How many times have we said (or do we hear) the phrase “Let’s just say…”? It has come to stand for understatement par excellence, when you know what follows is going to offer a vague proposition that leads you somewhere else, somewhere specific. A preface that will imply something much more profound than the statement itself. A pointer towards profundity in a sometimes humorous or sly way.
I often find that wonderful poems are constructed from the most quotidian speech, the kind we all use every day, the kind of speech you might find in a Frank O’Hara poem.
Kenneth Salzman is one of those poets who has the knack for writing something simple that gets you looking between the lines. Feeling what is left unsaid by the narrator, the one whose voice we want to sympathize with and who’s emotions we want to share in because in some way we have experienced them ourselves.
The poem Let’s Just Say is a perfect example from Salzman’s repertoire.
Let’s just say some memories
might hang in the air unnoticed
for a lifetime and then unexpectedly
come crashing down.
Let’s just say you can find
yourself picking dream-shards
out of the carpet for years to come,
that uncertainty might be the only thing
a person ever can be sure of.
Let’s just say she was the smartest girl
in school and I loved to hear her laugh.
—Kenneth Salzmann
("Let's Just Say" was originally published in First Literary Review --East.)