Four Years Old

[Lizzie]

Hey Todd, your interaction with it was quite helpful, actually. Sorry it's taken me so long to respond -- I've been letting it percolate.

Hi Lizzie,

What stands out to me most now isn't so much the imagination of childhood but the passive voice -- I think that's because of dropping the would's before the verb, it actually accentuates the tense.

When I first read this I took away playfulness and imagination. That isn't my main takeaway now. -- I wrote the initial version in response to a prompt to talk about your first bedroom. I can see now that there's a clear progression in the original from fun/superficial/glossed over at the beginning, and sadness creeping in at the end. I liked billy's call out about the anthropomorphism, and decided to structure the first two stanzas around that and to keep the tone a little wistful throughout.
I'm glad that's coming through, as long as it's not over the top or too maudlin.


My brother disappeared
with the moon each morning--the moon gives me both a sense of time (still night) and a potential madness implication. -- Interesting. Yes, the moon is often associated with madness. I was trying to find an image that would be emblematic of a child's mind that could replace the 'brother went away to school each day' which is pretty plain. But, yeah, I'm not wanting there to be too many other connotations slipping in here.

only at the very top.--the image serves much better without the original mention of inaccessibility. It still conveys this. It also conveys that life or vibrancy was absent in the home. It was something the mother couldn't share--so the speaker had to substitute with whitewashed props, plastic and glitter and concrete. -- I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at with whitewashed, but I am aware that I'm fighting against memory in a way -- it's hard to know what's well recollected and what's pieced together, polished over. I hope it doesn't READ too neat and clean, as in not believable.



I think I like the poem much better than I originally did. -- cool, glad it's headed in the right direction.

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Hey Crundle. Thanks for the critique.

I can see how the second stanza could be read as pointing into the future, thanks for voicing your interpretation of that. Seems like this poem can be interpreted in many different ways.

So, in the last stanza you're reading that the loss of the brother each morning is a cyclical emotional loss and not a physical leaving? Interesting. I'm totally down with these disparities in interpretation as long as readers aren't thinking WTF at the end.

I'm glad that the diminishing green is being interpreted as a slow dying and not just a strange looking tree. Ha!

Thanks again for the helpful feedback!

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Thanks for stopping by, Death. I see what you mean, that it sounds like the kids died or something. I was trying to use childlike images for absence. I suppose by the age of four kids don't think people are gone forever when they leave the room, so I take your point. Hmmmm....