Completely Subjective: Jane Shore’s “I Am Sick of Reading Poems about Paintings by Vermeer”
Here in Connecticut, I breathe in cold air; I breathe in the dying leaves that fill the sidewalk; I breathe in the freezing Long Island Sound. In Ormond Beach, Florida, I exhale.
I love Ormond Beach so much…like so much. I love the way the sun turns my skin golden as I sit in the crab grass on my grandparent’s front lawn; I love driving on the Ormond Beach Loop, that feeling of the fast wind blowing my hair into my face while I catch glimpses of the white birds weaving through the palm trees; I love eating Mint Moose Tracks outside of the ice cream store in the strip mall across from the beach, even if it’s pouring rain just outside of the overhang.
What brings me back to Ormond Beach the most when I’m not there isn’t photos, nor the seashells I pick up from the beach and keep on my bookshelf at home, nor the paintings I create of the plants in my grandma’s garden in my scrapbook; it’s picking up the exact scent of my grandparents’ driveway. No, not the scent of concrete or the grass next to the driveway, it’s the atmosphere of it. Not even the atmosphere, just everything about that exact location. Ugh, how can I explain this to you? If only I could be standing on that pavement right now, taking in the scent so I could capture it in a perfume bottle and tell you everything down to its top, mid, and dry notes. Whether it be on my own driveway, a friend’s front lawn, or even in the mudroom of my house, it comes when and where it wants to, this olfactory nostalgia that brings me to the edge of the driveway sprinkled by cracks of anthills and budding weeds, with a tie dye sunset that melts into the horizon, washing my head as clear as the sky.
The funny thing about all of this is if I were to show you a picture of my grandparents’ driveway, you would probably be underwhelmed. No scent would come to mind, no warmth would flood your body, etc.. You would see the driveway, plain and tan as it is, and even though it’s a fine driveway objectively, you would not understand just how indescribably happy it makes me feel. It’s like when someone is explaining a joke to you, but it doesn’t seem that funny, and they respond to your bored/confused reaction by saying, “You had to be there.”
I could go on all day about this amazing, frustratingly indescribable Floridian scent, just like Jane Shore goes on about Vermeer paintings in her poem, “I Am Sick of Reading Poems about Paintings by Vermeer.” Throughout the entire poem in a tone of frustration, Shore explains how Vermeer paintings used to be a rare commodity, only to be seen in person; however, the “Veermeer-lovers nudged aside Vermeer-hoggers” in art museums were just the beginning of this Vermeer overflow, with his works being “multiplied” in various items, such as a Vermeer puzzle that was “so real, yet a replica, yet very unlike the actual painting.”
Has Shore actually added to the saturation of Vermeer paintings in literature in writing a poem that is intended to bash them, though? Does this poem completely contradict the point it feels like it should be making? Yes; but, perhaps it’s not the “Vermeer” that is being hated on; it’s the “about.” These days, “replicas” are rampant in society, and the “actual painting” of the lives of many is expressed through “postcards and notebooks and tote bags,” these items symbolizing things like the replication of human writing in AI to the addiction of scrolling on social media and living vicariously through others’ experiences.
Shore does not take us to an art gallery to look at Vermeer’s paintings to understand the importance of seeing them in person to get her message, though. She rather drops the more sarcastic tone and introduces a moment of soft clarity. By expressing a fondness of viewing Vermeer paintings in real life in the poem’s final sentence, her tone shifts from exasperated prose to a delicate description of “the exquisite icy pinprick of light on a pearl” on Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. Shore is no longer an annoyed critic, but almost speaks about Vermeer in the way that the romantics speak about nature; this sight of the paintings in person evokes that much emotion. Vermeer’s work is no longer depicted as an objective, reproduced image, but an “exquisite,” soft, and emotional pull on Shore’s heartstrings and senses. When I first read Shore’s work, I wondered what was so bad about this overuse of Vermeer, of “replicas”; looking at a copied and pasted photo of a painting can’t make much of a difference in the way you see the painting, right? Seeing isn’t the important thing, though. It’s the feeling.
You have to be there.