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<tr><td>The Quick and the Dead

It was so quick. The kitten frisked;
with one ungainly bound
she struck the spokes of my brother's bike
as they went spinning 'round.

Her tiny body in the wheel
made a tuneless strum
and a tawny circlet around the hub.
We kids stood stricken dumb.

As eldest, every eye was turned
toward me. A splat of red
on the sidewalk broke into my trance.
"Get Mom. The kitten's dead."

She freed the broken little corpse
and told us to be brave.
We prayed there would be a happy home
beyond the backyard grave.

That night, she tucked us kids in bed
and played Ave Maria.
I thought about the quick and the dead
and Daddy in Korea.
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[center]<table bgcolor=white cellpadding=25 border=0><tr><td>The poems I've been privileged to read for this project suggest that narrative poety is alive and well, and that it's being done in different ways in various parts of the English-speaking world: that's great news. This one, anchored to recent American by the last line, tells a homely story clearly grounded in memory. It's painfully visual--impossible to read that second stanza without wincing--and widens out beyond the domestic only in the last stanza.

A few questions: in line 9, does that misplaced modifier ("every eye" is defined mistakenly as the "eldest") create unintentional humor for everyone else, as it does for me? I would get that out right away. And does stanza 4 strike everyone as hovering dangerously on the brink of sentimentality? I know what the poet is after, and it belongs in the poem, but maybe it could be more lightly done.

And the thing that troubles me most is this: why is the speaker in the poem at all, when it was the brother's bike that did the damage? The "turned to me" in stanza 3 feels extraneous, because it's the brother I want to hear about, his response, the grief and guilt I can imagine--but he's dropped right away. This appealing and moving poem could be even stronger, with a change in the cast of characters, and maybe in the diction of stanza 4.

~Rhina

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I missed this one when it was originally posted. I particularly like the way it opens out in the last stanza in an unexpected but perfectly appropriate way. Like Rhina, I flinched a bit at the rather maudlin tone of stanza four. I had missed the misplaced modifier on the first read, but once you know it is there, it is distracting. Although one can certainly say

We kids stood stricken dumb.

it occurred to me that a pause might work to break up the rhythm and add additional meanings:

We kids stood stricken, dumb.

The visual and aural details are shocking and effective.

Susan

FWIW, I didn't notice the misplaced modifier until after I read your comment, Rhina.

I'd suggest shortening "we prayed there would be" to "we prayed there'd be".

The homely simplicity of the rhymes and meter did well to emphasize the childhood angle, especially with the unexpected final rhyme and switch of focus. Switching to a feminine rhyme for the final pair also helped kick the ending.

What I think makes this poem work is the fact that the manner and the mode makes one expect the ending to be a hollow homily or distasteful sugarcoating--or worse, both mixed with kitsch piety of the Precious Moments school--but instead ends with a very real and immediate thought about death and the realities of war.

I really like this one, too, and am not troubled by the focus on the 'elder' child, in fact, think the poem sort've hinges on it. Being the oldest, it's possible s/he feels even more responsible/weighted than the child on the bike, but there's also the raised consciousness at the close which signals a kind of 'aloneness' or wisdom in his understandings/recognitions/fears that the younger children may not share.

I wouldn't change the opening two lines of S4 - I think it's the 'happy home' that's to blame for the Maudlin Charge in that stanza. The ending is excellent.

The tone of voice here very much reminds me of Countee Cullen's little poem, Baltimore.

wendy



[This message has been edited by wendy v (edited December 02, 2004).]

Was this posted before I showed up around these parts? What a brutal, memorable, utterly fit last line! I didn't notice the misplaced modifier in L9, though now I can't stop looking at it. In S4, I didn't notice or mind the "sentimentality" at all, since I was trusting the poet so much by this point--and then, of course, I felt like the bright and comfortable S4 worked as a perfect set-up to the vicious punchline of S5. What a knockout of a poem!

--CS



[This message has been edited by Clay Stockton (edited December 05, 2004).]

This is one of the best, if not the best in the selection.

The Lariat points out a problem with voice but I don't see it as such. The agreement to be a part of this poem stands as a solid reminder that prose and poetry generally differ in terms of narrator/listener assignment making.

It was so quick. The kitten frisked;
with one ungainly bound
she struck the spokes of my brother's bike
as they went spinning 'round.
*Extraneous use of SO in so quick

Her tiny body in the wheel
made a tuneless strum
and a tawny circlet around the hub.
We kids stood stricken dumb.
*Extraneous use of AND in L3

As eldest, every eye was turned
toward me. A splat of red
on the sidewalk broke into my trance.
"Get Mom. The kitten's dead."

The Lariat stumbles here as I do.
But not significantly so. Adding THE to eldest is helpful, as is deleting WAS.
As the eldest, all eyes turned
toward(s)me....
Then:
Extraneous use of INTO in L3, suggest
..on the sidewalk AND broke my trance
(in which the word AND is used as it should be used.)

She freed the broken little corpse
and told us to be brave.
We prayed there would be a happy home
beyond the backyard grave.

As a nonmetrical kind of person, I find too many syllables in this stanza (and Rose apparently agrees much to my delight) for natural speech. Suggest:
She freed the broken corpse,
told us to be brave.
We prayed THERE'D be a home
beyond the backyard grave.
*Happy is extraneous here. I heartily advice the conjunction!

That night, she tucked us kids in bed
and played Ave Maria.
I thought about the quick and the dead
and Daddy in Korea.
*Weak in L1. Suggest:
AT night she tucked us all in bed
and played Ave Maria,
I thought about the quick and the dead,
THEN Daddy in Korea.

No comma betweeen night and she...not helpful in terms of the stop that is intended and not consistent with the previous stanzas.

FINAL and KILLER last line. The mark of a very well made poem.

Kudos.

"As eldest, every eye was turned
toward me."


What here is being called a misplaced modifier occurs in a sentence that also happens to be semantically crystal clear. So I'd say you have a grammarian's stand-off. I say Tomato, you say Tahmato. Further, I bet you could cull no less than Keats and find half a dozen of the same constructions. Just a hunch.

John






[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 04, 2004).]

No, I'm afraid this is not just a "tomato/tomahto" difference, because the placement of the modifier affects the image created. If the text said, "Every eye was turned on me as the elder," that would make sense, because the modifying phrase is right next to the pronoun being modified, "me." But leaning the modifier up against that "eye" says, quite literally, that the eye was doing its turning and gazing in its capacity as "the elder." That's unconscious humor, very badly out of place in a poem as serious--and as good!--as this one. Grammatical construction is not optional, guys.

J. A.:

Sorry, Rhina's right. When I read that sentence, the phrase jumps out at me as ungrammatical. Reading that sentence, the phrase jumps out at me as ungrammatical. No, no, that second one doesn't work, does it? The one in the poem isn't the most egregious misplaced modifier I've ever seen, including from poets and in poems, but I still don't think it's okay.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

Rhina,
I remember this poem well. At first I almost dismissed it then was hit by that last line.
Yes, stanzas 3 and 4 will have to be rewritten.
I think it makes sense that there is a crowd of children and the brother is speechless. I was the younger of two children and my brother always said he was "in charge".
I almost felt a hint of "mawk" in four but decided it was probably what would have happened. Pet's funerals are very solemn affairs.
A child digesting the reality of death and the fate of its father is simply and powerfully told.
Janet

Rhina,I understand exactly what you are saying, and you are right

And Steve, yes, technically this is ungrammatical.

But again, I would assert that in this semantic context, specifically in light of the previous line's information that a group of children has gathered, the meaning of the line in question is pretty close to unambiguous.

I would say it's like one of those optical illusion drawings that looks, at first, like a vase, but upon closer inspection it's also two profiled faces. It depends on your vantage, on what your mind snags on first. And linguistics is game of many perspectives.

I'm a little rusty with all this, but I think that this is basically the gist of Paul Friedrich's "The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy." I'd give you a pithy quote, but I can't locate my copy. (Besides being a first-rate ethnographer and linguist, Friedrich is also fine sonneteer).

Rhina, thanks for all the devotion to the commentaries, I am enjoying them immensely.

Sincerely,

John

[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 04, 2004).]

John:

I wrote two sentences with the same meaning, one with a misplaced modifier, above. Was the meaning of either one unclear? I don't think so. Nevertheless, the one with the misplaced modifier was an inferior sentence. Why? Because it causes an unwanted hiccup in any informed reader. I won't presume to speak for Rhina, but I certainly think that's an issue, especially in a poem, where every syllable is precious. I think the sentence in the poem was structured as such to fit the meter, not to be the best possible sentence AND fit the meter.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

Steve:

I take your point about such a mistake causing an "unwanted hiccup in any informed reader."

If, however, you inserted "the," as Maggie suggests--

As [the] eldest, every eye turned
to me

--would that do the trick? Would the use of the definite article before an adjective make it a noun? Example: "The finest is what we offer." I'm here to learn.


Rhina:

I'm not trying to be contentious, so bear with me. I'm going to get some sleep and look at this question fresh in the morning, at which time I'll probably see the error of my ways.

In your explanation, you said that the modifying phrase "as eldest" leaned directly against "eye." But really it doesn't; it leans up against "every eye." Now for me it's clear that "eldest" is singular and "every eye" implies plurality. Therefore, these grammatical facts dissuade me from interpreting "eldest" as modifying "every eye."

OK, again, I'm going to sleep on it. But if you can clarify this for me further I'd appreciate it.

Sincerely,

John



[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 04, 2004).]

John

I'll have to go with Rhina and Steven here; the sentence won't pass muster. Here's a slightly different take on it:

as written:

As eldest, every eye was turned
toward me. A splat of red
on the sidewalk broke into my trance.

alternate (for grammar):

The eldest, I saw how every eye was turned
toward me. A splat of red
on the sidewalk broke into my trance.

I'm not saying that's better poetry, of course, but it illustrates a point: In the line as written, one wants to assume (from the construction) that "I", the "eldest", "me", is the subject of the sentence, when in fact the "eye" is the subject and the "eldest", "me", is the object. I think this is where it's falling apart. Clearly, in the context of the poem, the subject is the observer, the speaker of the poem, but in this particular line the contorted grammar doesn't support that at all. So in many ways it's the lack of a verb associated with "eldest" that is tripping us up here.

(robt)

May I suggest, as a quick fix to the misplaced modifier, "Since I was eldest, all eyes turned / toward me"?

Susan

Robert, Rhina and Steven:

I’ve slept on it and I’ll submit in this case.

Still I’m not sure that grammar shouldn’t sometimes take a backseat
to music, meter, and effect. Just this morning I was reading Brodsky’s
Nativity Poems and ran across a formalist piece with this first line
(as translated by Derek Walcott):

“The air—fierce frost and pine-boughs.”

Does this verb-lacking cluster pass grammatical muster? Probably not, but I'll take it.

Just to give this dead horse one final stab, I’ll go back to Rhina’s original
observation that the line “As eldest, every eye was turned/towards me”
invokes “unintentional humor.” Could we as readers accept this as a lovely
misstatement by the poet, a fortuitous hiccup uttered in the child-speak
of the narrator? I probably belabor too much.

The good news is that I think Robert has hit on the perfect solution
for revising the poem, which I would pare down to :

The eldest, I saw every eye turn
towards me.

Thanks all for the lesson,

John




[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 07, 2004).]

Hmm. Poems are to be grammatically correct or well understood by the reader?

In this case, the grammar/diction applies to SPOKEN English as opposed to WRITTEN, and there is a difference. The use of rhyme and meter (loosely) however, cues the metricists on board to take the bull by the horns and squeeze the life right out of the poem...add a ridiculously long sentence in there to attend to the GERUND status of the thing. Bugger. It's a toss up but in my opinion, clarifying a WELL understood dialectical phrase (WE ALL USE THIS PHRASE PEOPLES) would ruin the cadence of the poem. Completely.

This so often happens and comparing this poem to the other offerings.....

it is the stellar example of what good poetry looks like.

Life imitating art and art imitating life.

*In my humble of humblest opinions, the biggest problem with this poem is the poor use of the word AND. And can be used as the INCLUSIVE device but in poetry, it is better used as the EMPHATIC device.



[This message has been edited by Maggie Porter (edited December 07, 2004).]

Dear Rhina,

I’m very grateful for your generous time and effort with all these poems. I'm just sorry that it became contentious.

I nearly croaked when you pointed out the grammatical error. How could I have missed it? There’s a biblical expression about the scales falling from one’s eyes that seems appropriate here. I’d like to take comfort in the clarity of the semantic sense (thanks, John) but, of course, it won’t do.

These are five of eight stanzas in the original version, which made it clearer that this was a tragedy shared by a group of brothers and sisters at play. That was lost in the cut, which is probably why you were left unsatisfied about the brother. A rewrite of S3 would give me an opportunity to rectify that and cure the grammatical error in one stroke.

I have already rewritten S4 to cure the cloying sentimentality. It has the added advantages of getting rid of the superfluous modifier “little” (what other kind of corpse would a kitten leave?) and giving me a better slant with “corpse” than “home”.

Mama freed the broken corpse
and told us to be brave.
She said there was a better world
beyond the backyard grave.

Thanks also to all my other commentators as well. I will take your remarks into account as I revise.

Bill