[R. Nemo Hill]

I think Petra is correct, Roger. The mother comes off as extremely neurotic here--the sonnet seems well aware of that and eager to emphasize it. Even in the more fancifully descriptive close: those beautiful images?--they're his. The poem defends the boy's own vision there and leaves the possessive mother empty-handed. Any subtlety can be explained, I think, by compassion for a dilemma of motherhood that is, after all, somewhat universal if varying in degree. Returning to the epigraph after reading the poem, the coda "This should not be a cause for concern" does thus seem a gently ironic commentary on the mother's attitude.

Nemo

[Susan McLean]

I like this and agree with those who read criticism of the mother in the poem. I would say that "anxious tone" might be a good substitute for "nervousness." I find the "now" at the start of L4 to be awkward. It doesn't add anything and can create a metrical stumble with the headless iamb. I very much like the emphasis in the end on the beauty that the child will see and that the mother can't see because she focuses too much on what he can't see. I am picturing paintings by Giotto, though I realize that the context is contemporary. I don't find the shift to a different sense to be jarring because the emphasis on differing perceptions fits that shift. If we only look, we don't feel.

Susan

[Carol Taylor]

This one doesn't ring true to me. How can a child get to be five years old and in school without his mother knowing he can't distinguish red from green? Didn't she ever buy him a coloring book?

For those who think the mother's reaction is harsh, including the poet, I suggest that any mother would feel concern knowing there are so many things her child will miss out on. Her anxiety and denial doesn't mean she's blaming him, she's just trying to convince herself it isn't so, and she'll be fine as soon as she accepts the fact. Too much is being made of the metaphorical differing views. She's concerned for her son. How is she to understand he won't miss what he's never seen? Color blindness may not be as serious a handicap as deafness, but it's certainly less fixable than crooked teeth or being pidgeon-toed.

Carol

[Julie Steiner]

I wouldn't go so far as Carol does, to say that the mother's overreaction can be explained more sympathetically as extreme concern. Swearing at the kid and treating his condition as a moral failing that can be drummed out of him with repeated questioning...well, that degree of ugliness is pretty damning evidence that the mother does not see things through her son's eyes, either literally or figuratively.

But is the mother unwilling to empathize, or unable? For me, that is the key question here, which puts me closer to Carol's position of greater sympathy for the apparent villain. Certainly, the mother's view of what constitutes an appropriate parental response to this situation is different from that of most readers. And her crime--failing to appreciate the child's perspective--becomes its own punishment, when she misses out on the wonders we glimpse in the final lines. We readily accept that it is not the kid's fault that he can't distinguish color, but I wonder if it's the mother's fault that she is ill-equipped to handle this situation. Maybe her unenlightened response is a side-effect of whatever circumstances have given her such limited clothing options (The hot pink sweatpants that she always wears), in a home with such mismatched decor (maroon couch, green-striped carpet). Poverty? Mental illness? A chronic lack of taste? I don't know. And without knowing, I find it difficult to feel as judgmental of the mother as the poet seems to want me to feel.

If I forgo the emotional satisfaction of meting out judgment, the sonnet still makes me think. That's a success, in my book.

Miscellaneous responses to other comments:

This one doesn't ring true to me. How can a child get to be five years old and in school without his mother knowing he can't distinguish red from green? Didn't she ever buy him a coloring book?

For all but a few meticulous kids--usually girls--the point of coloring books isn't to get the right colors in the right places, but simply to saw away with whatever crayons are handy. Process, not product. As a parent, I certainly wouldn't have blinked at my preschooler's red grass or green fire engines.

Also, I don't get why the note says the child "may" have red-green color blindness. If this is an otherwise normal five year old who can identify various numbers, shapes and letters, the test for color blindness is pretty definitive. You show the kid the bubbles and if he can't see the number, shape or letter inside, it means he's color blind.

Roger, I regard the "may" as standard school-issued waffle. School nurses have legal obligations to screen for scoliosis, vision and hearing problems, etc., depending on state law, but they aren't allowed to make actual medical diagnoses.

[Catherine Chandler]

Formatting problem in line 9 has been corrected. Thanks, Julie.

[R. Nemo Hill]

By the way, I think the title needs re-thinking on this one. It's so obvious it has a flattening effect on the poem.

Thanks for re-formatting, Cathy, much better.

Nemo

[Michael Cantor]

This one puzzles me. It's not getting through to me, and the problem might be me, not the poem. It's another one that sounds like two different poems. The mother seems overly harsh, almost irrational, considering that (a) the kid is only five, and (b) I don't see this as a major problem. The depiction of the child's world in the last four lines is beautiful - but, for whatever reason, they don't play off each other well enough for me to rate the poem highly. Possibly my problem is that I don't know whether the poem is sympathetic to the mother, or critical - and I seem to think it's important to determine that judgement - and I get stuck. Dunno. But I somehow feel that the poem is better than the reading I am providing, that I'm missing something.

[David Mason]

I think I'm with Michael on this one. It's not that the metaphor of color blindness isn't perfectly good, but that the dramatic significance of the conflict isn't clinched in a way that really gets it across. I think of the sonnets of EA Robinson as counter examples of ordinary detail made grippingly precise.

[John Beaton]

The idea of parlaying colour-blindness into “different visions” of the world to the extent that they might cause a mother to worry about a rift in the mother/child relationship has good possibilities. And this poem expresses such a mother’s concern quite well.

However, most of the poem is founded on differences in colour perceptions of a couch, sweatpants, and a carpet line. Without a deeper examination of the implications of those differences, it labours to make the development convincing. By L10 it becomes a bit expository.

L12-14 raise it to a new level, but late in the game.

The epigraph may come across as a circumvention of the sonnet’s line limitation. I would have liked it better as part of the poem.

John

[Petra Norr]

I talked about the poem earlier, but I never said what I thought of it. I think people here have made some valid points and some of the criticism is justified. But I like the poem better than most people do. The sestet is gorgeous. With three(?) more poems to come in the bake-off, this sonnet might not make my list in the end. But it won't be far behind the top.