[Joe Crocker]

rev 3

Self-reflection

I try not to look at myself in the mirror,
and the face that I don’t recognise.
The hopes that I had for it languish and wither.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror.
And this is my vanity. Cracks wanting filler
-- I would rather ignore than revise.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror.
That face. I can’t meet its eyes.



rev 2

Self-reflection

I try not to look at myself in the mirror,
avoiding a face that I don’t recognise.
The hopes that I had for it languish and wither.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror.
And there is my vanity. Cracks wanting filler
are best to ignore than to probe or surprise.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror,
avoiding that face. I can not meet its eyes.




rev 1

Self-reflection

I try not to look at myself in the mirror
and the face I do not recognise.
The hopes that I had for it languish and wither.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror.
And that is my vanity. Cracks wanting filler
-- I would rather ignore than surprise.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror
or that face. I can not meet its eyes.



original

I try not to look at myself in the mirror
and the face I do not recognise.
The hopes that I had for it languish and wither.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror.
And that is my vanity. Cracks wanting filler
-- I’d rather ignore than despise.
I try not to look at myself in the mirror.
That face. I cannot meet its eyes.

[David Callin]

By jingo. A triolet, if I'm not mistaken. And a good one too, I think - quite searing self-scrutiny, though, Joe.

You might want to look at L6. I'm not sure that works, either metrically or for the sense of it (which I can't follow).

Cheers

David

[Hilary Biehl]

Overall I think this is good, Joe, but definitely has some metrical problems. I think you may have caused yourself difficulties by trying to make lines 2, 6, and 8 shorter by a foot in a largely anapestic poem. (At least, I'm assuming that was your intention?) The problem is that none of these lines scan in the same meter as the longer lines. L8, for instance, reads to me as iambic tetrameter:

That FACE. i CANnot MEET its EYES.

But I assume you are wanting it to scan with 3 beats, like the other lines that rhyme with it. Perhaps you were reading it as

That FACE. i canNOT meet its EYES.

L2 reads to me as follows:

and the FACE i DO not REcogNIZE.

So it begins with an anapest and then falls into iambs, and has 4 beats, like L8. Again, I think you are wanting it to scan:

and the FACE i do NOT recogNIZE.

L6 actually does fit the pattern I think you were trying to establish, but, like David, when I first read this I thought L6 was a mess metrically and I didn't know what it meant. I think I understand it now, though.

The main problem, I think, is that these lines I have highlighted are metrically ambiguous in the larger context of the poem. It's too easy to read them iambically so that they have the same number of beats or feet as the longer lines. But then you have a poem that is metrically all over the place.

These issues are fixable, though, and I think that the poem is worth fixing.

[Joe Crocker]

Hi David. Yes a triolet of sorts. But with half rhymes and some broken format rules.

I was going for mostly anapests and the "mirror" rhyme lines in tetrameter and the "ise" rhyme lines in trimeter.

I can see that I didn't quite succeed and have tweaked it a little to try to fix it.
L6 is a little awkward. I was trying to say that the N's vanity is in refusing to accept the evidence of their aging and choosing instead to avoid looking at it. I have also tweaked this line by replacing "despise" with "surprise" which I like much better. So thanks for that.

Joe

Cross-posted with you Hilary. Some of the changes may answer the problems you saw. But I will get back to you.

[Joe Crocker]

Hello again Hilary. I think you have my intentions correct. This is how I meant it to be stressed.

I TRY not to LOOK at mySELF in the MIRror
and the FACE I do NOT recogNISE.
The HOPES that I HAD for it LANguish and WITHer.
I TRY not to LOOK at mySELF in the MIRror
And THAT is my VANity. CRACKS wanting FILLer
-- I would RATHer igNORE than surPRISE.
I TRY not to LOOK at mySELF in the MIRror
or that FACE. I can NOT meet its EYES.

But you may be right that it is too ambiguous metrically. Or I'm asking the reader to crash the gears of accepted pronunciation. esp in "recognISED" and "canNOT". I have split the latter into two words now to make my preferred stress a little easier to adopt (I hope).

[Joe Crocker]

A bit late at night and I should probably sleep on it, but here is another revision. Metre more regularised, but still perhaps some unexpected wrenches.

[Matt Q]

Hi Joe,

I like the idea here. It's just a question of how best to tighten things up. I also like the idea of triolet in ballad metre a fair bit. I wonder if you've moving to tet just because of L2? Maybe it's worth putting more time into seeing if you can get the ballad metre to work?

In the first line (and its repetition) it strikes me that "at myself" is somewhat redundant, and maybe pads the line a little.

I try not to look in the mirror / at that face that I don't recognise

seems to say the same thing. So maybe there's a better use for that foot? (Or maybe you can even get the whole thing in trimeter?)

I prefer "best to ignore than despise" to "best to ignore than probe or surprise". I'm not sure how he can surprise the cracks wanting filler. I guess the idea is that he startles them, comes on them suddenly?

In the last line of the revisions "can not" rather than "cannot" seems a little odd. And actually, that line seems to be pentameter:

aVOIDing that FACE. i CAN not MEET its EYES.

I guess one might stress "not" instead. Still, wouldn't "can't" work?

best,

Matt

[Hilary Biehl]

Hi Joe, I think that keeping your original conception of alternating four- and three-foot lines is doable. As Matt suggested, "at the face that I don't recognise" is a fix for L2. I'm sure there are similar fixes for the others.

I didn't say this in my earlier comment, but I did like the abruptness of your original L8. Maybe "That face. I can't meet its eyes" would work? It's not perfectly anapestic but I think you can get away with it because of the period.

I also think your revision of L6 doesn't work grammatically.

[Yves S L]

Hello Joe,

I just don't see what you are doing with the "man looking in the mirror trope". Okay, so you have the language flat, and if you take the musicality out of a repeating form then what do you have left: cliches.

Yeah!

[Joe Crocker]

Thanks Matt and Hilary. Having slept on it I think you are right that the earlier alternating meter versions read better. So I’ll go back and salvage that in rev 3

Matt. Still thinking about despise v surprise. I think I’ll try revise for size. And Hilary, given that several triolet rules are broken, and the last line is already not a close link to L2, then, if it makes the poem better, why not butcher it properly? I have taken your advice and shortened the last line.

Thanks for dropping in Yves. Sorry it was on the dull side. I’m probably not well-read enough to have picked up the “man looking into mirror “ trope. But I would say that the poem is more about a man avoiding looking into the mirror, in the vain hope that if he can’t see any evidence of his aging, then he is not aging. Some sort of twist on the Dorian Gray story perhaps. And true, if I have flattened the music then it will be less musical.

Many thanks each of you

Joe