[Susan McLean]

Bruce Bennett:
The second most numerous type of poem I received (tied with rondeaux) is also the shortest, the triolet. Again, the quality of craft was high, so I looked for poems that surprised me by how much could be implied and suggested by only eight rhyming lines, one repeated twice and one once. I chose three triolets, and will comment on all three in this posting.

First, “Being the Bad Guy:


Being the Bad Guy

She doesn't want to face it, yet
you're forced to force her to. Today
you bring it up; she gets upset.
She doesn't want to face it yet.
You love her, and you'd like to let
your aging mother have her way.
She doesn't want to. Face it. Yet
you're forced, too. Force her to. Today.


Yesterday I broached the question of how far villanelles can go toward introducing and sustaining a narrative. But a villanelle seems positively spacious compared to a triolet. Yet, “Being the Bad Guy” provides a stunning example of a really short poem implying an entire dramatic situation with remarkable intensity.

At times, one has to be “the bad guy” with one’s “aging mother” for everyone’s good, no matter how much one loves her and how distasteful that role may be. I am reminded of “hint fiction,” where a full-length work of prose can be adumbrated through just a few sentences, or even words. We don’t know what the specific issue is in this poem – perhaps the son or daughter has to tell the mother she must go into a nursing home – but we do hear, and are made to feel, the speaker’s reluctant willingness to act, finally, under the urgent prodding of necessity.

What I especially admire are the minute changes in the repeating lines which, in the most precise manner, carry the dramatic and emotional weight of the poem. We go from “She doesn’t want to face it, yet…” to “She doesn’t want to face it yet” to “She doesn’t want to. Face it. Yet…” That is brilliantly-nuanced writing. And it is matched by “you’re forced to force her to. Today…’, which becomes the climactic ending, “you’re forced, too. Force her to. Today.” Not only does every syllable count; every syllable stresses the imperativeness of taking an action that nobody really wants. It’s masterful, and showcases what it is possible to contain in a tiny triolet.