Trope and trust in the speaker

Trope figures prominently in A Cradle Place as Lux uses it to develop bizarre subject matter found in many of the poems. In “Terminal Lake,” Lux writes about the lake,

“All’s blind down there, and cold./ From above, it’s a huge black coin,/ it’s as if the real lake is drained/ and this lake is the drain…” “It’s a huge black coin” isn’t an extravagant metaphor but it does a good job of helping us imagine the physical shape (circular) and color (black) of the lake. In “asafetida” he writes,

The good, good thing for you

as prescribed by another, bitter

to the taste,

and, too, it stinks

like a neck after a boot heel is lifted,

for a moment, from it.

Like an eely

spike in a sinus. A horse-choking pill

put in a plunger

and shot down your throat—it’s good

for you, will improve you, you need it,

put a little honey on this tiny bomb

and take it down, take

it right down.

Wow, this “good, good thing” is compared to an “eely spike in a sinus,” “a horse choking pill,” a “tiny bomb” and its stink is compare to a “neck after a boot heel is lifted.” All these similes and metaphors in such a short poem and about one object definitely places great importance on the object. The problem is, this trope doesn’t give us much concrete imagery. I, for one, can’t really imagine what a “neck after a boot heel is lifted” smells like, or what an eely spike in a sinus looks like. It seems as though Lux doesn’t really want us to have a grasp on what exactly this “thing” is or what it smells and looks like. the speaker does call it a pill, but the fact that he has compared it to such strange things makes me take that statement with a grain of salt. If he calls it an eely spike in a sinus then I really can’t know if he is actually stating that the thing is a pill or it is just another odd metaphor. I think this dilemma is related to our discussions on whether we can “trust” certain speakers. It certainly appears to be something that others claim is a medicine, but we can’t know that it is an actual pill.