Cameron, I echo others’ enthusiasm for this poem (and also the last one I saw in this vein, which I’m sorry I wasn’t able to comment on.) I find the thesis fascinating and persuasive. And you bring the scenes and the n’s moods, as bizarre and distinctive as they are, to life with such detail and conviction.
“A word’s noose” is great—especially trenchant coming from a poet! Still, starting at the end of S2, it took me a while—a bit too long for my liking—to catch on to the conceit that sighted=word-using=ignorant. And it sounds like you’re asking us to imagine that Adam was still alive at the time of the Flood—is that correct? If so, as a reader, I’d also appreciate a bit of “help” with this.
But I just love that last line. Oh, how I love the way you have forced me to think about things in new ways in your poems on this theme! It’s both scary and exhilarating; it’s definitely humbling. You give exalting defense of the merely physically unsighted in making a distinction between these people and the many others who, while physically sighted, lack inner vision; even suggesting that physical unsightedness can be a portal to a deeper, truer understanding. And I think one of the most compelling and unsettling things about this concept is, Who am I--who is any sighted person--to argue it? To consider the parallels between the potentially stultifying literalism of words and of seen objects is pregnant with potency. I’m reminded of Jesus’ parable about the mote and the beam.
Carl nailed it all in saying, “I struggle with it, and it struggles with itself."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl Copeland
Perhaps Cameron will pardon my use of his poem to illustrate a broader question: I experimented on myself and determined that I wouldn’t have suspected any meter or rhyme here at all if it weren’t for the lineation. That doesn’t make it less poetical, and many here consider such closeted formalism a virtue, but it lacks the sensuality I crave in a formal poem. It must give pleasure to receptors more sensitive than my own. Thoughts? Feelings?
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Carl, I perceive this poem’s meter as straddling the border between poetry and prose, and this struck me as the right balance--perfect, in fact--given the theme and tone. I definitely felt and enjoyed the prosody of the piece but think that more deference to meter would have taken some of the vital edge--that sense of angsty strain against the very world order--off of the poem.