once as a child I lost my way on the short walk home from school.
dismayed that I was passing the wrong trees,
I wept, afraid.
now I can not trace your silhouette in the empty bed,
but I have learned to know you are missing:
my hands can not find what they've forgotten.
I studied the maps of your skin and ceiling,
but was perennially surprised by the length of your hair;
the roughness of the plaster;
the warm give of your body;
the many unremembered shadows.
Why are you avoiding contractions where in spoken language you'd use them? This may sound like a trivial point--it's not. Your language is otherwise fluid and natural, not at all 'high diction,' where one would be expected to avoid contractions. There's a mental component here--some holding to a probably unconscious anxiety about 'getting it right'... smoothed over by a minor concession to Usage Propriety. Unless you're INTENDING formality, the APPEARANCE of formality --as appearance, an aesthetic mask, for for its own sake--if it sounds to your ear like the kind of speech-concessions you might make to one's 'betters' (even if--especially if, you don't in any way really think of them as betters)... scratch it in favor of the risk of being offensive.
ReplyDeleteThe very anxiety of getting it right--of having others like what you're doing--can be either inhibiting if you let it--or a useful sign that you're pushing into scary territory... which is a good thing. Like your analysis of Rapunzel... which I really like.
Okay, only contraction was 'I have' in the 5th line... but that's how much it stood out for me.
ReplyDelete... maybe cause it adds an extra beat, like something you'd trip over
ReplyDeleteI looked over older posts - you're right that I don't often feature contractions. There's a "won't", and a "haven't" written as dialogue.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to think on your comments, as far as general use - but for this instance, I think the lack of contraction is intentional. Or rather, unintentional, but preferred - I didn't write them long with the intention of avoiding them, but
"I can not" and "I have not" are slower and more measured than "I can't" and "I haven't".
Can not should actually read there as "can-not" and in "I have learned" the option is there for the stress to fall on "have", an option and potential meaning lost with "I've".
This is not as much the case in the next line, "my hands can not find"... which does use "they've", so there you go, a contraction after all, but reading now, I'm tempted to remove that whole line anyway, as it feels out of place.
Reading this today I think my leaning is to pare it down, remove entirely the first half, and start at "I studied...".
ReplyDeleteI think I still want to rescue the widow in the first half, if I reduce it to:
"I have forgotten how to trace your silhouette.
but my hands have learned to know you are missing"
But the meat of this one starts after. Losing the map, a fragment of connection that never made it in here, we're left with:
I studied your skin and ceiling
but was perennially surprised
by the length of your hair;
the roughness of the plaster;
the warm give of your body;
the many unremembered shadows.
--
And even then... there's nothing in that first line to indicate time spent studying, only studying as an instant. thus, there's no disparity in the surprise of new detail.
However much
I studied your skin and ceiling
I'd be perennially surprised
---
And then, the temptation to even cut the detail after, which is a game, of mixing details of person and place, long hair and rough plaster and shadows blending...
And that actually leaves a hole, something lost, so here, the cutting stops.
It's fun, though, to imagine - cut and cut and cut and eventually all the words are cut and we're left in the glorious white potential snow.
However much
ReplyDeleteI studied your skin and ceiling
I'd be perennially surprised
by the length of your hair;
the roughness of the plaster;
the warm give of your body;
the many unremembered shadows.