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The poem in question: Power

This is the second in my Famed Trilogy (so named, just now, by me) of Ignorance, Power, and Abdication.

My Paul Simon influence can once again be spotted here, as the verse style was patterned after the song "Save the Life of My Child," though the meter and rhyming points ended up being somewhat different. The surface-level subject matter–suicide–is even the same, though I suspect the motivations behind each are also somewhat different.

This poem is about a man who has gone mad with power. (Oops, I guess I gave away the ending.) However, it is not the all-to-familiar scenario of someone trying to amass all the power he can to be some supreme ruler or some such; rather it is someone who, little by little, bites off more than he can chew, time and again. He eventually discovers that he is seemingly incapable of handling all that is now in his life, and something has to give. Rather than continue to maintain his illusory façade (yes, I know that’s redundant, but darn if it doesn’t sound cool), he finds no alternative but to end it all. Interestingly, a part of him also believes that greater part of fault lies elsewhere than with himself and his foolhardy choices:

The sadness in his heart was but a tiny part
And much more than he felt that he had earned.

Even more interesting, to me at least, is the original version of those lines, which is:

The pressure building up was beginning to tip the cups
And fill up the urns.

The metaphor I was trying for was something about a cup of life being emptied, with death slowly taking over. I decided the metaphor was too oblique even for me, and ultimately changed it. I do think that it fits the contents of the second stanza better, and that the finished lines provide better accompaniment for the first stanza.

As I have re-read this poem over the years, I have never really liked the "mighty lake" of the third stanza. It just doesn’t seem to fit, though it does go well with the line

To wash away his bleak mortality.

I never could come up with a suitable change for the line, so I just left it. As I have been studying this poem while writing this commentary, though, I noted something that I don’t think occurred to me before: it was after he saw the "mighty lake" that

He decided then to leap from the barren, wasted peak

I think a part of him thought there was a possibility of surviving his fall if he fell into water, and so that gave him the "courage" to actually go through with his suicide. That is how I will now justify the line to myself.

The interspersing into the poem of the line

Ignorance can be damning but power can be maddening

is obviously modeled after the similarly used style in Ignorance. The two poems are not really related except through this line, and I suppose that without having read the first, the reference in the second makes little sense. However, out of the 0.26 people reading these commentaries, the odds are that at least 0.18 of them will read both poems–possibly in order–and those are numbers I can live with.

The use of the word but in the line does beg the question whether madness is worse than damnation. I won’t comment one way or the other here, but will attempt to talk about it a little bit more when I get to the commentary for Abdication. That’s called a cliffhanger, and will bring my 0.049 readers back for more.

Overall, I like this poem, though it is a little rough around the edges. It will probably be subject to an entry in my Redux series whenever I get around to it, but I am not embarrassed by it, and I suppose that is saying something, alien in tongue though the saying may be.

The poem in question: A Whisper

There’s not really a lot to say about this poem, but what I said in my last commentary seems to apply pretty well:

The only thing that I can remember about writing this poem is that I wanted to write something. I needed to keep up the streak, even if the end result didn’t turn out as I hoped. I don’t remember what I was writing about then; I’m not sure that I even had anything specific in mind. Possibly I was just putting some words down that I thought could convey some message of which I was unaware.

One thing is for certain: this poem is not very good, and doesn’t really mean anything. (I suppose those are actually two things.) It seems to me that it was written somewhat like Pretense, i.e. I wrote down the first words that came to mind, as quickly as I could, and called it good. I like to keep things like this around so I have something to look at 10+ years later and have a good chuckle at myself.

That is all. Up next (assuming I don’t take another long break in writing) is a hopefully more interesting commentary about a hopefully more interesting (and better) poem. Stay tuned!

The poem in question: Empty Eyes

I have sat down to try and write this entry several times in the past few months, but could never figure out what to say. Tonight, I am up way past my bedtime, as usual, and decided that I had to just get through it so I could move on to other poems, about which words will hopefully come more easily.

The only thing that I can remember about writing this poem is that I wanted to write something. I needed to keep up the streak, even if the end result didn’t turn out as I hoped. I don’t remember what I was writing about then; I’m not sure that I even had anything specific in mind. Possibly I was just putting some words down that I thought could convey some message of which I was unaware. Whatever the forgotten theme, I now have a perspective that I am fairly confident I didn’t have then.

Now that I have one child and one more on the way, I often think about how I am going to teach them the things they need to know to be successful in life. My definition of successful isn’t important for this commentary; only that I want them to be it and I worry about how to help. As with any effort made to do something good, sometimes failure is inevitable, no matter how good of an effort is made toward the goal. Sometimes it happens that expectations are higher than one can reach. Sometimes mistakes are made in ignorance.

Whatever the cause may be, when failure happens, corrective steps need to be taken. This might include anything from further instruction on how to accomplish the task to simple encouraging words to try again. In an effort to teach my three-year-old daughter things, I am constantly reminded of how bright and insightful she is, while at the same time lacking knowledge of many things I take for granted, simply because she has less life experience than I do.

[Insert lame joke about my life experience here.]

Sometimes I get frustrated with constant questions of “Why?” and “How come?” and I have to bite my tongue in order not to snap something that I would regret saying. Sometimes I bite air. I try my best to show my daughter that I love her and want to help her understand why I want her to do things the way I ask her to.

[Insert lame joke about OCD here.]

I now read this poem as being about the opposite of how I want to treat failure, or missed expectations, or ignorance, or anything else. It is from the point of view of someone who has screwed up and is about to be reprimanded for his mistakes, but clearly in an unkind, borderline evil fashion.

Now that that convoluted mess has been written, a bit about the writing style.

This poem is comprised of ABAB style rhyme, which I think is cool when it works. In this case, I think there are some awkward moments, but overall it seems to flow without too much issue. In digging through my various sources, I have found a version with some variations in wording and meter. While I don’t think the version as published on the site is a masterpiece, I think it is somewhat better. The alternate (original?) version is reproduced below, and you, reader, can judge which you think is best.

I don’t think that I could ever forget
Those empty eyes staring at me.
They never held any remorse or regret,
Just cold and ruthless certainty.
The suffering that was caused by those eyes
Goes beyond your wildest belief.
I think their job was to maximize
My suffering, and never offer any relief.

I just stood there, helpless, alone,
Wondering when it would all end.
Never even a glimmer of light shone
In those eyes, while they waited for me to bend.
Finally, I just couldn’t take the pain
And suffering any longer,
And before I could even begin to explain,
I found out who was the stronger.

The poem in question: Poetisms

The final poem of July 9, 1996, Poetisms is by far my favorite. It is very simple, relatively brief, and perfectly sums up my feelings on poetry. I don’t know that there is much else to say about it. As I have mentioned before, if I ever have a book of poems published, I want to to be called "Poetisms."

When I read this poem, it also reminds me of the Simon & Garfunkel song "The Dangling Conversation," and I have the feeling that the song was on my mind when I wrote this poem down. It is a beautiful song.

This is evidently going to be a short commentary, as I have nothing more to say.

The poem in question: What If?

I do not like this poem. I like the idea behind it, but I think the poem itself is not good. I often have ideas that sound really great in my head, and once they break free somehow become a congealed mass of vague incomprehensibility. One such example was today in a Sunday meeting when the teacher asked a question about what you could say to someone who thinks that church is not necessary to attend; the important thing is to spend time with your family, building family relationships, ekcetra, ekcetra. The thought in my head was about being a good example for our families, especially our children, and helping them learn good priorities and the importance of Christ in our lives. I certainly can’t inculcate all that without some divine help, which includes Sunday worship, among other things. When I raised my hand to actually answer the question, it came out very strangely, and then other people started chiming in with other answers, one of which was what I was trying to say, but in an actual sense-making fashion.

Without digging in to look too closely right now, I expect that a large share of my poems are focused on negative emotions and experiences, rather than happy things. This is because, for me at least, happy things are way harder to write about without sounding stupid. My use of language seems to flourish more when dwelling on the depressing. I am proud of the successes I experience in treating happier subjects, because those successes are harder for me to come by.

This is not one of those successes.

As a brief side note before commenting on the text of the poem, I once wrote a poem called "Words," I believe at about the same time I wrote What If? It was a What If?-style treatment of the different effects words can have on people. Sadly, that is all I can remember about it, because at some point I decided it was terrible and purged all copies of it. I wish I could look back on it now, even though I suspect that I would still find it awful.

When I say about the same time as What If?, I am referring to November of 1995. My notebook has two dates: 11/95 and 7/9/96. The poem as displayed on the site is dated July 9, 1996. If I think it is bad now, I wonder how bad I thought it was 11 years ago that I had to rewrite it then. As I type this, I realize that these two days are significant, at least as they relate to what was happening in my life at the times.

November of 1995, to the best of my knowledge, was when I first started growing attached to my high school girlfriend that I have mentioned before. At the time, this girl made me want to be the best person that I knew how to be. I tried hard to Do Things Right in my life (though not exceptionally hard, it would seem, as a lot of our relationship–possibly the bulk of it–occurred before I was sixteen, and as I have mentioned before we do not date before we are sixteen in the LDS church). I suspect that those feelings were at the root of "Words" and What If? This also means that my return to poetry after my freshman English class two years prior happened some four or so months before I thought it did, as referenced in the commentary for What Lies In Wait.

I also suspect that the revisions made in July 1996 were inspired in some way by the poems I had written a few days earlier, namely Insincerity and Cried Out, as those poems were about a girl by whose relationship with me What If? was originally inspired. I don’t know, and don’t suspect I ever will, as I don’t have the original version of What If? any longer. It was tossed out along with "Words."

Regarding the text itself, one of the big problems is it is just clunky, any way you read it. As I said, I like the ideas, but the execution of their expression is just that. The basic structure is simple: A few lines about What If everything was lovely and wonderful, then some about What If everything was crappy, and then an admonition which I feel is actually the best line of the poem:

Try to turn a good "what if" into "what really is."

I don’t have much else to say except to note a few differences in the electronic copies I have, e.g. the one on the site, versus the one in my notebook. Also, as my notebook copies are all written in pencil, I have just done some heavy squinting at some old erase marks and found some even earlier versions, perhaps even from the original.

Web site: Can you picture the effect upon the world’s state?
Notebook: Can you even picture the effect on the world’s state?

Web site and Notebook: There’d be no one left to care, no one left to give.
Erased notebook: There’d be no one to care, and there’d be no one to give.

Web site: Life might not be worth the running of its course.
Notebook: Life might well not be worth the running of its course.
Erased notebook: Life might not well not be worth living, of course.

Web site: Which "what if" would you choose to create a better world?
Notebook: Which "what if" would you choose, to make a better world?

Web site and Notebook: If you care about your loved ones, you might consider this:
Erased notebook: If you care about your loved ones, what you should do is this:

Overall, I prefer the web site version, though it’s really sixes with the revised notebook copy. The erased notebook copy is definitely the worst, but when I’m talking about a poem I don’t really like to begin with, it probably doesn’t matter anyway.