So, this is what I wrote about the cultural information the poem provides, before I realized I was doing it completely wrong...considering I ignored the entire idea of the poem: a man trying to convince a woman to commit suicide with him.
Good Job, Zoe *pats self on back*
"Punk Pantoum" by Pamela Stuart is written to put the rebellion of the punk era into perspective using obscure references, word choice, and details. What's interesting about this poem is that, even though its purpose is to inform about punk life, it uses references that are not common to people looking in from the outside: drugs are referred to through metaphors, unheard of music icons appear, and good ole fashioned taboo is abundant. In this poem, the author lets people step into the lifestyle set by those who fiercely oppose conformity, and in my opinion, the fact that most of the poem may seem like absolute gibberish shows how little people from the outside can comprehend.The unique language, how the lack of common information makes it require a bit of research, and that it is mildly out of form, is a testament to the rebellion this poem is highlighting.
"There's sawdust on the floor, and one dismembered horse" in 1967, "The Summer of Love", the "sawdust trail" came to be. It was a pathway used by ministers for revival meetings, attended by hippies and recovering 'punks' who thought drugs were a pathway to an ethereal experience. Sawdust specifically was used because it held down the dust of the dirt floors, and muffled the noise of shuffling feet. As I said before, these meetings were attended by the people the poem is about, and the mention of heroin or 'horse' in conjunction with this line, is referencing a drug that they used to "experience God".
"I got three shirts from the hokey-man at dawn" a 'hokey-man' is actually a street cleaner who pulls a hand broom and trashcan along the roads, picking up garbage that large, mechanical brooms would miss. Because of the form of the pantoum poem, this line is supposedly repeated in stanza three, but instead we find "They'll look good hanging from the shirt I took at dawn". Not only did this person get the shirts from a street cleaner, he had to steal them from him. You may think that this speaks to the lowly life they live, but the next line reads "Bitch, let's be proud to live at Eutaw Place" which is a very nice street in Baltimore where musicians go to play their music. This is a contradiction because most people who partook in the punk lifestyle were middle to upper class citizens, not the lower class. So, the men and women the poem is referring too were actually quite well-off, enough so that they weren't forced to steal from street people, but did anyway.
I'd like to point out that, including another line in this stanza, this is the third allusion to music culture from the time, which may explain the lyrical quality altering many of the repeating lines causes.
"George will bring his snake and the skirt Divine threw out" Divine is a famous drag queen, which may help to explain why this George fellow is wearing his skirt, but the mention of such a unique musician is mainly a way to bring the reader into the world the narrator is living in. Another reason this line is interesting is because of the poet's use of 'snake'. Personally, I didn't assume right off the bat that the speaker was referring to an actual reptile, and later found out that a 'street snake' is a term for a drug dealer. The line "Eating Sadoz Oranges, we watched the ladies in their spats" affirmed this belief. Sandoz is a drug company that produces anti-dementia pills, which can cause internal bleeding if taken improperly, but can bring on vivid hallucinations.
CITATION:
http://www.drugs.com/imprints.php?action=search&imprint=sandoz
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1991-05-23/news/1991143049_1_sweepers-swafford-city-clean
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/30/not-your-grandmothers-sawdust-trail/
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