[John Riley]

Roof

He set a fire to breathe the smoke, burning
ragweed and wildflowers growing up
the old woodpile, and learned he was a fool.
The deeper he leaned the thinner the smoke.
What was not there is not what eludes, leaves
no bones in mourning, no table overturned
or shattered glass globe, no raised roof,
no creep of the healer come to leave him alive.

[Jim Moonan]

.
I’m afraid I must recuse myself from interpreting this one the way you intended because it has gotten into my head that it’s about my brother, so everything I get from it is tainted with those memories I harbor of him. It is painfully cathartic. The poem is so unpredictable from line to line that it's odd to see it here on metrical (but I'm not the one to judge the metricality of this). Metrically, it is a wild horse of a poem to my ear.

Thoughts

The combination of punctuation and wording/phrasing in the opening lines was hard for me to parse (I’m still not sure I get what’s going on to begin the poem. Has he set fire to the ragweed and wildflowers which just so happen to be growing up(?) the woodpile and inadvertently sets fire to the entire woodpile? I’m being dense, maybe…

This line gives me brain freeze:

What was not there is not what eludes,

And then it is followed by the compounding, repeating negative “no” to end the poem. It hits me like hammer blows and I’m left with nothing but “alive”.

The final line is stupefying. I hear in its tone a faint hint of Yeats' “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? I don’t know why.I]


But it doesn't matter. The poem latched on to my imagination and became a vignette of my brother’s life. I’ve taken every line to be about him. It is astonishing how combustible poetry can be when it finds its way into the memory and imagination.

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[John Riley]

Jim, thanks for being willing to comment on this little poem. I didn't see it as difficult when I posted it but guess I was wrong again. I'll take another look at the beginning.

Thanks again

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

The problem I have with this John is the venue. This is not metrical and does not meet the criteria for posting. Why have you posted it here?

Jan

[John Riley]

Jan, I didn't mean to offend you.

Metrical is defined as stress-based meter (accentual or accentual-syllabic).

[Rick Mullin]

Hi John,

I'll admit I'm having trouble understanding this one. What was not there is not what eludes, is really not an appealing line for me. I guess, logically (maybe the wrong approach) it's saying that what is there is what eludes? Keeping up with that line is essential to understanding the end of the poem, I guess. I like what leads into it, but then I'm thrown.

It's not a concern I would bring up if this weren't a metrical trough here, but I can't discern any metrical structure to this poem. It's certainly not blank verse. Responding to your response to Jan, I'd say every sentence has stresses.

Things are really quiet here these past few days. I hope to read a response from anyone who's having an easier time with this poem.

Rick

[W T Clark]

This does not seem entirely hidden to me. It seems like a quietly savage anti-epiphany. The boy burns the shed to get at something: spectacle, anger, to see himself, or some realisation in the fire. Instead he is confronted with the realisation that what is piercing, real, are the things that elude: that present you with their blank void. The metre, broken and spindly, but with long enough moments of coherence to be detectable, seems so exquisitely balanced between the iambic and the anapestic, that it is flame-like, forked and twisting, and also forces the reader to enter into a state distantly echoing the boy's: staring straight at that which eludes. I do agree that the "eludes" line should be made more metrically coherent, it is the crux of the poem, and at the moment there is something slightly clumsy, rhythmically, in its phrasing. But this is not some imposter; it's a little revelation of smoke.

Hope this helps.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Further comment to clarify.

I scan.

He set a fire to breathe the smoke, burning
Ignoring the schwa in ‘fire’ the line scans as iamb, iamb, iamb, iamb, trochee

ragweed and wildflowers growing up
The line scans as spondee, iamb, trochee, trochee then headless or tailless take your pick.

the old woodpile, and learned he was a fool.
The line scans as iamb, spondee, iamb, pyrrhic, iamb.

The deeper he leaned the thinner the smoke
The line scans amphibrac, iamb, amphibrac, iamb

Scansion is no exact science but a relative assessment invaluable in checking metre. It can be seen from the above, even allowing for different assumptions on stress, that this is prosaic. There is not enough repetition to establish the poem as metric verse.

We all use substitutions in our verse for effect. The only metric verse form that uses a multiplicity of feet that I can call to mind is the Sapphic and that is patterned in repeat.

We have a forum for non metric verse and that is where this belongs

[Rick Mullin]

Cameron--that must be the most generous dispensation anyone has granted another on meter in the Eratosphere metrical poetry channel. I find no need to see or feel any deeper than "free verse meets free jazz drum solo" here. Which is cool! Again, I wouldn't have commented on meter initially if I'd read this poem published in a journal. The lack of formal metrical structure that doesn't require us to study to find it is not a flaw. Your parsing of the sense, Cameron, was helpful.

John--I could go through this and show where I find the stresses and count the beats. I can tell you there would be no consistency. But I'd like for you to show us how this works as a formally metrical poem (which, once again, no poem needs to be). Also repeating myself--every sentence has stresses and all free verse includes anapests.

[John Riley]

Sorry for the delay. I haven't been well.

Thanks, Cameron and Rick for reading the poem and commenting on it. It's probably overly obscure and needs work in that regard. I heard four beats in each line except the last which has five beats. I only counted the beats and let the unstressed syllables take care of themselves. I thought counting the beats was welcome here. I'm much more interested in the poem than I am in the meter, but I saw or thought I saw a consistent number of beats per line.

Jan, what has always interested me about the met board is how certain people put on their hall monitor straps, in my junior high they were orange and the monitor was always telling me to get back into my classroom—no suggestions on what could be changed to make the poem better—just a huffing of the shoulders and a pointing of the finger. Thanks for the memories.