After
You are gone
I live here alone
with the dog
he will soon follow
nose to the ground
tail like a plume
disappearing down the path
which interwoven spruces' branches
enclose like a shroud.
Memories settle like a fine dust
everywhere, I dust and clean,
still molecules fill every crevice
of the house and my brain.
The water in my bath
glides over me like your hands
circles clockwise then
disappears down the drain with a sigh.
From the spruces,
where stolen blue from the sky
tinges each needle blue-green,
a white-throated sparrow
calls Old Peabody-Peabody-Peabody
ending with his pensive notes
Wait-up, Wait-up.
Wait-up, I repeat: Wait for me.
Copyright 2012 by Joem D. Phillips
Critique by Tracy Koretsky
It is no exaggeration to say that I cried when I first read this month's poem, "After", from the collection A Voice Alone by Joem D. Phillips of Santee, South Carolina, and Campobello Island, Canada. What is more surprising, though, is that despite many readings, I continue to find it deeply moving. Honest, pellucid, in no way sentimental, manipulative or mawkish, its declarative tone is direct, humble and altogether human.
Though its topic might elicit fear or drama, there is a calm assurance to this poem. This may be, in part, due to its confident sense of place conveyed through the naming of the bird, and the meaning of its song.
Likewise, in another possibly very fine poem, this topic might inspire specificity: "your tennis trophy", "our travel souvenir", "the pictures of our children". However, the images here—the well-observed dog, the house with its quotidian demands, the quiet but undeniable sexuality of the water circling the drain, the return to the trail with its spruces who bear their ancient witness—are available to us all to share, comprehend, and empathize with. The power of this poem is that to understand it, all a reader need bring is an open heart.
Which is not to say that Phillips's use of images is unsophisticated. Notice how she transits, in the manner of poetry, from one dominant image to the next.
Something similar is true of her diction choices. So unassuming is this diction, that there is no attempt to call blue anything other than blue. Dust is repeated because dust is repeating; it's everywhere, all the time, always more of it. Clearly, to be unassuming is a tonal choice.
Yet there is more to it; observed carefully, the sounds, like the images, shift in their dominance from stanza to stanza. The o and u sounds connect the first stanza with their subtle, invisible threads. The second stanza, much more staccato as the poet's day proceeds, is stitched together with s's and t's, moving into the final stanza whose subject is sound, sound created by fellow travelers whom, like the sound patterns in the previous stanzas, we may not at first be able to discern.
Towards revision, I would reconsider the punctuation of this piece. Actually, punctuation deserves consideration in each and every poem we write. Sometimes, it seems to me, poets fear punctuation. I theorize that this is because poetry does not always adhere to the standard rules of grammar, with its propensity for "run-ons" and "fragments", as our grade school teachers used to say, as well as other syntactical irregularities.
Often, rather than be "incorrect", poets skip punctuation entirely, relying instead on line breaks. This is a misunderstanding of the line break. We break our lines in poetry to create a tension in opposition to the sentence. Line breaks work with grammar, not instead of it. One widely held misconception is that that the end of a line indicates a pause. It does not; that is the function of punctuation.
This is why punctuation ought to be a delight to poets. It operates musically, directing the degree of pause, or a change of timbre. A period, obviously, is a full stop, akin in its way, to a quarter note. Everything has been said. A comma, with its promise of more to come, is more like an eighth note rest. There is no greater friend in reducing verbosity than the colon. The dash indicates a change: tone, subject, address, anything really, whether internal to the sentence or arriving at its end. Such changes lend texture and complication to our poems. Whereas a semicolon, it seems to me, describes the very essence of poetry itself, by bringing two disparate ideas together (just remember that the general rule is that there be a verb on both sides of the semicolon).
Occasionally there is a valid expressive reason for choosing either to forgo punctuation or use it in non-standard ways—for instance, where the poem's subject suggests a very spare presentation, or the poem is built of imagistic fragments, or there is an intentional desire to conflate and confuse the syntax. Though this can be very stylish and often affecting, the choice to omit punctuation always comes with a risk. Readers require grammar; that's just part of reading. If the poet asks the reader to supply unspecified grammar, some cognitive energy will necessarily be spent there. While this may be a fun mental exercise, potentially engaging the reader actively, be aware: that energy will have to be spent before the poem can be comprehended, and more importantly, before it can be felt.
Which is why careful, unobtrusive grammar choices support an emotionally potent poem like "After". Just look at the difference these small changes make in the opening lines:
You are gone.
I live here alone
with the dog.
The full stop at the end of the first line is so definitive, so incontrovertible. The closed-door fact of it is no longer mitigated by the existence of the dog.
The next two lines could end in a period, comma or semicolon with differing, mostly rhythmic, effects. The same is true of these lines:
Memories settle like a fine dust
everywhere, I dust and clean,
Memories settle like a fine dust
everywhere I dust and clean.
Memories settle like a fine dust
everywhere. I dust and clean,
Memories settle like a fine dust
everywhere. I dust and clean.
Memories settle like a fine dust.
Everywhere. I dust and clean.
Here not only does the rhythm change, but there is a slight shading of the meaning too. Are the memories evoked by the specific objects and places she dusts and cleans? Or are the memories like fine dust in general, adding to the futility of her response? In the last example I demonstrate how a poet might choose to ignore the formal principles of grammar in order to orchestrate a rhythm to the words.
This may sound overly basic, but a good first step to rethinking the punctuation in our poems is to reset the text temporarily as if it were prose. Oddly, standard punctuation comes more easily this way. Then the poem must then be read aloud, repeatedly, and possibly experimented with. When the poem sounds right to its author's ears, guiding punctuation can be added.
In the end though, even if Phillips had removed every bit of punctuation from this piece, I would still have been moved by it. Punctuation can never, in itself, make a poem as affecting as this one is. That can only be done when a poet is unafraid to share her humanity.
Where might a poem like "After" be submitted? The following contests may be of interest:
Pat Schneider Poetry Contest
Postmark Deadline: July 1
Amherst Writers & Artists, a well-regarded writing workshop, offers $1,000 for unpublished poems; winners invited to give a reading in Western Massachusetts
Porter Fleming Competition
Postmark Deadline: July 13
Prizes of $1,000 for poetry, short fiction, essays, and dramatic works by residents of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, South Carolina or North Carolina who are aged 18+
This poem and critique appeared in the June 2012 issue of Winning Writers Newsletter (subscribe free).
Categories: Poetry Critiques
