[FOsen]

Coming back to agree with Maryann's comment - it would have been all too easy to workshop out the daughter-in-law - I like this the better for not having done so. Her presence is one of the elements that allows this to occupy the unique space it does.

[Chris Childers]

I think the wife has joined the husband by writing the poem. "This subway token" must be the sonnet itself, and as such reminds me strongly of Rossetti's poem on the sonnet, particularly the sestet:

A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
The soul,--its converse, to what Power 'tis due:--
Whether for tribute to the august appeals
Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue
It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.

There is at least a hint--more than, considering the title--that the poem has been either literally or metaphorically slipped into the hand of the dead man.

That said, I don't love this one: the crowdedness of the language, overwriting in 5-7, "wealthy-waking," the meter in line 9, & I don't know why the slipping of the nickel into the father's hand is "all you knew of touch." I need more space to be interested in the "content." As it is, I can't dissociate content from form and I'm not loving the form.

Chris

[John Beaton]

In response to your comments about pov above, Maryann, I had drafted a longer comment than the one I posted. It probed more deeply into the pov question and got a bit complex. However, it addressed the issue you raise.

I agree with what you've written, and I think this could work in the way you describe. But I part company with that perspective when I read "a rite of our own making". Here N is claiming co-origination of what was and, in my view, should still be, the son's personal ritual. Even it was at his wife's suggestion that he repeated it at his father's deathbed, I think she moves too much to the fore when she refers to it as "of our own making".

That's why I had the reaction I cited above. If it said that they placed the token in the father's hand jointly, I'd say it works. Maybe that's what the poet meant and this was a minor concession to rhyme.

Anyway, it's a small point, and it doesn't seem to stop the "emotional arc" coming through.

John

[Rose Kelleher]

Chris, I love all those little flourishes you dislike - "wealthy-waking" etc. Why is it "crowded"? Why not "textured"? And "all you knew of touch" refers to the boy's experience with the father, who was never around except when he was asleep. Yes, that could be more precise, but it's pretty clear in context, I thought.

I don't understand the objection to N's presence in the poem. She's his wife. She sympathizes with the little boy he once was, and with the man he is now. She grieves because he grieves. It's not the same kind of grief, of course, that goes without saying, but they're married, they're together in this. Nemo mentioned "healing" - the wife's presence now helps make up for the father's absence in the past. Without her by his side, this would just be a depressing poem about a funeral.

I'm reminded of Alfred Nicol's gut-wrenching sonnet, "Your Other Men," and Stephen Scaer's sonnet about the in-law's funeral where the jerk is getting eulogized. The story isn't just told by the narrator, it includes the narrator.

The more I read this one the more I like it.

[Alder Ellis]

My problem with the POV is that it's implausible that the wife of the man who was the boy who slipped the coin into his sleeping father's hand many years ago is going to have such a vividly sensory memory of the event as in lines 1-3. It comes across as a fantasy on her part, consequently, & is misleading for the reader.

Re. the sentence fragments in lines 4-8: line 4 works well with the implied predicate "it was," but the next two strike me as somewhat clumsy, especially with the unspecified antecedent (not immediately obvious who is being referred to).

"father's" in L9 is a nice, reader-friendly clue to what's going on, but in context, where the preceding line had "he," one would surely expect "his." It is clumsily expository. I would consider reworking lines 5-9 as a single complete sentence with the identity of "he" more felicitously introduced.

Small point: I think "into" would work better than "in" in the penultimate line. More idiomatic, & of course echoing the title.

Content-wise, a wonderful poem. If it were my poem (which it ain't) I would try simplifying the concept by dropping the wife out of the equation. The wife does add a dimension of meaning but also creates aesthetic problems. The poem is not a convincing "dramatic monologue" of a wife, rather an omniscient narrative implausibly attributed to a wife. At least, that's how I see it... (I think I am making a point similar to one of John's, not sure...)

[Rose Kelleher]

He told his wife the story, and she's telling us how she imagines it. What's wrong with that? Should she pretend to have a weak imagination, or relate the story in a vague, boring way, so as to be more believable?


Here's the Alfred Nicol sonnet, by the way:
http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=5633

The poem wouldn't be as powerful if it weren't so vivid. Yet N wasn't there to see it, so how can he describe it? To that, I say: Pbbbbbbbbbt. ;-)

[Wendy Sloan]

It is a moving, dramatic & effective story.
I was confused the first time through, but on second read it seemed perfectly clear. I don't know if the poem needs smoothing or revision ... or if it's just one of those poems that has to be read more than once ...

The story's told by the wife: her husband ("you") used to slip his father (the subway worker who'd come home tired and drunk and crash) a nickle. The extreme reserve of this father/son relationship is briefly sketched in a few words -- "all you knew of touch" -- and the fact, noted, that the father never said anything about his son's act. Now, coffin-side, the wife is repeating the story as the two of them say goodbye to the father by slipping a subway token into his"cosmetic" (i.e., prepared by the undertaker) hand.

A lot is said in a few words here. And there's a turn -- from relating the husband's childhood act of leaving the nickle in his father's hand, to the present coffin-side gesture the husband & wife have hit upon.

Very original.

N can relate the story so vividly because ... being a poet, she's able to use her imagination!

[A. E. Stallings]

I think this is very fine, and I like the rich texture of it. The idea of sonnet as token, a la Rossetti (bringing us back to payment for the ferryman), as Chris points out, is a very attractive one. I do think the POV issues could be clarified, and that that would make this stronger. One of the problems is referring to "father" as though he were the speaker's own (in addition to the re-visioning of events, so that one feels the speaker was present--a sibling?), when he is the speaker's husband's father. the line could be "into your father's room, bearing your coin" (isn't "bright" overused by us poets anyway?). This ambiguity doesn't add anything to the poem, just makes for one having to carefully re-read. It is worth that careful re-reading, of course, but then also perhaps some careful revision: I do think some small tweaks would put the focus back on the poem's strengths, which are considerable.

[David Rosenthal]

I like this for its strangeness and specificity. I like the symmetry with the title and the extra line. It covers a lot of ground -- narratively, symbolically, thematically, temporally -- in a short space, which is to be admired. The danger in such an operation is to be so complicated that you lose the reader. It almost happened for me, but I held on. I suspect Mr. Cassity was right about the pronouns being the culprit there.

David R.

[Terese Coe]

As per some of the remarks by Turner Cassity and Messrs. Cantor and Childers, I find the writing too complicated and overcrowded. Combine complicated phrases with syntactical irregularities (eg "you'd slip a nickel"--into what?) and the writing becomes somewhat affected and consequently unappealing. "All you knew of touch" and "wealthy-waking" are heavy on the shorthand (probably in order to be crowded into the sonnet form), and the end is too predictable.

As for "the joke," it needs to be brought home with at least another line about the father's reaction.

Of course there is (possibly great) talent here, but it strikes me as excessively worked over.