Upon receiving this assignment, the interest was clear. Carrie Fountain’s poem, Experience, touches so much of what is human about everyone in one area of life or another. Whether we have denied it or not, everyone has that remembrance that was great while it was happening, but was more an ending than a means to an end. Humankind makes mistakes of judgment frequently. Thankfully time, and what is intrinsically good in us can manage to overcome our battles with all things, which is something of an element in this poem that will be discussed soon enough. The central question is this: What is the meaning of Carrie Fountain’s poem, “Experience”? The writing that will follow will give an interpretation of the poem’s meaning from the standpoint of the essayist alone, and of course, the poem by Carrie Fountain. Occasionally there will be an application to the subjective implications to the poem to humanity. However, most of the meaning will strive to stay at an objective point of view.
Youth, in this poem, is a veil that disguises the event in the poem for the innocents (the male, and perhaps the two females), and makes it seem like an adventure. Only later is it realized to be a loss, especially to the young and innocent. It is my interpretation that the girls are innocent to some extent, but not totally. They have been chosen because they chose to be chosen to belong with the group. In their youth, they think this is the stuff of dreams. Perhaps one, the narrator, if not both of them, has an eye on at least one of the males as a prospect for the return of the feelings they have, because “When I think of everything I’ve wanted / I feel sick” (1-2). The narrator character is one who seems very in like, lust, or love with the idea of being there with the male or males as a group, if not one in particular. The other female character is the same, if not more so, because she is perhaps more of a dreamer than the narrator, asking questions for which knows what the score really is. From her speak, it can be interpreted that she, or both of them, have been to the rodeo before. In other words, they are both experienced at having been in some kind of compromising way with at least one, or more of the males. It is easy to forget this is a poem about experience. A person wants to reach out to them like the person at the theater, yelling at the film at the theater, as if the action is actually happening. Despite and still, there is the wish that a wise person with a vehicle would show up in the poem before the rest of the night is over, answer the “Jennifer Scanlon questions” with a, “No, ‘he’ probably does not even like you—You have made yourself available to young boys who are behaving like vermin, only to be beaten another way, just like the weak boy is being beaten—That is why you were chosen. You were weak enough to want to be there, so they can get beat out their frustration. Get in my vehicle, and let’s leave before they get to you, too.” But the damage is already done. The girls want to be there. Besides, without experience, no one learns.
There are levels of innocence ruined. Unfortunately, the youth, and, yes, their feelings for the males have made the girls glued to what is happening, even as they know they will probably be next, in some pleasurable and blurred experience. At least one of them, the narrator character, if not the other character, is watching the physique of the males as well, even if not necessarily the violence of the act in which they participate. It seems to be associated with a right of passage—to being cool, or being his, or their girl when the males get too drunk to know the difference. It is riveting for them from where they are in life. In other words, the characters of the narrator and her friend seem to have nothing else more motivating in life than to be with a group of male(s) and receive drunken acceptance, even if it might be that the male(s) would not give the females any attention if all were sober, let alone be seen with them in daylight. Of course this is just speculation, but it is in keeping with “When I think of everything I’ve wanted / I feel sick” (1-2). The event of the beating of the weaker male could be a so called initiation into joining a fraternity, a gang, a club, getting drunk, or just being able to fit in with the other group. Figuratively it could represent joining any group, from a gang to a church. People get beat up in many places in life, and never admit it, just to be what is required, it seems. It is an experience any person can understand from their perspective, if for nothing else, when they were deceived because they wanted someone or something that they realized, with experience, might not be worth the cost of the memory.
The verse, “Thank god time erases everything / in this steady impeccable way” (17-18) does not apply to everyone, but only to those who have gone through an experience like this, learned from it, and somehow managed to move on. The reason why I mention this is because many who have experienced an abuse of some kind in hope for acceptance and love are still in denial, and enduring their beating. There are yet others who have left the place of abuse, and are still hurt. I write this to say this poem has many implications to the subjective, in that it can be applied to lives, as will be done in the next paragraph.
It is evident near the end of the poem, that he narrator has let go of the memories that the poem evokes. The question is, how many other readers are still trapped in the poem after it has reached a point of resolution for the narrator? It is an interesting question, and it is relevant to where the reader is in their area of experiences. This is a reflection of brilliance in the work by Carrie Fountain. It has taken everyone in, and some readers have to pretend that they are done with what happened—even though the experience they are personally going through is not over, and they are still there, wondering when they will be relieved of where they are, in life, and in the poem as well!
What is most redemptive of all is the for an answer, for a voice that never spoke during what was witnessed in Carrie Fountain’s Experience. The evidence that our conscience or that voice that speaks to us to get out of a situation before it consumes or hurts or hardens us happens. The fact is, unfortunately, we often cannot hear that voice when we are engulfed in what we have chosen to do, knowing it wrong, no matter what it is. We mentally close our ears. That is how I interpret what the narrator character speaks. What is even more human and excuses all that we are is, “Of course, if we'd been quiet we wouldn't have heard anything, and that silence, too, would have ruined us” (29-31). It lets the reader know what I have already written. No voice was going to answer the characters because they had chosen. But if they had listened for what to do, and heard silence, they would only have used the silence as an excuse for why they lost—which was a point of innocence, and would have blamed the silence, perhaps god, for the reason why it was alright to succumb to what they wanted, if for nothing but to have someone, or something, to blame for the ruin that resulted. This is my expression of the meaning of Carrie Fountain’s Experience. It has been a gratifying one.
Work Cited
Fountain, Carrie. The Human Experience. 11th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 209. Print.
