I don’t usually like poems that sprawl on forever in a convoluted manner. I tend to prefer those that are short and to the point, yet filled with deep meaning. But there’s something about Stephen Dobyn’s “Lullaby” that demands the extra space. It’s such a profound poem about the end of the millennium, and I love the repetition of “The century is going to sleep” throughout. The poem is more than just a reflection on the past though. It’s a wish for events to have unfolded in a different manner – a cry for our heroes to have survived – “And John Lennon, maybe in another world/the madman missed and more songs got made,” and also an anxious anticipation of the future. The last section of the poem begins as a brilliant denouncement of the grandiose, electronic obsessed social conventions of our modern culture, before taking a darker turn with the question, “What/Auschwitzes and Hiroshimas are already being/prepared.” Still, it ends on an optimistic note, as he writes that while there will surely be pain and suffering in the future, there will certainly be new love and laughter to go along with it, and that, he identifies as a surprise worth waiting for.
Conversely, Charles Simic’s “Classic Ballroom Dances” is one of those brief but insightful poems that I love. It’s a poem that describes the funny dances certain people do each day in everyday life from “pickpockets/Working the crowd of the curious” to “the weave of a little kid/Who is walking to school with eyes closed.” I love the way he organizes the line breaks, establishing the doer and then in the next line, revealing what they do. Some lines like Line 2 serve as a creative transition (In this case between a grandmother and a schoolteacher nun) with the words “Of chickens; old nuns.” And the language is so imaginative, conjuring up instant images of these movement patterns. The last night is especially pertinent right now: “On rainy Monday nights of an eternal November.” Eternal. You got that right. Now change rainy to snowy and you’re describing this week in Dayton.
Lullaby: http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/26/dobyns.html
Classic Ballroom Dances: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/04/14
Conversely, Charles Simic’s “Classic Ballroom Dances” is one of those brief but insightful poems that I love. It’s a poem that describes the funny dances certain people do each day in everyday life from “pickpockets/Working the crowd of the curious” to “the weave of a little kid/Who is walking to school with eyes closed.” I love the way he organizes the line breaks, establishing the doer and then in the next line, revealing what they do. Some lines like Line 2 serve as a creative transition (In this case between a grandmother and a schoolteacher nun) with the words “Of chickens; old nuns.” And the language is so imaginative, conjuring up instant images of these movement patterns. The last night is especially pertinent right now: “On rainy Monday nights of an eternal November.” Eternal. You got that right. Now change rainy to snowy and you’re describing this week in Dayton.
Lullaby: http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/26/dobyns.html
Classic Ballroom Dances: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2004/04/14