Pictures
The walls of life are closing in;
her world reduced to one room
covered in pictures that sometimes
jog memories, but more often
questions, like: ‘Who is that man?
I don’t know him.’
‘That’s Dad, Mum.’
Comments
love the economy of this. So much said by so few words.
just not comfortable with the zeugma of 'jog' with 'questions', Maybe some other verb needed instead/ as well?
I agree with you, Julian - and Steve - that that line may be superfluous. And the poem is about reduction, after all.
It is excellent, en route to my kind of poetry where less is more, more or less. I agree with Steve that you could cut more and gain effect. For example, with 'Who is that man?', you don't need 'I don't know him'; you've already told us that. 'sometimes' is implicit in 'but more often', etc.
Enjambment is ideal for expressing the confusion of the subject.
And here we are again with those questions about written versus spoken.
I love this and would urge you to play with the words and layout a bit more. none of my business, of course!
Excellent example of a strikingly effective `enough said`
Excellent Greg. Maximum power from minimum wordage.
It frightens me to think that we will swop place in time and, instead of being the author and observer, become the subject of the poem.
Excellent, Greg.
I love the way it says so much with so few words, which seems to add to the pathos. Love it.
Yeh, think you're spot on with that Is, re the performance aspect of it. Perhaps we should join some kind of creative writing 'workshop' - learn all about stuff we don't know the names of heh ;D
Dunt take away from the poem though.
I just hope I'm never in this position with my mother who has always been a larger than life character. No problem with the 'enjambment'. Line breaks, stanza breaks just give opportunities to play with rhythms and highlight certain words. I just read it with a slight hesitation after 'sometimes' - which could be effective if the poem was being 'performed'.
I'm with you on the structure Laura. I've never understood people wanting that kind of disjointed enjambement. I think it's the performance poet in us, that looks for the flow we would use to perform a piece. Plenty of high profile poets seem to use it though - even CAD - it doesn't mean to say we have to like it though :)
I love the poem though Greg. So much in so few lines. If I re-order everything mentally, it's a fine poem that would transfer from page.
I'm no expert, but I think it's called enjambment, Laura. I'm also trying to take a leaf out of Steve Black's book, and compose shorter sentences. Meanwhile he's trying out some of Winston's tricks!
Brief, sad, interesting choice of structure.
I never understand that gap between verses without punctuation. Why did you do that?
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Greg Freeman
Sat 15th Sep 2012 11:41
That's a good point you make about the word 'jog', Yvonne. Maybe 'spark' would be better? For a little poem, this poem is getting extensively workshopped! Quite right, too