Love and loneliness are two emotions that often dance together, moving in and out of each other’s shadows in a complex interplay. In Inner Self Portrait, Sari Fishman takes these contradictory feelings and turns them into raw art.
Through her powerful combination of poetry and painting, she explores the tension between intimacy and isolation. She reveals how these opposing forces are not only connected but essential to understanding the human experience.
Two poems that talk about this delicate balance are Young Werther, and I and Your Shadow Lingers in the Air Like the Stench of Cigarettes. Both pieces highlight Fishman’s deep understanding of love and loneliness, portraying them as simultaneous emotions that shape and define each other.
Let’s get into these two poems to understand how Fishman discusses contradiction lies at the heart of this book.
Love and Despair in Motion
In Young Werther and I, Fishman presents love as an agonizing yet rapturous experience, full of both passion and pain. The poem begins with movement: “We dance/agonizing into the yellow / rapturing into the blue.” Here, Fishman raises a sense of emotional fluctuation, where love is at once excruciating and euphoric.
The choice of colours, yellow and blue, adds depth to the imagery, with yellow representing brightness or caution and blue symbolizing melancholy. She illustrates the duality of love, which can lift us to unimaginable heights while simultaneously dragging us down into despair.
As the poem progresses, the intensity of this emotional dance only deepens: “plugging love at one another / like two pistols.” The violent metaphor of love as a gunfight shows the idea that intimacy can feel like both a battle and a connection. Love, in this context, is both a weapon and a surrender, an act of mutual vulnerability that carries the potential for both harm and healing.
The speaker is caught in an endless cycle of longing and suffering, where love feels both eternal and doomed: “Who would have believed / this night has endured / for two hundred and fifty years.” Time, in this poem, becomes elastic, stretching and warping under the weight of unfulfilled desire. Love is enduring, but it is also haunting, keeping the lovers trapped in an unending emotional night.
Loneliness in the Presence of Love
While Young Werther and I present love as an intense, consuming experience, Your Shadow Lingers in the Air Like the Stench of Cigarettes takes a different approach, focusing on the alienation that often exists within relationships.
The poem opens with a striking and unsettling image: “You are an alternative ghost / a cruel stopwatch / an intimate lewdness / a chaos of alienness.” Here, the lover is both present and absent, an intangible force that haunts the speaker rather than offering comfort or connection.
The contradiction in this poem lies in the fact that love is not enough to fill the void of loneliness. The “shadow” of the lover lingers like smoke, present yet insubstantial. The relationship is reduced to “intimate lewdness,” suggesting that physical closeness does not necessarily translate to emotional intimacy. The lover becomes a “cruel stopwatch,” marking time but offering no real solace or understanding.
Fishman’s use of the phrase “chaos of alienness” perfectly shows the feeling of being with someone yet still feeling utterly alone. Love, in this poem, does not bring the two people closer. Instead, it magnifies the distance between them. The lover is both familiar and strange, creating a sense of disorientation that leaves the speaker lost in a fog of confusion and isolation.
Inescapable Love and Loneliness
In Inner Self Portrait, love and loneliness are not presented as separate experiences but as two sides of the same coin. Through poems like Young Werther and I and Your Shadow Lingers in the Air Like the Stench of Cigarettes, Fishman shows how these emotions exist in a constant state of tension.
Love can feel like a connection, but it can also heighten our awareness of isolation. Similarly, loneliness can be experienced even in the presence of love as we struggle with the realization that no one can ever truly understand or complete us.
This dance of contradiction is central to Fishman’s work, where the beauty of love is always tinged with the pain of loneliness and vice versa. The duality of these emotions reflects the complexity of human relationships, where intimacy often comes with an inherent risk of hurt, and loneliness becomes a companion even in the closest bonds.
Vulnerability in Contradiction
What makes Fishman’s exploration of love and loneliness so compelling is her willingness to embrace vulnerability. She does not shy away from the discomfort of contradiction but rather uses it to go deeper into the emotional landscape of her characters.
In both Young Werther and I and Your Shadow Lingers the speakers are exposed to both the pleasure and pain of their experiences. This vulnerability allows readers to connect with the poems on a personal level, recognizing their struggles with love, loss, and loneliness.
Conclusion
In Inner Self Portrait, Sari Fishman invites us to confront the contradictions that define our emotional lives. Love and loneliness, connection and isolation, joy and despair: these are not mutually exclusive but connected forces that shape who we are and how we experience the world. Her work shows the beauty and tragedy of these contradictions, offering a stark exploration of what it means to be human.
Grab your copy of Inner Self Portrait today and explore the delicate balance between love and loneliness through Sari Fishman’s powerful poetry and art.
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