at edge of the woods is a shorter poem out of the bunch, so I have chosen to focus on the poem as a whole. The poem has more sexual undertones in comparison to the others. It seems to be more of a meaningless hookup for the other party. Saeed Jones or whomever he is writing from the perception of seems to feel defeated and dirty (literally and metaphorically) in a sense after the interaction. Jones or the persona he writes about has a feeling of not satisfaction, but emptiness. The other man leaves the writer alone for the aftermath of it all, which I’d assume to be upsetting. The abandonment is just as significant as the encounter itself. Possibly this was done for an escape initially but leads to the feeling of being underwhelmed. The sense of searching for relief or distraction is there, but the poem closes with the return to the “burning house”. This “burning house” seems to me an unhappiness with his home and possibly even with his parents since many other poems in this series alluded to parental issues. Ultimately, I think this poem is really about the emptiness that follows when physical desire is used as an escape from deeper pain. The language makes this clear when the speaker returns to the “burning house,” an image that suggests unresolved turmoil at home and perhaps even family conflict, as hinted at in other poems where Jones alludes to parental issues. The encounter itself may seem like relief in the moment, but the aftermath shows how fleeting and hollow that comfort is. This connects to the poem as a whole because the short length (only one stanza) mirrors the brevity of the experience, quick and intense, but leaving behind only silence and loneliness.
2 thoughts on “Boy at Edge of Woods”
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I enjoyed that you focused on the people in this poem as I focused on the symbolism of the nature within the poem. I agree that this was an escape and it was “unsatisfactory” for the boy of the receiving end that is “left to clean the mud off himself”. I thought it was interesting that you said he felt dirty and defeated, I didn’t make the connection between guilt and shame and the mud until you put it liek that. As for the defeat It was strongly implied that the boy was desperately trying to grasp on to whatever attention or what he believed the be love from a boy that neither wants all of him or just wants to use his body leaving the emotional side of sex thrown in the trash. I get this feeling that this is a repetitive meeting just by the title “ the boy at the edge of the woods” He knows that he will be there so this is not the first encounter that have had together there, so he is possibly addicted to the brief moment of hope and attention of there hook up and then deeply disappointed, or hurt that his partner that shares this secret wants nothing to do with taking care of him or loving him as he has to return to the “burning house” of people who might also not show him the love he is seeking.
I think it’s really interesting how you connected the burning house to his parental issues. I had assumed while I was reading this poem that the house was on fire metaphorically because it was like hell to him, but I really like the idea that returning home to his father would leave burns or scars that would never heal (hence the fire). His father’s wrath is displayed in a biblical sense in “Boy in a Whalebone Corset”, so perhaps he is including his hellish home with his other religious trauma related to his father’s wrath.