Everything Will Be on the Final Exam

[PrinceMyshkin]

As eagles fly above sheep below
and eternity puddles into slow,
slow time, we inch our way forward,
scrabbling with torn, ragged fingernails
to scale the sheer face of destiny.

There are lessons to be learned
and teachers, waxen-pallored teachers,
to teach them. There are no mid-terms here,
only a final exam, every day.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is a poem I'm proud of, so I'm bumping it in the hope that someone will have a comment, pro or con.

[Hawkman]

Hi Prince, although not exactly cheerful, it is thought provoking and I agree deserves a bit of attention. However, the consequences of failing that final exam are bleak...

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hi Prince, although not exactly cheerful, it is thought provoking and I agree deserves a bit of attention. However, the consequences of failing that final exam are bleak...

H

thanks, H., I've concluded that I post too frequently and people may feel they're overly familiar with my voice, so I'm going to post new threads less frequently but continue responding to those of others.

[psychofemale]

I really loved this. I loved the last stanza

[PrinceMyshkin]

I really loved this. I loved the last stanza

Thanks, pf, I'm especially glad that you singled out the 2nd stanza as I was afraid it was too didactic after the first.

[Virgil]

You should be proud of this one Prince. It's a really good one. I love every line but one, if I may point one out: "to scale the sheer face of destiny." I think I've mentioned a few times how those metaphors based on an abstraction, "of destiny" here, are very tenuous. I will admit this one is not as bad as others I've seen, so perhaps you can get away with it, especially since the other lines are super! I'm in love with that second stanza:

There are lessons to be learned
and teachers, waxen-pallored teachers,
to teach them. There are no mid-terms here,
only a final exam, every day, every day.
Outstanding. I love the repetitions thoughout. They work great.

[Dr. Cambridge]

As eagles fly above sheep below
and eternity puddles into slow,
slow time, we inch our way forward,
scrabbling with torn, ragged fingernails
to scale the sheer face of destiny.

There are lessons to be learned
and teachers, waxen-pallored teachers,
to teach them. There are no mid-terms here,
only a final exam, every day, every day.

I was last on the forum two nights ago and it was your destiny to wait until now for my comments, PrinceM.

The symbolism of predatory eagles overhead and helpless sheep below carries us forward into the vexed struggle for survival in the face of our demanding destiny, which is compounded by the tyrany of time which occurs when "eternity puddles", a brilliant juxtaposition of imagery in this stanza.

From torn ragged fingernails to teachers, and blackboards being scratched, I couldn't help thinking. Lessons and exams, will they never end? But hullo, we discover that this, this is the final exam, we are being tested on everything, it all counts, every day counts. No cheating now!

I like this sort of short, economical poetic philosophising. Thank you for giving me something to mull over.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Virgil and Dr. Cambridge: I'm deeply appreciative of both your comments. This is a poem I worked on rather more assiduously than I usually do and, technically at least, I thought it absolutely free of 'fat.'

Virgil: I understand in general your objection to abstractions, but here I would have hoped that the concept of eternity puddling into pools of time prepared one adequately for the shift from the concrete to the abstract.

[blank|verse]

I like this overall Prince, but feel it needs to be a bit stronger and more definite. (Now... cut... paste...)

The first stanza introduces a rather typical Myshkinian theme - the struggle for survival, foreshadowed by the eagle and sheep imagery. The 'sheep' also carries connotations of religion, particularly Christianity. It's rather moralistic and nihilistic, marked by the 'we inch our way forward'. We're all doomed. And we're dealing with Big Themes here – Eternity and Destiny are present, even if in lower-case.

I particularly like the poetry of the first three lines: the full below / slow rhyme, combined with the repetition of 'slow' in the enjambed third line is very effective. If there is a problem with it, it is that it is so strong it rather overshadows the rest of the poem that can't match its virtuosity. I think this is a problem as it makes the poem as a whole imbalanced. If the second stanza could match this form it would lend the poem and the moral behind it greater weight and that sense of 'rightness' that comes when words balance out well, as if they belong together.

(Also, I think I've heard rock-faces described as 'sheer' too often; and I'm not sure about the word 'scrabbling' in context - does one scrabble 'slowly'?)

The second stanza marks a shift from the cliff-face to the chalk-face. Again, it's quite moralistic, although stops short of being overly didactic. Saying the teachers are 'waxen-pallored' makes them sound weak and dull, as if one shouldn't listen to them; but the implicit argument of the poem is that one should, which undermines the argument of the poem, I feel.

Also, the whole 'life as classroom' metaphor isn't the most original; and the repetition in the stanza ('teachers / teachers / teach / every day / every day') doesn’t really make for a satisfying end to the poem. The narrator seems so definite in imparting his lesson that such indecision undermines his authority. The moral conclusion is one of desperation and suffering. Often, poetry and art can offer alleviation from the pain of life: here, it is magnified.

Overall, I enjoy the fact you're willing to be so ambitious and tackle life's big questions; but I feel to write a really effective poem about things like this, the poet needs to be saying something equal to the grandeur of the subject, and I feel this poem falls short of that.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Blank|Verse: Please allow me some time to re- and re-re-read these judicious comments, to digest them and then to respond in as close to an equally thoughtful way as I can. (I might only point out initially that the "sheer rock-face" is here minus the "rock" per your suggestion when you read this privately.)

I'm so bowled over by your careful, articulate comments that I had the momentary fantasy of proposing to substitute them for the poem itself!

Thanks...

[kiz_paws]

I loved the use of eagles and sheep; the shakers-and-movers vs. the group mentality/the non-daring.

What a powerful first stanza; the torn ragged fingernails truly represented to me man's state of perseverance faced with life's challenges.

Those waxen-pallored teachers really scared me, lol. Beautifully said.

The final exam of each day is so true -- one cannot take back a day lived, but answer to all thoughts/deeds of that 24-hour period, and try to one's best.

Loved this work, Jer. Short and sweet and packs a punch! :)

[PrinceMyshkin]

I loved the use of eagles and sheep; the shakers-and-movers vs. the group mentality/the non-daring.

What a powerful first stanza; the torn ragged fingernails truly represented to me man's state of perseverance faced with life's challenges.

Those waxen-pallored teachers really scared me, lol. Beautifully said.

frankly, that was sort of a shot in the dark, probably a belated echo of Saul Bellow's phrase "reality instructors" in Herzog




The final exam of each day is so true -- one cannot take back a day lived, but answer to all thoughts/deeds of that 24-hour period, and try to one's best.

Loved this work, Jer. Short and sweet and packs a punch! :)

At least one or two haven't thought it "sweet" but morbid! I've always believed vis a vis the genre of tragedy that confronting the truth, as best one can, is one of the ways of surviving it.

Thank you.

[qimissung]

I love this poem,Prince. Because as we all know, we are all of us whistling in the dark as we walk past the cemetary, and your sublime poem illuminates the heartbreaking fact of life's immense difficulties with a single succint blow.

I would like to point out that poets "base metaphors on abstractions" in order to illuminate their abstract qualities. That's what writer's do if they are going to write something besides a laundry list or something more factually based.

I like thinking of myself as climbing that sheer face of destiny with a crampon in one hand, and reaching for the next miniscule crevice with the other, and I'm dangling there, and the ground is so far below me that I can't breathe when I look down. Thank you for putting me there, Prince. I hope I pass this test.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I love this poem,Prince. Because as we all know, we are all of us whistling in the dark as we walk past the cemetary, and your sublime poem illuminates the heartbreaking fact of life's immense difficulties with a single succint blow.

I would like to point out that poets "base metaphors on abstractions" in order to illuminate their abstract qualities. That's what writer's do if they are going to write something besides a laundry list or something more factually based.

I like thinking of myself as climbing that sheer face of destiny with a crampon in one hand, and reaching for the next miniscule crevice with the other, and I'm dangling there, and the ground is so far below me that I can't breathe when I look down. Thank you for putting me there, Prince. I hope I pass this test.

You've passed every test I can think of, not that I was applying any to you. Make sure you read Blank|Verse's glorious poem and get yourself a copy of practically anything by Anne Tyler who fills every minute of her characters' lives.

Thank you for your comments.

[AuntShecky]

Yes, it's true that Prince attempts to tackle the eternal problems of life, but it's also true that the effectiveness of a particular poem depends on the way the writer handles the problem. This is why telling less experienced poets to avoid "abstractions" is very good advice. Not only is it difficult to write something new about mortality, love, and other ideas such as freedom, but doubly difficult because such amorphous, indefinable ideas have widely-divergent meanings in various contexts. "Different strokes for different folks," yadda-yadda. The point I'm trying to make is the most important aspect of any artistic work is not so much the "what" but the "how."

[PrinceMyshkin]

Yes, it's true that Prince attempts to tackle the eternal problems of life, but it's also true that the effectiveness of a particular poem depends on the way the writer handles the problem. This is why telling less experienced poets to avoid "abstractions" is very good advice. Not only is it difficult to write something new about mortality, love, and other ideas such as freedom, but doubly difficult because such amorphous, indefinable ideas have widely-divergent meanings in various contexts. "Different strokes for different folks," yadda-yadda. The point I'm trying to make is the most important aspect of any artistic work is not so much the "what" but the "how."

But this leaves me at a loss to know how you thought I handled the "how".

[PrinceMyshkin]

I like this overall Prince, but feel it needs to be a bit stronger and more definite. (Now... cut... paste...)

The first stanza introduces a rather typical Myshkinian theme - the struggle for survival, foreshadowed by the eagle and sheep imagery. The 'sheep' also carries connotations of religion, particularly Christianity. It's rather moralistic and nihilistic, marked by the 'we inch our way forward'. We're all doomed. And we're dealing with Big Themes here – Eternity and Destiny are present, even if in lower-case.
No doubt I should have thought of the religious, specifically Christian implications of the reference to sheep, but if I had I might have reasoned it away on the grounds a) that there were sheep on the earth long before Christianity or any form of religion; b) that any other group of animals I could have chosen - bisons? Woodcocks? - might have sent the reader off on some irrelevant quest; and c) I was aiming for a panoptic view of human history, one in which the period of religious or metaphyisical thinking was just one of the puddles of slow time.


I particularly like the poetry of the first three lines: the full below / slow rhyme, combined with the repetition of 'slow' in the enjambed third line is very effective. If there is a problem with it, it is that it is so strong it rather overshadows the rest of the poem that can't match its virtuosity. I think this is a problem as it makes the poem as a whole imbalanced. If the second stanza could match this form it would lend the poem and the moral behind it greater weight and that sense of 'rightness' that comes when words balance out well, as if they belong together.

(Also, I think I've heard rock-faces described as 'sheer' too often; and I'm not sure about the word 'scrabbling' in context - does one scrabble 'slowly'?)

The second stanza marks a shift from the cliff-face to the chalk-face. Again, it's quite moralistic, although stops short of being overly didactic. Saying the teachers are 'waxen-pallored' makes them sound weak and dull, as if one shouldn't listen to them; but the implicit argument of the poem is that one should, which undermines the argument of the poem, I feel.

Also, the whole 'life as classroom' metaphor isn't the most original; and the repetition in the stanza ('teachers / teachers / teach / every day / every day') doesn’t really make for a satisfying end to the poem. The narrator seems so definite in imparting his lesson that such indecision undermines his authority. The moral conclusion is one of desperation and suffering. Often, poetry and art can offer alleviation from the pain of life: here, it is magnified.

In this poem I attempted to work in cinematic fashion, beginning with stanza one where both time and space were presented in extreme long view, then zooming in past eternity to the daily puddles of time, ending with the Werner Herzogovian shot (cf Fitzcarraldo) of lilliputian humanity attempting a difficult if not impossible climb.

Stanza two is a medium shot in which students and teachers alike are trapped in the web of lessoning. Then pull back to a long shot again, where the quotidian is viewed in the context of the infinite/eternal.


Overall, I enjoy the fact you're willing to be so ambitious and tackle life's big questions; but I feel to write a really effective poem about things like this, the poet needs to be saying something equal to the grandeur of the subject, and I feel this poem falls short of that.

I am of course disappointed that you feel the poem falls short of its own implied objectives but, I repeat, I'm deeply grateful to you for the close reading you gave it.

[lallison]

I like the visual abstractions in this poem a lot. You create a beautifully rugged landscape out of eternity and destiny and the line break between the two "slow"s helped me feel just how slow time can be.

To me, this poem is crying out for elaboration. It just feels crammed and cut into something less than it should be. I can imagine the lines as rugged as the world it gives light to: long and less long and short and long again. The form seems forcefully symmetric for something as tedious as piecing together a surprise essay question for which one isn't quite prepared.

As an American, an eagle has nationalistic symbolism for me, and whether or not intended, it works here even though, as an American, eagles flying feels like a tired phrase.

What do you think about a transition that connects the wilderness and the classroom? I'm not satisfied with what's here, I want more.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I like the visual abstractions in this poem a lot. You create a beautifully rugged landscape out of eternity and destiny and the line break between the two "slow"s helped me feel just how slow time can be.

To me, this poem is crying out for elaboration. It just feels crammed and cut into something less than it should be. I can imagine the lines as rugged as the world it gives light to: long and less long and short and long again. The form seems forcefully symmetric for something as tedious as piecing together a surprise essay question for which one isn't quite prepared.

As an American, an eagle has nationalistic symbolism for me, and whether or not intended, it works here even though, as an American, eagles flying feels like a tired phrase.

What do you think about a transition that connects the wilderness and the classroom? I'm not satisfied with what's here, I want more.

Hopefully I answered some of your points in message 18 in response to B|V, but as for your question re the unsatisfactory brevity of this piece, I have an abhorrence of ever milking the metaphor, as I think of it and possibly I do go too far in the other direction. I like to think of my technique as being like two or three quick blinks of a flashlight in the darkness. So much of what I write is my attempt to deal with things that can only be glimpsed, not perfectly seen or delineated.

Many thanks, though, for your careful, thoughtful reading and response.