by Blair Allman
Before reading the poem “L.A. Loiterings” by Larry Levis, the reader should look at the title and think about the questions: What is this poem about? Who is loitering? Why is this loitering in L.A.? By asking these questions, the reader is more apt to know and understand the poem’s theme, which is: wasted lives exist everywhere and go unnoticed and insignificant, just like the dead animals we pass on the side of the road, every day, without thinking twice.
When reading the first stanza of the poem, the reader sees a title: “1. Convalescent Home,” which does not describe the lines to follow. The term “convalescent,” in this context, is used to mean a place to recover one’s health or grow strong. In the lines that follow, “Convalescent Home,” the patients do not seem to be getting better; instead they are being drugged up: “High on painkillers.” The lines following say, “the old don’t hear / their bones hollering / anything tonight,” meaning that these patients (who may be in a rest home) are being drugged to the point that they feel nothing. However, “They turn / harmless and furry, licking / themselves good-bye,” which indicates to the reader that not only are these people numb in the body, but they are also numb in the world, slowly disappearing from real life. The last line of this section reads, “They are the small animals vanishing / at the road’s edge everywhere.” The author paints a picture of the animals on the side of the road that go unnoticed, and occasionally are run over. These old people are the dead creatures on the side of the road that we drive by every day, going unnoticed.
The second part of the poem is titled: “2. The Myth,” and this begs more questions concerning the theme to the reader. In just fourteen lines, Levis paints a picture of the sad, dull life of a “go-go girl.” The last lines of this section read, “She glints / She is like / the screen flickering in / an empty movie house / far into the night.” These lines seem to say that this girl once perhaps had something going on with her life, but it is now over, much like the movie that is now showing the “flickering screen.” The girl “glints,” however, as if waiting for her life to pick up again, and the next movie to play. But her life is fading, much like “her hair” that is turning “green” from the “cheap dye” that “her mother swiped” for her at a “five-and-ten.” The girl’s “eyes are flat / and still as thumbprints, or / the dead presidents pressed / into coins.” The girl has nothing to see and nothing exciting to take in, so her eyes just sit in her face, “flat and still,” and bored.
In these two short sections, Levis paints an adequate picture of two very different people, wasting life and wasting lives away in the L.A. wasteland. Levis’s use of figurative language supports the theme that wasted lives exist all around us, and this waste goes unnoticed. “Convalescent Home,” tells the reader that the first section may be talking about a rest home, where the old go to recover and grow strong. The real world interferes though, not wanting to take care of the old. Instead of making something of these old people’s last years, the workers drug the patients up on “painkillers” so they won’t feel anything, thus making the lives of the workers easier since they then will not have to listen to complaints about discomfort or anything else: “They turn / harmless and furry, licking / themselves good-bye.” Then Levis goes on to make an analogy of the old to the “small animals vanishing / at the road’s edge everywhere.” By doing this, Levis is able to help the reader grasp most of the theme. The lives of the old go unnoticed and become insignificant to those around them, much like the dead creatures that are unnoticed on the roadside every day. The old will soon become decomposing waste of L.A., just like the small animals.
The life of the “go-go girl” in the second section is dull, and boring; the exact opposite of her title as the “go-go girl.” Her life (like the old in the convalescent home) was once full potential and light; her hair has faded, her eyes have faded, and her spirit has faded, which brings us to her life that has wasted. The girl had hope in her at one point, and this is apparent through the analogy of her glinting like the “screen flickering in / an empty movie house.” A screen flickers at the end of a movie, waiting to play another picture, much like the girl waiting for the next part of her life start. But this is not happening; the girl’s life is gone; wasted.