[Aaron Poochigian]

Process of Elimination

The years disclose that I am not a face,
a shape, a posture, or a crop of hair,
for I have lost all these, and yet I’m here.
I am whatever stands in those things’ place.

Subtract my gentleness, a coward’s grace.
Remove this rage and courtesy’s veneer.
Slide back the paper screens of self that snare
with furtive silhouettes the inward gaze.

Now I am the wind without the trees,
progress unseen, and now the leaves at rest.
I’m branches broken for the fire, undressed
to ashes. I who thought myself a hive
for honey gathering am sealed alive,
a husk leaking drip by drip its bees.

[Aaron Poochigian]

In perfect contrast to “Thirteen,” “Process of Elimination” gives us off-rhymes in the octave and true rhymes in the sestet. A sort of riddle, the poem challenges the reader to identify what is this “I” that speaks in a somewhat literary diction (“for” for “since”/“because” in line 3, for example). In stanza 2, in fact, the “I” addresses the reader directly with imperatives (“Subtract,” “Remove,” “Slide back”). What is at the bottom of this intellectual strip-tease? The absence of anything has never been so alluring.

[Catherine Chandler]

This sonnet reminded me of the poem "Do not stand at my grave and weep", and not in a good way.

The elaborate attempt at riddle, with its mini-inversions and somewhat hifalutin' diction, turned me off, and its prosaic title, well . . .

[Roger Slater]

I like this one a lot. It seems to me that the sonnet has a fascinating central metaphor that it explicates with clarity the use of a series of appropriate sub-metaphors, as it were. I found L8 perhaps a bit lacking in the clarity of the other lines, and L13 perhaps could use some metrical tinkering (since I'd never naturally give a beat to the -ing), but on the whole I think this is very well done and stands out for originality of content.

[David Danoff]

I'm grabbed by the first line of this one, and I think the whole first quatrain is very solid. The second quatrain, I start to lose the thread of the argument a little. And I'm fairly lost by the sestet--but I like the imagery and the sense of wildness. Although I wish the writing (the meter, the phrasing) were a bit more controlled in the final lines. (Yes, a more controlled sense of wildness.)

It's also true that the tone is on the formal side, perhaps even a bit fusty. But I'm not sure that's a problem. It seems like it's part of the point, part of the persona.

[Tim Murphy]

Really fine sestet.

[Michael F]

I found this very compelling of re-reading. It's philosophical and reminded me strongly of the early Eliot of wasted spaces and hollow men. Several of the metaphors are quite striking, e.g., the notion of the self as the invisible wind. It ends, for me, on a bitter and rueful and literally stinging note, a hive without honey, to all appearances.

I find the diction in lines 7-8 strained.

Very engaging and darkly beautiful, to me.

[Kyle Norwood]

Is the riddle of this poem so hard to solve? I take the narrator to be old, close to death perhaps, looking back at the tokens of identity that once defined her (or possibly him), and recognizing that those tokens were all superficial or insubstantial. Age has stripped away the physical attributes that the speaker used to identify with, and the speaker has outlived the styles of behavior that once seemed to define her--the graceful gentleness that was really a kind of cowardice, the underlying rage that was disguised by courtesy. These "paper screens of self" (striking phrase!) tricked the "inward gaze" into believing that there was a true identity behind them, seen as "furtive silhouettes" through the fragile screens. Strip away all the superficial signs of self and there is little or nothing left--a wind without the trees that make it visible, or the trees motionless without the animating wind. The final image of the abandoned beehive is particularly haunting--I don't know much about beehives, but I assume that bees that would "drip" from a hive must be dead. The speaker feels empty, no longer involved in the "honey-gathering" of biological life. So I must disagree with Claudia: this grim, quietly bitter poem seems like the direct opposite of "Do not stand at my grave and weep."

I think the "fustiness" of this poem has been exaggerated. I would call it compressed rather than overly formal.

A couple of quibbles: The title accurately describes what goes on in the poem but seems a bit dismissive; it could be improved upon. The missing syllable in the final line would not seem like a stumble if there were a comma after the word "husk."

I think this is the most ambitious of the poems so far--definitely not a "one-read" poem, to use a phrase that has popped up in other threads.

[Ron]

Yes, but shouldn't it be "in those things' places"?

[Susan McLean]

I think that the mood of this sonnet is hard to pin down and that the varying interpretations we are seeing of it come from that indeterminate mood, which seems a kind of zen acceptance, seen from one angle, or self-pity, seen from another. I like the title, but it contributes to that indeterminate quality. I do find that the missing syllable in the last line causes a stumble. The line would read better, I think, if one were added, as in "a dry husk leaking, drip by drip, its bees" or "a husk that's leaking, drip by drip, its bees." I add commas for clarity, but I don't think it is too confusing without them.

Susan