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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
My favorite poem in this wonderful collection is "My Education" and as a poet myself, I found this one line from it to be a real treasure and gift: "You will mispronounce words in front of a crowd. It cannot be avoided. But your poems, with all of their deficiencies, products of lifelong observation and asymmetric knowledge, will be your own." Thank you, Diane, for this crucial reminder and for your brave, honest and inspiring words!
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
medium-paced
I am always drawn to poets who utilize objects in their poetry, particularly when they infuse those objects with emotional resonance. Seuss's Modern Poetry is a new favorite for using these tools of the craft, particularly with the combination of fractured emotions and the resonance of grief and healing that has been infused into the writing.
As I read the titular poem, "Modern Poetry", the lines: "Stephanie had us over to her house / a damp place in the woods. She roasted a goat / and served it to us, shredded, on blue plates" (Suess, Kindle Ed. 270), firstly I love that she used a specific name (and perhaps it stood out to me because it is my own first name) as it is something that I tend to do in my own poetry, what also struck me was that using this element of incorporating multiple physical objects, grounded in reality, represented and highlighted the significance of something beyond the physical. Each modifying word built up the meaning, for the house becomes not a house alone but a place and not merely a place but a damp place, yet not in a way which is unappealing, but instead is warmed by the food, yet the food served, goat's meat, is unusual and unexpected and establishes a sense of ethereal strangeness, while the word shredded signifies a tearing apart that serves to build an emotional tension into the line. The addition of the commas around the word "shredded" serve to separate and isolate at a level that adds further tension to the word and amplifies its meaning more so than if the functions of punctuation had been abandoned. In a way, the intentionality of the punctuation in the line serves to hold up the poem with a formal intensity that implies the greater significance rather than giving the meaning away in a rather pat or perfunctory way it to the reader. Knowing the function of the appositive phrase which is being used there, it is typically meant to modify and rename the word directly prior. While the reader is, at the most surface level, aware that the word shredded applies to the meat of the goat being served, the placement of it directly after the word "us" brings to mind that the us within the poem is subsequently described as well. This artistically rendered double meaning, that is delivered at a way that hits more psychologically or intuitively vs. being apparent on a surface level, makes a connection with the emotional landscape of the reader rather than delivering the information directly to the mind for easy consumption. As I finished the poem, the thought that went through my mind was: What is the cost of the education she describes here, what is the price of being 'shredded' in pursuit of becoming? Yet, I did not question for a moment if the author was willing to pay that price.
After my meditations on the function of commas in "Modern Poetry," I can't help but be drawn to the author's own commentary of the change of meaning in the last two lines of the poem literally named "Comma". It is a different flavor of function, and it is focused on sound rather than on the physical objects of my previous meditation. Instead, it rejects the self-same images Suess's other poems use for meaning, for it states: "I don't want to bring a story / to it. Not even an image" (Suess, Kindle Ed. 517). This rejection of image and story, a tool so readily wielded in the majority of the poems in this collection, places an emphasis on absence and presence. For with the acknowledgement of the absence of imagery the sounds become so loud and the drive-in movie screen inside my mind flickers into darkness -- allowing me to hear the words without the images I so often look for as a reader. The last line (and I'm an absolute sucker for a solid last line in a poem) resonates so clearly, because I can hear the meaning shift in the lines "Don't narrativize, Diane. Don't narrativize Diane. See what a comma can do?" (Suess, Kindle Ed. 517). Firstly, an admonition, secondly a nearly protective blanket of identity around the narrator, and in the reflective way the poem becomes about the reader, that blanket is wrapped, too, around my own implacable identity.
As I read the titular poem, "Modern Poetry", the lines: "Stephanie had us over to her house / a damp place in the woods. She roasted a goat / and served it to us, shredded, on blue plates" (Suess, Kindle Ed. 270), firstly I love that she used a specific name (and perhaps it stood out to me because it is my own first name) as it is something that I tend to do in my own poetry, what also struck me was that using this element of incorporating multiple physical objects, grounded in reality, represented and highlighted the significance of something beyond the physical. Each modifying word built up the meaning, for the house becomes not a house alone but a place and not merely a place but a damp place, yet not in a way which is unappealing, but instead is warmed by the food, yet the food served, goat's meat, is unusual and unexpected and establishes a sense of ethereal strangeness, while the word shredded signifies a tearing apart that serves to build an emotional tension into the line. The addition of the commas around the word "shredded" serve to separate and isolate at a level that adds further tension to the word and amplifies its meaning more so than if the functions of punctuation had been abandoned. In a way, the intentionality of the punctuation in the line serves to hold up the poem with a formal intensity that implies the greater significance rather than giving the meaning away in a rather pat or perfunctory way it to the reader. Knowing the function of the appositive phrase which is being used there, it is typically meant to modify and rename the word directly prior. While the reader is, at the most surface level, aware that the word shredded applies to the meat of the goat being served, the placement of it directly after the word "us" brings to mind that the us within the poem is subsequently described as well. This artistically rendered double meaning, that is delivered at a way that hits more psychologically or intuitively vs. being apparent on a surface level, makes a connection with the emotional landscape of the reader rather than delivering the information directly to the mind for easy consumption. As I finished the poem, the thought that went through my mind was: What is the cost of the education she describes here, what is the price of being 'shredded' in pursuit of becoming? Yet, I did not question for a moment if the author was willing to pay that price.
After my meditations on the function of commas in "Modern Poetry," I can't help but be drawn to the author's own commentary of the change of meaning in the last two lines of the poem literally named "Comma". It is a different flavor of function, and it is focused on sound rather than on the physical objects of my previous meditation. Instead, it rejects the self-same images Suess's other poems use for meaning, for it states: "I don't want to bring a story / to it. Not even an image" (Suess, Kindle Ed. 517). This rejection of image and story, a tool so readily wielded in the majority of the poems in this collection, places an emphasis on absence and presence. For with the acknowledgement of the absence of imagery the sounds become so loud and the drive-in movie screen inside my mind flickers into darkness -- allowing me to hear the words without the images I so often look for as a reader. The last line (and I'm an absolute sucker for a solid last line in a poem) resonates so clearly, because I can hear the meaning shift in the lines "Don't narrativize, Diane. Don't narrativize Diane. See what a comma can do?" (Suess, Kindle Ed. 517). Firstly, an admonition, secondly a nearly protective blanket of identity around the narrator, and in the reflective way the poem becomes about the reader, that blanket is wrapped, too, around my own implacable identity.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I don't know much about poetry. My enjoyment or non-enjoyment is a visceral thing and might, to those who do know about poetry, be meaningless or even laughable. And perhaps that is one of the things I love so much about Diane Seuss' work. She democratizes poetry, bats aside the flowery, and acknowledges that in fact, many poets we think of as having been romantic heroes were gross, dirty, unattractive, syphilitic messes. In that community, she finds herself comfortable. I have no reason to believe Seuss is gross, dirty, unattractive, or syphilitic, but she has divorced herself from striving toward or caring about being physically appealing or socially engaging. She speaks in these poems of having cared in the past about that, and when she does it is as if she is speaking of a person with no relation to her current self. She speaks too of poets she admires and both relates herself to and distinguishes herself from them. It is as if she is finding her place in the canon. She tries, as part of that quest I think, to define what modern poetry is. Her poetry is smart, generous, funny, heartbreaking, and vulnerable and is no slave to form. This was clearer in her last collection, frank, where she reinvented the sonnet, than it is here, but though subtler Seuss is as willing here to buck the rules as she was in that book.
As I said at the start, I don't know much about poetry, but Seuss' work excites me, challenges me, amuses me, and makes me reconsider all the rules. That makes it rare and special, at least to me.
As I said at the start, I don't know much about poetry, but Seuss' work excites me, challenges me, amuses me, and makes me reconsider all the rules. That makes it rare and special, at least to me.
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
reflective
medium-paced