The Third & Fourth Generation

[Lizzie]

Hi, Tranquility. Thanks for offering your thoughts. I have some follow up queries if you feel so inclined to address any or all. No pressure, as always. Just want to make sure that I'm tracking. 

His grandmother fed him without complaint—              just fed him?  this section seems too abbreviated, surely she felt more about him than this. -- I'm sure that this is true, it just didn't feel particularly germane; but if there's desire for more of the female side to the story, I'll think on that. Perhaps it feels to you like a reference to her was just plopped there and left undeveloped? 
that's how she was raised. 

Last lines are problematic, so maybe a more full fledged final stanza. -- just trying to be clear, you didn't like the final two lines because it felt too compacted? I heard your criticism of "spare the rod, spoil the child," and I will think on that (I'm thinking of it more as discipline than punishment, but I hear you). I think I'm missing something, because I hear you saying that I should expand on something problematic, and I'm completely lost. 

Perhaps it's too whiny at the end?  I don't hear it as whiny.  But he didn't exactly raise you, he just made sporadic, somewhat mysterious visits. -- I mean, to me, if a grandparent lives with you every summer, they have a hand in child rearing. Perhaps this is a cultural thing, a difference in expectations surrounding family structures? Maybe a wording issue? 

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Hi, Knot. Thanks for taking time on my piece, I appreciate it. I can tell that the piece is suffering from a dreadful lack of clarity, and I thank you for pointing out what's the most confusing. The point you raise about a possible refrain in intriguing, and I'll think on that. 

Grandpa drives north/south (is he Mom's father?) -- No, everything is through the paternal lineage. 
Greatgrandpa left when Grandad was seven -- yes
Greatgreatgrandpa addicted to opium/kills himself -- yes
Greatgreatgrandma unsympathetic (is she the same one in S2 who raises Grandpa?) -- yes and yes

Had to look up the Bible quote, and was left wondering what is the crime being punished. -- I was thinking of it more as discipline than punishment, but I will likely cut this part or rephrase since it's causing widespread confusion. 

The last two lines are an attempt to explain the sudden coming and going. It's a kind of self-discipline, always prepared to lose anyone or anything at a moment's notice. Always ready to run, to detatch. If it's punishment, it could be seen as punishing a part of the self that is getting too attached to people around them, too dependent. Yeah, I would say that desire is seen as weakness and so it gets punished. But, punishment....discipline....I feel like I'm splitting hairs now. 

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Hi, Bryn. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have a couple of questions, but there's no pressure to respond. 

That's how he raised us, with unsparing rod:     I do think that the poem should end with something like this but it doesn't feel like he raised the narrator.  He raised the Mom and so on....
grandfathers vanish, so don't ever care.
I addressed this with Tranquility as well: I'm curious about what the definition of "raising" is. To me, a grandparent that spends every summer with your family has enough of an influence on a child to justify categorization as one of the people who helped raise the child. Kind of a 'takes a village' sort of thing. I can see how mom being the one who cooks could lead people to believe that it's mom's dad, so I'll need to fix that. 

I also sense that there are aspects of the storyline that still aren't clear to the narrator and thus aren't fully articulated.  Of corse that would require more than just rearranging some stanzas. -- Usually I insist on a manner of speaking about poems where we differentiate between the speaker and the author, but I think the artifice needs to come down here for me to understand. I think that you mean that, as a writer, there's a lot of things that I don't know or would have no way of knowing, and so I can't relate them reliably in a piece because of the limitations of time and distance. Or are you saying that the voice in the piece comes across as an unreliable narrator (as a poetic device)? Does the voice sound like a child, and then they wouldn't be able to understand because of the limitations of the child mind? 

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His grandfather's closest friend was opium. and secret lover 
They bonded during the civil war
over rifle fire and a shattered leg
that never fully healed.
They swapped war stories in silence
of the departed who wouldn't die.
It vanished in 1906, kinda would prefer "she" to "it" here, to enforce the personification
pulled from the drug store's shelves.

This is clever, Tiger. I guess it probably does feel like there's something illicit about the opium addiction. 
What's all this tendency to see women as vices?