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Something Seen on the Fridge
I pass her face one dozen times
And gaze
And marvel, at the length gone by
From days of youthful passion crimes
And rough-red Brillo hair,
And now attired in black and white
I muse
What meeting you were off to tend
With bun and blazer, and step in sight
Through rose-bowr’d meeting square.
Her heart-shaped cheeks spell anarchy
I think
Each time they catch me, in a flash
Is she the same one, calling me?
With breath-starved solicitude?
Or maybe it’s some other kin
Whose house
I purge and stove I clean, and sink
I scrub with thought of Pharoah’s sin,
And time-felt turpitude.
And gaze
And marvel, at the length gone by
From days of youthful passion crimes
And rough-red Brillo hair,
And now attired in black and white
I muse
What meeting you were off to tend
With bun and blazer, and step in sight
Through rose-bowr’d meeting square.
Her heart-shaped cheeks spell anarchy
I think
Each time they catch me, in a flash
Is she the same one, calling me?
With breath-starved solicitude?
Or maybe it’s some other kin
Whose house
I purge and stove I clean, and sink
I scrub with thought of Pharoah’s sin,
And time-felt turpitude.
I'll admit, as a certified normie, this one kind of went over my head a bit. The old-timy phrases took me a while to digest. On this one the title was required reading to parse through the poem. Words like 'bowr'd' and 'solicitude' are not something I generally run across.
So it seems that the poet is passing by an old picture on the fridge and wondering at how time has changed the individual. How young and vibrant they were, and now are now presumably old and frail. Or they have the wrong person. Makes me think they're an in-law who doesn't know the history of the photo very well. (Or maybe they're the help. The last stanza seems to go against the rest of the poem.)
Visually the two syllable lines break up the blocks rather well. They represent a pause for the poet as they consider various things. I can imagine doing something similar if I found an old picture of my grandmother in a drawer somewhere.
Altogether, good job. It's not the sort of poem I would probably read, but it seems to be well put together.
So it seems that the poet is passing by an old picture on the fridge and wondering at how time has changed the individual. How young and vibrant they were, and now are now presumably old and frail. Or they have the wrong person. Makes me think they're an in-law who doesn't know the history of the photo very well. (Or maybe they're the help. The last stanza seems to go against the rest of the poem.)
Visually the two syllable lines break up the blocks rather well. They represent a pause for the poet as they consider various things. I can imagine doing something similar if I found an old picture of my grandmother in a drawer somewhere.
Altogether, good job. It's not the sort of poem I would probably read, but it seems to be well put together.
I like the sound of this, but I'm not close to understanding it. Structurally, it's not a form I'm familiar with. It seems like the lines are supposed to be iambic, but that breaks on several of them, and two run long on syllable count. Like the previous one I read, it pulls a switch in the middle that I don't feel like I have the context to interpret. Someone constantly sees a woman's picture on the fridge, and at first it seems like it's because the person knows the woman and considers her significant. It almost seems to be saying they don't know her as well as they wish they did. But then it gets disarmed by the speaker seemingly being cleaning staff who might have simply seen the picture in one of their clients' houses, and so seems to be brushing off the significance of it. That kind of mood change can be meaningful if I can see enough of the bigger picture to know what difference that makes, but here, I don't.
I rewrite verse a thousand times
And pause,
Then tweak the scansion once again
And wring some further hopeful lines
From English prosody.
And pause,
Then tweak the scansion once again
And wring some further hopeful lines
From English prosody.
>>MrExtra
>>Pascoite
For this poem, I used a short line to give the flow an odd count, to keep it from being too "old-timey". It's something that happened to me. My step-aunt recently had brain surgery, and I stayed with her the first night she arrived back from the hospital, and helped clean her moldering kitchen.
The photo is of her sister. But it seemed to me, in that situation, the image of one vibrant young woman was as good as another.
>>Pascoite
For this poem, I used a short line to give the flow an odd count, to keep it from being too "old-timey". It's something that happened to me. My step-aunt recently had brain surgery, and I stayed with her the first night she arrived back from the hospital, and helped clean her moldering kitchen.
The photo is of her sister. But it seemed to me, in that situation, the image of one vibrant young woman was as good as another.