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love song of Satin-Legs Smith: Gwendolyn Brooks revisits Prufrock's hell, The

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2000 by Saunders, Judith P

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The quest for women's company, which provides impetus for the forward movement in both poems, clearly forms a major point of contrast between the two protagonists. Prufrock fears rejection to such an extent that he cannot approach a woman at all. In fact, he scarcely looks at women as whole beings, seeing instead merely body parts, garments, and accessories: "arms," bracelets, "a shawl," "a dress" (62, 66, 64). He names no particular woman as the object of his desire or the audience for his love song, and he regards all females as the embodiment of humiliating criticism. If he tries to tell a woman "all," including revelation of his metaphysical questions and insights, she might simply dismiss him: "That is not what I meant at all" (95-97). And his yearning to confide in a sympathetic female is undercut by a fundamental ambivalence: the women he observes who "come and go / Talking of Michelangelo" look like willing participants in the scheme of social hypocrisy and self-disguise he despises (13-14, 35-36). He wishes, apparently, for an all-wise, quasi-divine woman, perhaps someone like the Beatrice figure in Dante's trilogy, a woman who would provide a combination of spiritual guidance, moral example, and human love. Frustrated by the absence of any such goddess-like rescuer, he finds otherworldly females only in the mythic mermaids who appear at the poem's conclusion. And these fabulous females, too, he is certain, will turn away from him and refuse to exercise their siren-like powers on him. He is so worthless, in his own view, that even creatures who derive amusement from enticing men to their doom will not waste their time enticing and destroying him: "I do not think that they will sing to me" (125). Insofar as the sirens' song is a representation of male desire (male urges displaced and attributed instead to the fatally seductive females), Prufrock ends his love song expressing fears that desire itself-along with actual women-will elude him.

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Smith's quest for female companionship could not be more different. Untroubled by self-doubts and consistently successful, he is portrayed as having squired and bedded numerous women. If readers are perturbed by his lack of monogamous focus, he is not: there is no hint that he wishes his relations with the opposite sex to be anything other than what they are.?The poem opens, moreover, with the statement that he is popular with women. They appreciate his clothes; they enjoy his company; they have "bestowed" upon him the nickname of "Satin-legs." Brooks concludes her poem with six italicized lines depicting Smith's lovemaking with the selected "lady" of the week. This day on which he is king, managing to transcend the deprivations and degradations that otherwise shape his life, ends with the most fundamental of human pleasures:

Her body is like new brown bread

Under the Woolworth mignonette.

Her body is a honey bowl

Whose waiting honey is deep and hot.

Her body is like summer earth,

Receptive, soft, and absolute .... (148-53)

love song of Satin-Legs Smith: Gwendolyn Brooks revisits Prufrock's hell, The

Papers on Language and Literature, Winter 2000 by Saunders, Judith P

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