09-22-2023, 07:22 PM
There are names
I need to forget.
I’m teaching myself to isolate -- The enjambment here is interesting, and possibly meaningful, where you literally isolate "isolate" from "them", but it's also the only one of its kind from an otherwise more conventional piece, so I don't think it works overall.
them, to detach them
from their personae,
turn them into artifacts
I can no longer interpret. -- This and the two lines before it: for a poem with less than ten words that have more than three syllables, lumping them together like this feels like word soup, especially when they remain at the same level of abstraction as everything else. At the very least, you can maybe go "....into artifacts I / can no longer interpret."
When they appear in my mind
I discourage their masks
from taking the stage; -- The "mask" thing is interesting; it reminds me of Ancient Greek theatre. But I usually imagine the mind to *be* the stage, so I'm a little confused as to what is being represented by this metaphor overall.
their enactments are not helpful,
they turn into a riddle
of imagined moments,
stories I tell myself
to reprove the present.
The present is all there is,
all there will be. These names -- I find that it's usually the past, present, and future which are distinct temporal categories, i.e. "the present" isn't something that will ever be. So I'm not sure if the sentence contained in the first two lines of this stanza really work, though they do sound kinda good.
obscure and mislead, they -- Returning to the enjambment before, while this is also a "choice", it's a far less interesting one, as the words involved -- they / tell -- mean very little on their own. Suggesting, perhaps, the diminishing returns of this project.
tell me lies I can no longer afford
to believe. It only remains to be seen
which of them will outlive me
which will be waiting for me -- I'm missing the "and" that would normally be at the start of this phrase. And it does strike me as rather dull, to have the two penultimate lines end, not only with the same word, but with that most....meh of words, "me". So maybe "and which of them will be waiting / on the other side".
on the other side.
I feel like this needs to be a little more concrete. To follow a different commenter's note, what is noted (by that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia) as Piet Hein's most famous "Grook" involves the very specific metaphor of losing one glove, throwing the remaining one away, then finding again the one first lost. While I myself don't remember encountering any pieces where the speaker would rather forget, than remember, certain names, the relative uniqueness of this piece doesn't make up for its fuzziness.
I need to forget.
I’m teaching myself to isolate -- The enjambment here is interesting, and possibly meaningful, where you literally isolate "isolate" from "them", but it's also the only one of its kind from an otherwise more conventional piece, so I don't think it works overall.
them, to detach them
from their personae,
turn them into artifacts
I can no longer interpret. -- This and the two lines before it: for a poem with less than ten words that have more than three syllables, lumping them together like this feels like word soup, especially when they remain at the same level of abstraction as everything else. At the very least, you can maybe go "....into artifacts I / can no longer interpret."
When they appear in my mind
I discourage their masks
from taking the stage; -- The "mask" thing is interesting; it reminds me of Ancient Greek theatre. But I usually imagine the mind to *be* the stage, so I'm a little confused as to what is being represented by this metaphor overall.
their enactments are not helpful,
they turn into a riddle
of imagined moments,
stories I tell myself
to reprove the present.
The present is all there is,
all there will be. These names -- I find that it's usually the past, present, and future which are distinct temporal categories, i.e. "the present" isn't something that will ever be. So I'm not sure if the sentence contained in the first two lines of this stanza really work, though they do sound kinda good.
obscure and mislead, they -- Returning to the enjambment before, while this is also a "choice", it's a far less interesting one, as the words involved -- they / tell -- mean very little on their own. Suggesting, perhaps, the diminishing returns of this project.
tell me lies I can no longer afford
to believe. It only remains to be seen
which of them will outlive me
which will be waiting for me -- I'm missing the "and" that would normally be at the start of this phrase. And it does strike me as rather dull, to have the two penultimate lines end, not only with the same word, but with that most....meh of words, "me". So maybe "and which of them will be waiting / on the other side".
on the other side.
I feel like this needs to be a little more concrete. To follow a different commenter's note, what is noted (by that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia) as Piet Hein's most famous "Grook" involves the very specific metaphor of losing one glove, throwing the remaining one away, then finding again the one first lost. While I myself don't remember encountering any pieces where the speaker would rather forget, than remember, certain names, the relative uniqueness of this piece doesn't make up for its fuzziness.