[Janet Kenny]

Rhina,
I remember this poem well. At first I almost dismissed it then was hit by that last line.
Yes, stanzas 3 and 4 will have to be rewritten.
I think it makes sense that there is a crowd of children and the brother is speechless. I was the younger of two children and my brother always said he was "in charge".
I almost felt a hint of "mawk" in four but decided it was probably what would have happened. Pet's funerals are very solemn affairs.
A child digesting the reality of death and the fate of its father is simply and powerfully told.
Janet

[J.A. Crider]

Rhina,I understand exactly what you are saying, and you are right

And Steve, yes, technically this is ungrammatical.

But again, I would assert that in this semantic context, specifically in light of the previous line's information that a group of children has gathered, the meaning of the line in question is pretty close to unambiguous.

I would say it's like one of those optical illusion drawings that looks, at first, like a vase, but upon closer inspection it's also two profiled faces. It depends on your vantage, on what your mind snags on first. And linguistics is game of many perspectives.

I'm a little rusty with all this, but I think that this is basically the gist of Paul Friedrich's "The Language Parallax: Linguistic Relativism and Poetic Indeterminacy." I'd give you a pithy quote, but I can't locate my copy. (Besides being a first-rate ethnographer and linguist, Friedrich is also fine sonneteer).

Rhina, thanks for all the devotion to the commentaries, I am enjoying them immensely.

Sincerely,

John

[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 04, 2004).]

[Steven Schroeder]

John:

I wrote two sentences with the same meaning, one with a misplaced modifier, above. Was the meaning of either one unclear? I don't think so. Nevertheless, the one with the misplaced modifier was an inferior sentence. Why? Because it causes an unwanted hiccup in any informed reader. I won't presume to speak for Rhina, but I certainly think that's an issue, especially in a poem, where every syllable is precious. I think the sentence in the poem was structured as such to fit the meter, not to be the best possible sentence AND fit the meter.

------------------
Steve Schroeder

[J.A. Crider]

Steve:

I take your point about such a mistake causing an "unwanted hiccup in any informed reader."

If, however, you inserted "the," as Maggie suggests--

As [the] eldest, every eye turned
to me

--would that do the trick? Would the use of the definite article before an adjective make it a noun? Example: "The finest is what we offer." I'm here to learn.


Rhina:

I'm not trying to be contentious, so bear with me. I'm going to get some sleep and look at this question fresh in the morning, at which time I'll probably see the error of my ways.

In your explanation, you said that the modifying phrase "as eldest" leaned directly against "eye." But really it doesn't; it leans up against "every eye." Now for me it's clear that "eldest" is singular and "every eye" implies plurality. Therefore, these grammatical facts dissuade me from interpreting "eldest" as modifying "every eye."

OK, again, I'm going to sleep on it. But if you can clarify this for me further I'd appreciate it.

Sincerely,

John



[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 04, 2004).]

[Robt_Ward]

John

I'll have to go with Rhina and Steven here; the sentence won't pass muster. Here's a slightly different take on it:

as written:

As eldest, every eye was turned
toward me. A splat of red
on the sidewalk broke into my trance.

alternate (for grammar):

The eldest, I saw how every eye was turned
toward me. A splat of red
on the sidewalk broke into my trance.

I'm not saying that's better poetry, of course, but it illustrates a point: In the line as written, one wants to assume (from the construction) that "I", the "eldest", "me", is the subject of the sentence, when in fact the "eye" is the subject and the "eldest", "me", is the object. I think this is where it's falling apart. Clearly, in the context of the poem, the subject is the observer, the speaker of the poem, but in this particular line the contorted grammar doesn't support that at all. So in many ways it's the lack of a verb associated with "eldest" that is tripping us up here.

(robt)

[Susan McLean]

May I suggest, as a quick fix to the misplaced modifier, "Since I was eldest, all eyes turned / toward me"?

Susan

[J.A. Crider]

Robert, Rhina and Steven:

I’ve slept on it and I’ll submit in this case.

Still I’m not sure that grammar shouldn’t sometimes take a backseat
to music, meter, and effect. Just this morning I was reading Brodsky’s
Nativity Poems and ran across a formalist piece with this first line
(as translated by Derek Walcott):

“The air—fierce frost and pine-boughs.”

Does this verb-lacking cluster pass grammatical muster? Probably not, but I'll take it.

Just to give this dead horse one final stab, I’ll go back to Rhina’s original
observation that the line “As eldest, every eye was turned/towards me”
invokes “unintentional humor.” Could we as readers accept this as a lovely
misstatement by the poet, a fortuitous hiccup uttered in the child-speak
of the narrator? I probably belabor too much.

The good news is that I think Robert has hit on the perfect solution
for revising the poem, which I would pare down to :

The eldest, I saw every eye turn
towards me.

Thanks all for the lesson,

John




[This message has been edited by J.A. Crider (edited December 07, 2004).]

[Maggie Porter]

Hmm. Poems are to be grammatically correct or well understood by the reader?

In this case, the grammar/diction applies to SPOKEN English as opposed to WRITTEN, and there is a difference. The use of rhyme and meter (loosely) however, cues the metricists on board to take the bull by the horns and squeeze the life right out of the poem...add a ridiculously long sentence in there to attend to the GERUND status of the thing. Bugger. It's a toss up but in my opinion, clarifying a WELL understood dialectical phrase (WE ALL USE THIS PHRASE PEOPLES) would ruin the cadence of the poem. Completely.

This so often happens and comparing this poem to the other offerings.....

it is the stellar example of what good poetry looks like.

Life imitating art and art imitating life.

*In my humble of humblest opinions, the biggest problem with this poem is the poor use of the word AND. And can be used as the INCLUSIVE device but in poetry, it is better used as the EMPHATIC device.



[This message has been edited by Maggie Porter (edited December 07, 2004).]

[Wild Bill]

Dear Rhina,

I’m very grateful for your generous time and effort with all these poems. I'm just sorry that it became contentious.

I nearly croaked when you pointed out the grammatical error. How could I have missed it? There’s a biblical expression about the scales falling from one’s eyes that seems appropriate here. I’d like to take comfort in the clarity of the semantic sense (thanks, John) but, of course, it won’t do.

These are five of eight stanzas in the original version, which made it clearer that this was a tragedy shared by a group of brothers and sisters at play. That was lost in the cut, which is probably why you were left unsatisfied about the brother. A rewrite of S3 would give me an opportunity to rectify that and cure the grammatical error in one stroke.

I have already rewritten S4 to cure the cloying sentimentality. It has the added advantages of getting rid of the superfluous modifier “little” (what other kind of corpse would a kitten leave?) and giving me a better slant with “corpse” than “home”.

Mama freed the broken corpse
and told us to be brave.
She said there was a better world
beyond the backyard grave.

Thanks also to all my other commentators as well. I will take your remarks into account as I revise.

Bill