Link: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/lightheads-guide-addiction-audio-only
“Lighthead’s Guide to Addiction,” from Terrance Hayes’ Lighthead collection, features a long list of deadpan advice for alleviating various addictions of various severity. The words “If you are addicted to…” are anaphoric, and introduce almost every line of the poem with the remedy of the previous addiction. The poem begins with a mundane addiction--an addiction to sleep, which is remedied by coffee--and from then on, his words oscillate between comical remedies (for example, teaching yourself to breakdance) and the realm of race, contraception/sex, disease, and money. Every handful of lines, Terrance interjects the iambic-like meter with a statement describing a seemingly unrelated situation; for example, “No one knows where your mother has gone with her tax refund” follows “If you are addicted to railroads, try wearing undersized shoes.” These interjections posed a problem when I heard the poem the first few times, as I could not clearly understand their significance to the work as a whole. I’ve come to realize that these interjections allude to the unfortunate, everyday effects of addictions. In the example above, a son or daughter wonders about where their mother spent their tax refund. In lieu of the title, this implies that the mother is struggling with some sort of addiction. Hayes uses these interruptions to identify situations in which addiction has affected someone’s life--it may be his life, or the life of one of his audience members. Towards the end of the poem, Hayes states, “Obviously, I have an addiction to repetition, which is a form of history.” This line of the poem shifts the attention of the poem to the status quo. Here, he focuses on poverty, and the ever growing importance of money both as a status symbol and as a basic means of functioning in America. I believe that the line “No one is addicted to poverty” highlights certain misconceptions about the impoverished: some people think that the impoverished do not work as hard, or that only a small percentage of people experience poverty, or even that poverty cannot and does not exist in the United States. Those in poverty cannot simply “try wealth,” as any wealth that comes their way is reserved for necessities. Most of those impoverished work hard when they can, but most are too young, too old, or too disabled to keep a stable income. It is easy for those who are fortunate to compare themselves to others, and become dissatisfied when a less fortunate person doesn’t seem to compare, but every situation is different. Perhaps this was Hayes’ motivation behind writing this poem--to offer “advice”, without first considering individual circumstances.
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March 2017
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