[Marion Shore]

Snow Blind

A gust of wind rocks his rig; he grits
his teeth and grinds down to a slower gear.
Snow slides like smoke across the - Deer!
He’ll hit them if they don’t move… Idiots.
He sags. They’re gone, swallowed into grey.
The pavement’s going next. Grim-faced, he steers
around storm-eaten holes. The world smears,
but he can’t stop. He’s going home to stay.

They find him parked beside the door, and wheel him,
unwilling, to his room. He drags his feet,
mumbles mad protest. His wife. She’s wait-
“She’s here,” they soothe; he knows they’re wrong. That woman,
she’s old! He waits his chance to sneak past the alarm.
He has to go. She’s waiting for him through the storm.



This poem has an almost cinematic quality for me. We're pulled right in by the dramatic opening, the vivid images, the sense of movement, and perhaps most strikingly, the poet's use of point-of-view. We see through the driver's eyes, the snow, the deer, the gray, the pavement, the way the world smears… In L8, "he's going home to stay” works on two levels – "going home" = death which seems the likely outcome of this crash, or, literally going home, which prefigures what's to come in the sestet.

When the scene shifts, he is "parked" beside the door – for all we know at this point he's still in his rig – but we soon find out he's in a different sort of vehicle – a wheelchair, in a hospital. So we realize he has survived the crash after all, and is waiting to see his wife. Then comes the shocker – we see, still through his eyes, the woman they assure him is his wife – but he knows they're wrong – "she's old!" And then it hits us, over all these years, in his mind, he is still trying to get through the storm and go home.

The dramatic dénouement of the poem is enhanced by the direct, simple diction, and the startling off– rhymes: grits/idiots, wheel him/woman. In L11, I had a problem with "wait–" – the breaking off of "waiting" sounds awkward to me. Perhaps "she waits," which would be echoed nicely by "she's here," in the next line.

While you wouldn't want a perfectly smooth meter in this poem, I found some of the irregularities jarring. In L3 – how about "like smoke across the windshield – Deer!" In L7 – how about "the whole world smears…" Also, the meter of the couplet needs to be smoothed out.

It needs some tightening, but overall I find the poem striking and powerful.




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[Elise Hempel]

I'm in a fairly bad mood today, and I like Sonnet 3 more than this one, but I thought the current Bake-off concept was supposed to raise the bar on quality. Not quite seeing that yet.

[Woody Long]

I agree with the DG regarding this poem's cinematic quality & I like the plot: we ride with the N through illusion to reality and back again.

The couplet wraps things up evocatively.

— Woody

[Elise Hempel]

I agree that there's action here. But why in the sonnet form? Not everything has to be put into a sonnet. There's almost something comic about subject vs. form for me.

[Maryann Corbett]

With a few rereadings, I think I see how this poet's ear works, and that words that end in -nds and -rld, being extra long, are often being treated as two syllables rather than one. I think "snow" and "slides" are being lengthened in a similar way.

SNO oo| x SLIDES| like SMOKE |a CROSS | the- DEER|

It may not be correct according to the prosody teachers, but that's the way it comes out of many mouths.

Age-related dementia is a common subject for poems these days, as is nursing home or assisted living, and this treatment is accurate enough, in my sad experience. Placing the turn at the division between hallucination and fact seems a good choice. That broken-off phrase, "She's wait--" might have been a little clearer with an em dash; it represents well the way staff have their own agendas, so that the residents' actual needs and desires are brushed away when they're inconvenient.

(I checked a certain anthology of poems on this subject and didn't find this one there. I mention this just to point out that non-Googleability might not always protect a poem from identification.)

[Simon Hunt]

I'm not dazzled by this one, but I like it best of the first 4. I might like the interplay of true and slant rhyme better if grits/idiots were revised. That is, the octave would then by all rhymey and the sestet would be all slanty, and that would seem to me to chime with the sense.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Simon Hunt

I might like the interplay of true and slant rhyme better if grits/idiots were revised.

Simon, out of my mouth, "grits" and "id-ee-its" is an exact rhyme, so I'd give the poet credit for the full/slant contrast you posit.

[Marta Finch]

Clearly this is written by an accomplished sonneteer. The alliteration of gust, grits, grinds, gear, grey, Grim, work wonderfully together, to mention only one of the many levels of word play here—and in only the first six lines! (Perhaps the “w” sounds are a bit overdone in the sestet?) I do like how “storm-eaten holes” in L7 sounds so natural, so used are we to “worm-eaten.”

There are other things, however, that interfere with my enjoyment of this poem. Perhaps it is the fault of the subject matter (the way certain movies will never be to my taste), for some of what I object to does fit the theme. One is the jerky rhythm, particularly in lines 3 (4-beat), 4, 7. For some reason the final couplet in hexameters does not bother me—perhaps because of the clear iambic pentameter of the sentence in L13 and the strong iambics in L14.

I’d rather see “lower gear” in L2, and I’m not sure using “wait” three times in the last four lines works.
But this gives me much more to work with than the first two postings did!

(Did I miss #3? I’ll go back now and check.)

Marta

[Michael Cantor]

Like Simon, this is my favorite of the first four. But I don't read it as a crash and survival, as our DG does - to me it's clearly dementia. It tries a bit too hard - the clever enjambments at the ends of L3,L4 and L11 are two more than I care for - but there's much more good than bad here.

[Elise Hempel]

I still find this one comic and can't completely explain why. No offense to the DG, but I can't figure why it was one of his/her picks. As I said before, the bar was supposed to be raised this time around -- wasn't it? (Maybe better sonnets are coming?) What about the penultimate line? "He waits his chance to sneak past the alarm" is iambic pentameter all by itself, so why are there extra syllables before it? This is just not a good, polished sonnet for me. Very disappointed.