Light Verse 12: Why You Can't Go Home Again
 

Why You Can’t Go Home Again

There were apples you shouldn’t have bitten,
attacks you should never have written,
friends it was wiser to flee,
punishments one can foresee,
neighborhoods wholly destroyed,
people you need to avoid.

There are journalists wanting a quote,
morals you failed to promote,
merchandise wholly unneeded,
questions you shouldn’t have ceded,
toxins your chimney emitted,
neighbors who want you committed.

There’s your sister in fantasyland,
barricades lately unmanned,
enemies fitter and thinner,
husbands still waiting for dinner,
floods from mysterious torrents,
cops who are waiting with warrants.

If you ever went home, you’d be nuts—
they’d make sausages out of your guts.

Terese Coe

I think this is an example of a particular kind of poem, the poem of paranoia about THEM. Except that paranoia is not quite the word, is it? Be advised that THEY are certainly out to get you. Indeed, have no doubt, if they have not succeeded already, they certainly will.

What can the writer do? Well, Ian Hislop, the revered author of Private Eye, a British magazine that specialises in scurrilous gossip about politicians (JUST the sort of magazine we need I can tell you), characterised The Public as people trapped in a huge vat with shit being thrown on them from above by the rich and powerful. The mushroom principle, if you know the old joke. Every now and again The Public (in the guise of Private Eye) get to throw some back. I think I accept a lot of this characterization of the world we live in.

But poet are not journalists so what can we do. We can write shapely, perfect poems like this. I have written some myself, but none better than this example. I particularly like the way it more than hints that you are to blame Be assured, you are.

Oh this is very, very good. I know I am going to be paranoid about the author. Looks nervously over shoulder before whispering resentfully: Bravo! This is very good.

The prosody in this one is fine, but it doesn't amuse me. Too many of the elements are clichéd, too few surprising.

Susan

What Susan said. Humdrum.

I really love this one. Wonderful unforced rhymes and smooth lines, but it's the message that gets me in the kishkas.

What John Updike said applies to this poem: "Light verse, an isolated acolyte, tends the thin flame of formal magic, and tempers the inhuman darkness of reality with the comedy of human artifice."

I like the idea behind this one but the execution could have been better. As others have noted, the lines should have more pop and wit. And while I'm a definite fan of non sequitur, list-like poems, I think this one could actually have been improved by a better sequencing of the lines, something that tells a bit more of the story - and it could be done with the lines already written. I would have have the mega-disasters come first and used "There are journalists wanting a quote" as the turning point that leads to a better, and less dopey, ending.

Another poem that skates over the surface of a better poem that was never realized. It could have gone one step further to make the language more interesting and create more specific images. One example is the sister in "fantasyland" -- that's such a broad term that it hardly bites. Another example is: "punishments one can foresee" -- maybe the poet can (fore)see the punishments but I can't. In general the poem is in broad strokes until the ending when the sausages pop up. Oh, and I loved the "husbands" in plural -- yup, this bigamist is going to have problems going homes again.

Petra, Petra. How many floods and cops are waiting at home for you? Have you heard of hyperbole? Are your enemies fitter and thinner? How many of your neighborhoods were wholly destroyed?

I assumed, possibly wrongly, that the sister's at the funny farm, to employ another euphemism.