San Serif
 

Sans Serif

In me, you will only see letters,
no remnants of winning or losing,
a mere collection of squiggles
with serifs no longer clinging

to stories of victory or defeat,
pleased to never be read
and spoken in conversation,
or remembered at sleep's sharp edge.

The French word for “without” is Sans, so the title should probably be “Sans Serif.”
I’m not able to figure out what the serifs have to do with winning , losing, victory, or defeat. Is it that inscriptions on stone memorials that celebrate victories or the fallen tend to have serifs since Roman times in order to prevent the stone from cracking? Throw me a bone, here.

Hi, John. Like Glenn, I'd like a few more clues. For a while, I wondered if you might mean ligatures (as in the joins between letters in cursive handwriting) rather than serifs, but then I decided you didn't). I still don't quite understand the significance of using a sans serif font instead of a serifed one. I find serifed fonts easier to read in print, but sans serif fonts easer to read onscreen.

I understood the serifs as giving his stories a weight and dignity that the poet now rejects. The idea that we should view his life as meaningless and forgettable is troubling, but perhaps also refreshing in its absurdism. I think it should be “read or spoken,” but that’s just me niggling again.

Ah, okay, Carl’s interpretation opened this up for me. Till now, I’d been puzzled, like Glenn and Julie. Perhaps there’s a way to bring this analogy forth more clearly? It’s actually a pretty cool one that I respond to well once it’s been cracked (for me).

I agree with Carl’s point about S2.

Although this looks like technically correct accentual verse with a consistent three accented syllables per line, I was bothered by the comparative metrical regularity of S1 (where each line features iambic first and last feet bookending two anapests, but with two iambs subbing for anapests in the second feet of the third and fourth lines) to S2. The fact is that our English ears are more syllabic than they are accentual, and in your first stanza, with its syllabic legibility, you set up an expectation that in the second stanza is only weakly and belatedly fulfilled in L3. I think this stanza would work better even if in this stanza, you were to sustain the new metrical pattern that you introduce in its first two lines.

I meant “serifs” in a simpler way that clearly doesn’t work and now seems silly. The serifs on the letters inside, characters—which is probably the word I should have used—don’t cling. The little hooks don’t work. My idea of a metaphysical conceit I guess. It clearly isn’t working.

Thanks

Hi John,

I like this one a lot. I take the absence of the serifs in part to indicate something like an absence of grandeur, of (self-)importance. All the stories N tells himself about his life, his victories and defeats, are gone. I like that the poem can be read as positive or negative: A loss of ego, a release from those stories that trouble us or that we tell ourselves to shore ourselves us up "at sleep's sharp edge", versus a descent into nothingness/incoherence.

Contra Carl, I think the "and" in "never be read and spoken in conversation" works just fine. The letters (and the words they once made) needed be read before they can be spoken.

I don't have any nits.

best,

Matt

Thanks, Matt, for the close reading.

With Carl and Matt’s explanation, the poem falls nicely into place.
I might have caught on more quickly if S1L2 had given me a bit more direction.
How about:
In me, you will only see letters
no grandiose acting or singing
a mere collection of squiggles
With serifs no longer clinging

Thanks for commenting, Glenn. Unfortunately it would eliminate what the poem is about. Your lines are more consistent but will make a different poem.

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I connect completely to the heart of this poem. Some might prefer not to reveal the person behind the curtain that is themselves, but I think it's imperative to knowing the person.

Awhile back, upon Cameron’s reference to and recommendation of Osip Mandelstam’s poetry, I bought a slim volume of his selected poems. There is a passage I underlined (from He Who Finds a Horseshoe) that your poem immediately brought to mind:

A rustle scampers over the trees with its green clogs,
The children are playing jacks with the vertebrae of dead animals.
The fragile chronicle of our era is coming to an end.
I am grateful for that which was.
I myself was in error, became confused, lost count.
The era was ringing, like a golden orb,
Inflated, formed in a mold, supported by no one,
Answering each and every contact with a “yes” and “no”.
Just so a child answers:
“I will give you an apple”—or: “I will not give you an apple.”
His face—an exact duplicate of the voice that pronounces these words.



Over on fiction I verbosely wrote about much the same thing as your poem seems to be speaking of.

Nice capsule poem, John.

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Thanks, Jim. It's an honor, of course, to be compared to Mandelstam. It's hard to believe such a comparison, but I like what you quoted. I'll find my copy of the selected and spend some time with it. I always end up in the Voronezh Notebooks.

Thanks