Charades

[penguin]

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil
stuck in the throat of her table.

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals
leaves only its Latin label.

Sex and Death, we guess.
She shakes her head,
hand waving
illegible scribble.

[Leanne]

First impressions: I read this aloud and love the sound of it, especially those first lines. It's firing off some really interesting thoughts in my head but they're not coherent enough yet, it's too early on a Sunday morning for me! I will return when I've let this percolate some more.

[Todd]

While I know I'm not fully getting the content, it doesn't lessen my enjoyment of the poem in the slightest. I love the title. It feels like a metaphor for what we're not able to say. This does strike me as a little more pictionary than charades but I don't mind because pictionary is sort of ugly sounding and it comes across either way.

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil
stuck in the throat of her table.--beautiful opening. I'm in love with shrinks. It's sort of the act of describing diminishes someone. Stuck in the throat is also very cool for its dual meaning (a physical place and tying back to the title on what can't be said)

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals--reminds me of the old they love me they love me not...another sense of ambiguity
leaves only its Latin label.--reduced to its base description without nuance...stark

Sex and Death, we guess.--appropriate with a flower
She shakes her head,
her hand forms
an illegible scribble.--love the ending. In a way, it makes me think how we're all alien to one another.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot. It's lovely work though.

Best,

Todd

[billy]

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil
stuck in the throat of her table.

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals
leaves only its Latin label.

Sex and Death, we guess.
She shakes her head,
her hand forms
an illegible scribble.

i like all of it, no quibbles here, my take on it;

i'm anal so i'm taking shrinks at face value. (don't they have to de-construct a persons psych before building it back up.) i see charades in the title and take it as games we play in life, maybe to give hints at who we are. the 'she' is trying to bring the real us out ...or it could just be a game of charades

i really liked whhat you did and how it worked for me. not sure if that was your intent but it's my take on it.

thanks for the read.

[penguin]

Thanks all. Funny, last night after several beers and glasses of wine I couldn't locate the facility to italicise. Today, I can.
The poem is meant to portray - if that's the right word - a certain kind of Doctor - Nurse - Patient relationship. If that's any help. I'm not wild about the last 2 lines.

[don miguel]

Rather a riddling poem, this one, penguin, which perhaps is suitable given the 'charades' of the title.

The first question I asked was whether the title should be taken as the subject for the first line / sentence. The capitalised 'Shrinks' suggests not. So how do we read the first sentence?

The image of the 'throat of the table' sounds concrete… yet I can't picture where a table's throat is at all. Perhaps the leg, but then how could something be stuck there? And is he stuck, or the notebook?

I'm afraid I don't really take much from this, as I have more questions than answers. I can kind of guess at what's being hinted at, but ultimately, the poem's abstractions mystify rather than enlighten.

[billy]

he's stuck, right up the table role play can be fun

[Universalchild]

I really liked this, and I can't honestly find anything to criticize, but as I read it I thought I'd leave a comment anyway.

The only thing that puzzles me is the "we" o: We are who? There is a he and a she but she can't be part of the we, at least I don't think.

[tectak]

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil
stuck in the throat of her table.

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals
leaves only its Latin label.

Sex and Death, we guess.
She shakes her head,
her hand forms
an illegible scribble.

People will be beginning to talk.....I really like this punchy ( Film.....left right...Victory fingers ...ROCKY 2!) piece. Easy, quick witted and totally absorbable. I may even learn it by wrote to later claim I writed it in my "Poems what I have wrote". Mabe coulhave made something out of the backward writing last line....enil tsal.
Best,
tectak

[penguin]

Thanks all.
dom miguel - the title is separate from the opening sentence. (She) Shrinks him. stuck in the throat of her table means rendered speechless, overawed by the trappings of authority - it never was meant to make perfect sense.I wouldn't want to be writing this kind of poem too often but I'm fine that it provokes questions rather than answers. That can be a good thing in appropriate doses.

Phaedra - she is a psychiatrist, he is a patient and we are student nurses.

Tom - did you find it easy, easy to appreciate, I mean?

[Philatone]

hey ray
haven't really seen other responses, so with that in mind

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil ...does the title lead into this? does the /s/ need to be capitalized? I like the idea of "charades" "shrinking" a person if it's the subject.
stuck in the throat of her table.

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals
leaves only its Latin label. ...i'm trying to place the scene. at first, i'm seeing inside an office (what with "shrink" and the analysis going on), but the flower and label place me more on a porch or somewhere outside. or perhaps it's an hourglass of sorts? (plucking at petals--sand for time for a game--e.g., a person's turn is almost over. the "latin label" makes that difficult though). could always just be an inkblot...

Sex and Death, we guess. ...great in the context of the game and psychiatry
She shakes her head,
hand forming
illegible scribble...a nice sense of judgement is imparted in these lines, while perhaps also corresponding to the game (recording answers perhaps? i might be combining too many (board) games

short poems become cryptic pretty easily, and this one, while worded wonderfully, is not really an exception. there are far more questions than answers for me

[penguin]

Hello Geoff. Title is separate from opening line.In my fancy, the 2nd verse shows how a patient is reduced to a diagnosis, a disorder.
Illegible scribble refers to doctor's handwriting.
Well, it's Charades, it isn't meant to be easy!

Ray

[parakleseos]

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil
stuck in the throat of her table.

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals <-- Bit of a cliched verb/noun combination.
leaves only its Latin label.

Sex and Death, we guess.
She shakes her head,
hand forming
illegible scribble.

Don't like the final two lines (which I see you also say you're not crazy about) for two reasons. 1) It's not really the hand forming the "scribble". 2) As above re: plucking/petals.

[addy]

Shrinks him with notebook and pencil
stuck in the throat of her table.

A flower suspended;
plucking at petals
leaves only its Latin label.

Sex and Death, we guess.
She shakes her head,
hand forming I have no problem with these last two lines, but if you're bothered it may have to do with the word "forming"? It's a creative act that turns something amorphous into something with a concrete shape, at odds with the (very clever and appropriate ) "illegible scribble" this finishes with
illegible scribble.

This is wonderful, and of layered for something so short. Brava, sir.

i think the poem is most fascinating for its glaring gap. The title is "charades", and you manufacture for us a short comparison by having an unspeaking teacher who's writing stuff down and goading her students at guessing a diagnosis. Though if you study it, "charades" makes most sense describing the difficulty for the patient, who should be here in this poem but isn't, who cannot make himself understood, who is instead picked apart as a puzzle, a game. The patient's human presence is deliberately absent here, excised. There is a metaphor for him in the second stanza, stripped of all personification, individuality, and agency (and again only the metaphor is present here, not him). The table may be a projection of him, too. Objects, furniture, the silent elephant in the room and then just gone. Done with. Amazing stuff.

[Leanne]

Now here's where me being perverse comes into the equation -- I've read all the replies now, which I rarely do, and I have to tell you that my first interpretation was entirely different: I saw "her" as a poet diminishing an unsatisfactory lover with her rather scathing words. This interpretation was supported by the flower motif. Shame I'm not right actually, it's fun flaying folk in verse

[penguin]

Thanks all.
Parakleseos - yes, I partly agree about the cliches. On the other hand, it's a fairly cryptic poem that I wanted to ground a little, not go totally flying off in space. Mostly, it's the penultimate line I don't like. Have to think on it.

Addy - yes, "forming" is a problem. She's meant to be prescribing medication, the end result of nearly all psychiatric reviews!There's an old piece of film in which the guy who invented the term "schizophrenia" and whose name escapes me, is shown with his various "case studies" talking about them, moving their limbs, as if they were plants or furniture.

Leanne - it certainly is fun flaying folk in verse. I think the poem is open to many different interpretations. I wonder what I'd make of it if it weren't mine. Demasculinising - is there such a word? - was meant
to be inferred.

[billy]

just a suggestion seeing as you're in two minds

hand rendering

[parakleseos]

I don't see the relationship between cliches and crypticism... surely it's as desirable to avoid cliches when you're being cryptic as it is when you're being concrete? With the usual caveats about ironic usage, et cetera.

Thanks all.
Parakleseos - yes, I partly agree about the cliches. On the other hand, it's a fairly cryptic poem that I wanted to ground a little, not go totally flying off in space. Mostly, it's the penultimate line I don't like. Have to think on it.

Addy - yes, "forming" is a problem. She's meant to be prescribing medication, the end result of nearly all psychiatric reviews!There's an old piece of film in which the guy who invented the term "schizophrenia" and whose name escapes me, is shown with his various "case studies" talking about them, moving their limbs, as if they were plants or furniture.

Leanne - it certainly is fun flaying folk in verse. I think the poem is open to many different interpretations. I wonder what I'd make of it if it weren't mine. Demasculinising - is there such a word? - was meant
to be inferred.

[penguin]

Thanks, Billy, for your suggestion. I've come up with "hand waving", brings some closure, that's it, folks.

Parakleseos - I don't doubt that you're right. But I wanted some familiar markers in just so I could remember what it's about.
Speaking of which, Emil Kraepelin was the guy who coined the term schizophrenia - and I didn't have to google.