Boring, and yet too intricate to explain;
A world passed underneath as we missed
An invisible struggle too quiet to hear.
Boring, and yet too intricate to explain,
The day continued like a clockwork's
Invisible struggle. Too quiet to hear,
We missed a world passing underneath.
This poem is great. it's like a perpetual motion machine (which works well with the clockwork theme). It engages in a way I am not used to. Like a puzzle. I keep working through it and really focusing the punctuation, I can't stop rereading it.
ReplyDeletetim, when did you get so disenchanted and disappointed with the world?
ReplyDeletei like how you're re-arranging the lines here, it took me a second to notice. i think it would be interesting if you broke up the lines more and then repeated them in ways where they end up saying something more or completely different? like if you made this poem longer and played with different word packages? (i.e invisible clockwork, a passing world, struggle too quiet, etc?)
i feel like the act of repetition could be a good trope to this poem too (repeating signs that no one notices)--that being said, i'm still fuzzy on what a trope is....a rare species of fish right?
trope is a delicacy in south american where the lining of a bovine's stomach is used as food, primarily an ingredient in menudo soup. it is also a word for rubbish.
ReplyDeleteI think what Nina is saying, if I may be so bold is: this is a very effective pantoum. Why the hell would you write a pantoum and not something more interesting that actually lets you explore these themes??
ReplyDeletedinah, you are bold. and smarter. that's what i meant to say but better.
ReplyDelete...also i forgot about pantoum in the title. but tim! you know the villanelle and these other poetry forms make me anxious and give me nightmares of meter, schema, and scansion tests. so sorry if i want to make it into something different....
I agree - a better form would allow for better exploration. but this poem was meant to do somethin else.
ReplyDeleteI have been working lately at trying to create a poem whose primary effect is not an intellectual interpretation as much as a collective atmosphere/aura/feeling/Experience. I still want there to be interpretive parts of course, but my goal is for the mood and experience of reading the poem create something specific.
so, in this case, the pantoum was meant to create a sense of timelessness and stagnance while also noticing the limits to this timelessness - infinity in a bottle I guess. Something like that. That it comes before Easter is meant to represent the single day where Christ is buried and gone, and yet the world is continuing, unaware.
Not sayin it works or anything - and in fact I will likely write a poem based on both of your suggestions - but it will be for a different motivation than this pantoum, which was written primarily to give nina the jitters.