[Joe Crocker]

rev 1
Losing the plot

Now that I am old,
half deaf, unsighted, and forgetful,
I struggle to engage.

My hearing aid won’t help. It hisses
sibilants that camouflage the shape
of words I thought I knew.

My crouching cockeyed glasses see the distance out of true.
Wayward, they are looking to escape,
homesick for a settled point of view.

The list of things to do is curt and misses
out the things I used to do.

And jokes just laugh among themselves.
I do not ask them to explain their laughter.
That spark will not be worried after.

Often I am looked at like I’m odd.
I misjudge the tide, marooned or overwhelmed.
Often, yes, I simply smile and nod.

A wind is blowing way over my head.
I wonder what it brings:
the leavings from some far-off chatter,
nearer now, the hushing shadow
at the end of things.





Losing the plot.

Now that I am old,
half deaf, unsighted, and forgetful,
I struggle to engage.

My hearing aid won’t help. It hisses
sibilants that camouflage the shape
of words I thought I knew.

My crouching cockeyed glasses see the distance out of true.
Wayward, they are looking to escape,
homesick for a settled point of view.

The list of things to do is curt and misses
out the things I used to do.

And jokes just talk among themselves.
I do not ask them to explain their laughter.
That spark will not be worried after.

Often I am looked at like I’m odd.
I misjudge the tide, marooned or overwhelmed.
Often, yes, I simply smile and nod.

A wind is blowing way above my head.
I wonder what it brings:
the leavings from some far-off chatter,
nearer now, the hushing shadow
at the end of things.

[Roger Slater]

I think this is very good, but did you mean to post it in Metrical?

[Max Goodman]

I like this, Joe.

The last stanza feels different than the rest, more evocative, less prosey/prosaic. The rest might be pushed in that direction with more concision. (Half deaf, unsighted, and forgetful,/I struggle to engage.//My hearing aid hisses...)

In another way, too, the last stanza doesn't feel to me like it fits the rest of the poem: Despite its unhelpful second line, the last stanza is about knowing what is going on. Maybe a turn could make it clearer that the poem recognizes this change in approach.

The glasses make clear--and much of the rest implies--that the speaker is not "unsighted."

FWIW.

[RCL]

Very good and powerful, Joe. I can easily identify with the litany of old age maladies, including the wonderment of the final S, which I think should end with a question mark. I also agree with Roger that this would be more appropriate in non-met.

Oh, on "unsighted," how about less sighted or dimly sighted?

Refreshingly honest about what we didn't sign up for. Thanks.

[Carl Copeland]

I’m happy to have this in met. It’s anisometric (just learned the word), but we don’t have an anisomet forum, and it’s iambic from start to finish (allowing for some headlessness).

The jokes talking among themselves is probably my favorite bit, but I wonder about “worry after.” Is that idiomatic in the UK, or am I mistaking your meaning?

A mark of punctuation is missing after “head.”

We can’t tell whether “nearer now” refers to the leavings or the shadow, but it may not matter.

Actually, I think my favorite line is a very plain one: “I wonder what it brings.” For me, this captures the mood of the whole poem: a calm, resigned curiosity about the process of aging. If only we could all age as philosophically as this narrator.

[Carl Copeland]

It just came to me! The mood of this poem is mono no aware. I don’t know Japanese, but someone once described it this way: a woman looks in the mirror, sees gray in her hair, sighs and senses the poignantly beautiful passing of all things.

[Mark McDonnell]

I think this is wonderful, Joe. It’s gentle and poignant but sharp enough so there is no self-pity. There is still a self-aware twinkle in the narrator’s eye. I like the narrator of this poem. I agree it is absolutely metrical. It is also very musical. I love the scattered rhymes, throughout, which feel random but always in just the right place.

Mark

[Joe Crocker]

Well that reaction was surprisingly positive. I’m always hopeful when I put poems up here that the things I’ve worked at will come through. It’s a good feeling when they do. Part of me suspects that we may all be on a high after absorbing Mark’s Ulysses and some of that wellbeing has spilled over onto my thread.

Roger. So glad you liked it. Is it metrical? I don’t know. It certainly isn’t strictly metrical. I did feel I wanted to loosen the bindings a little. It doesn’t follow any set structure but my words tend naturally to come out Iambic, and it has plenty of rhymes and half-rhymes. I deliberately mixed them up a little so that they were less predictable. I think some rhymes can be too glaring (eg hisses/misses.) And one way of making them subtler is to put more space between them. I come back to Stallings' manifesto “Rhymes may be so far apart, you cannot hear them, but they can hear each other". I also like her point that “Rhyme can also free a poem from fixed line length. A rhyme lets us hear the end of the line, so lines may be of any metrical length, or even syllabic, and still be heard." So, unusually for me I didn’t deliberately count beats when writing this but relied on reading it aloud to see if it sounded right and could stay. But I know that others won’t always share my sense of rightness. I don’t have a strong opinion under which heading it would more comfortably sit.

Max. It isn’t quite metrical but it does use some words more for their contribution to rhythm than to meaning. So yes “ My hearing aid won’t help. It hisses” could benefit from being cut to “My hearing aid hisses.” Then again, the “won’t help” adds an agency to the inanimate object. Not only does the hearing aid not help, it stubbornly refuses to help. This seems to be a common theme between us grumpy old men, that the technology and crutches we now rely on are secretly ganging up on us.

By “Unsighted” I was meaning the verb where one’s view is being obstructed by some unwanted object (eg the hat of someone in front of you at a concert). I am broadening its definition a little here but not so wide as to mean “blind”. I mean it more in keeping with a curmudgeonly sense that if I can’t see clearly then it is probably someone or something else’s fault (eg my string of rubbish cheap spectacles, that I sit on and bend and which go out of their way to hide themselves from me)

The final stanza does have a different tone. As Carl says, It is a sort of sigh.

Thanks Ralph, I see, like Max that “unsighted” doesn’t work well for you either. So I may need to rethink it. Thanks too for picking up on the "wondering" at he end. I’ll think about the question mark too. I have only recently started to think seriously about old age – its always been something that happens to other people -- realising how often I now defer to my children’s opinions and accept their help and that of strangers.

Carl. Thanks again for your close reading. Always helpful. “Worried after” isn’t a UK idiom. I think it is my own confection. It sounds a little odd, but I hope it makes sense, and manages to capture both meanings -- to be concerned about, and to gnaw at. Nothing is guaranteed to suck the atmosphere out of a happy company than being asked to explain a joke. The joke resents it, and the questioner will regret it.

I had noticed, after the fact,that “nearer now” in the penultimate line could refer to the chatter on the previous line as well as the coming shadow. I decided that I liked that ambiguity.

Anisometric, Mono no aware. ?! Those are new to me. Had a quick google but still not quite sure. But your explanation of a sigh and a kind of acceptance is nice.

Mark. I was worried thar this may be seen as another in a series of sad old git poems, and am glad you picked up on the comic element. Once upon a time I was quite competent in the world. I am (was ?) a scientist, played with computers, wrote code, but never quite got used to smartphones. My (grown) kids still laugh at my mounting frustration using them (“aww look, he’s using his fingers!”). Does the phrase “he’s all thumbs” mean “dextrous” now?

Nemo, John, many thanks too for your support.

Joe

[Joe Crocker]

Hi Jim

Just noticed that we cross-posted. Thanks for your take on it. Yes, I am intending a sadness at getting to that point in life where I need to accept, or at least get used to, failing physical and mental capacities. I certainly get a feeling of isolation in company when I’m not keeping up.

Tercets. I could tidy things up, regularise the stanzas, line-lengths. But I do quite like the unevenness that keeps things slightly unpredictable, a more faithful reflection of the actual thought processes, hopping from one idea to another. (I find I get more ADHDish these days)

“A wind is blowing way above my head”. There are more interesting ways of saying this, but I wanted to use the vernacular because it echoes the title “losing the plot”. When someone is explaining something in very technical language that we find difficult to follow then you might turn to your neighbour saying “well, that went way above my head.”. As I get older, more things go way above my head. Once, when I had more confidence in my intellectual abilities, I might presume the speaker was being pretentious. Or I might think, that with a little more application on my part, I could get the sense of it. These days, I’m more likely to just let it go.

Hey ho

Joe

[John Riley]

Yes, this is simple in the best sort of way. There are so few poems written about aging. You've done it here is the rightest right way. I see nothing I'd change.