Epiphany

[PrinceMyshkin]

Like the thread to the eye of the needle
are we to the misery of those we love.
We live on the edge of each other’s wounds.

[Hawkman]

A delightful, iambic aphorism, PM. Pithy and profound, as always.

Best H

[hillwalker]

Very true, Prince. Another brief slice of your wisdom - eloquent and thought-provoking as ever.

H

[J.D. Sparks]

It's a very nice poem- I am particularly fond of the final line. But the title sounds, ironically, a bit banal to me. It just seems that epiphany is kind of an over-used word in literature, and this lovely poem could be better-served! But that was just my initial reaction.

[blank|verse]

Mmm, nicely aphoristic Prince.

I'd hesitate to describe it as 'iambic' though, Hawkman; I suppose syllabically it qualifies as blank verse, but could just as easily be free verse. Split the difference and call it free blank verse!

It is crying out for a bit of interlaced rhyme though... a second stanza in terza rima, perhaps... just to reflect the 'needle thread' simile.

Also, if the simile is to work both ways, then the thread needs to be 'living on the edge' of the needle and surely it does more than that? Something this short really draws attention to every syllable.

I think you're the 'anti-hillwalker' Prince - where I often want his poems to be shorter, I always want yours to be longer!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks, Hawkman, Hillwalker, JD Sparks, and B/V:


It is crying out for a bit of interlaced rhyme though... a second stanza in terza rima, perhaps... just to reflect the 'needle thread' simile.

It's not going to get that, though, because I think that might make it too poetic or poetically 'pretty' whereas I want it to have a certain severity that I feel is appropriate to the content




Also, if the simile is to work both ways, then the thread needs to be 'living on the edge' of the needle and surely it does more than that? Something this short really draws attention to every syllable.

I think you're the 'anti-hillwalker' Prince - where I often want his poems to be shorter, I always want yours to be longer!

How about you propose this to hillwalker: that you act as mediator and split the difference between one of his - as you feel - overly long poems and one of my overly short ones and I tweak the leftover lines from his poem to fit one of mine?

Not that I agree with you that any of his poems need to be any shorter than they are.

[blank|verse]

How about you propose this to hillwalker: that you act as mediator and split the difference between one of his - as you feel - overly long poems and one of my overly short ones and I tweak the leftover lines from his poem to fit one of mine?
I'm not sure that would be quite the same as if you wrote a few more lines in your own incomparable voice, Prince...

[dizzydoll]

Wow thats very deep. Well done Prince. :thumbsup:

[hillwalker]

Anti-hillwalker, BV?

Ok, next time I have a few surplus lines left over from one of my 'epics' I'll trade them with Prince for some of his lightness of touch and delicate artistry.

It's a good job we both know you have our best interests at heart!!!

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I'm not sure that would be quite the same as if you wrote a few more lines in your own incomparable voice, Prince...

Some of my poems, I hope, do have a coherent wholeness. Others, the rather short ones, I feel as if to go beyond the few lines I present might be like preempting the other half of what is intended as the opening of a dialogue.

[hack]

Bravo, My Prince.

[Revolte]

I have to be honest, I'm not normally one for shorter poems. But you have a hell of a way with them. There is something about this one that I can't explain, whatever it is, I love it.

[MorpheusSandman]

This piece really combines your gift for terse aphorisms in an understated, metaphoric, poetic form, Prince. Though I do kinda agree with BV I'd like to see this one extended. The metaphor is so good, there's so much that can be done with it. One thing that struck me after reading it is that needles are meant to sew up wounds rather than making them. So there's the double suggestion that we both wound others, but are also the greatest catalyst for healing them.

[lallison]

I feel this poem is already much larger than it appears on paper (...er screen). I thought of the stress a needle places on the thread as it pulls it along behind, stitching together holes, but piercing tiny ones in the fabric as well. Also, one must be quite supple to fit thought that eye. Even the cold rigid metal of the needle contrasted to limp following thread. i wonder what it was that brought on this epiphany, nicely relayed, nice poem.

[Hawkman]

"Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire,"

I was browsing and came upon this line and immediately thought of you, Prince.

I'll spare you the second line as it's reference to a harlot might not be seen as quite so complimentary. It's by Swinburne, from the 'Envoi' of "A Ballad of Fraoncois Villon"

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Many thanks Revolte, Morpheus, lallison, Hawkman and Hack...


i wonder what it was that brought on this epiphany, nicely relayed, nice poem.

I don't know the answer to that any more than one knows, much of the time, the derivation of one's dreams. I did remember, after the fact, that the rhythm or structure of the first two lines are reminiscent of the devastating lines from "Lear"



As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods,
They kill us for their sport

[qimissung]

I do love this. But I unfortunately have to agree with blank verse that it is a snippet or an aphorism simply begging to be turned into a "real" poem. I know you are resolute in your decisions, and this is not an effort to change your mind. But you have written poems with at least six lines. Seems like you could expend that much effort to hit this one out of the ballpark.

But you have done with this what someone said poems do: you have said in a new way that which we all recognize to be the truth.

Thank you for words that pierce the armor of our denial...

[PrinceMyshkin]

Mmm, nicely aphoristic Prince.

I'd hesitate to describe it as 'iambic' though, Hawkman; I suppose syllabically it qualifies as blank verse, but could just as easily be free verse. Split the difference and call it free blank verse!

It is crying out for a bit of interlaced rhyme though... a second stanza in terza rima, perhaps... just to reflect the 'needle thread' simile.

Also, if the simile is to work both ways, then the thread needs to be 'living on the edge' of the needle and surely it does more than that? Something this short really draws attention to every syllable.

I think you're the 'anti-hillwalker' Prince - where I often want his poems to be shorter, I always want yours to be longer!

I'm returning to your comments because I've been brooding over 2) the feeling several readers have that the piece is too short and 1) that the thread/needle metaphor is abandoned in favour of another.

1) The thread I would hope operates as a synecdoche for the speaker himself and insofar as poets sometimes do for mankind itself.

2) The ugly fact may be that I couldn't think how to extend it without losing some of the bluntness; but I'd prefer to make the case that I offered it as a truth and as in scientific formulae the 'elegance' of a formula is in its brevity and clarity.

[PrinceMyshkin]

the title sounds, ironically, a bit banal to me. It just seems that epiphany is kind of an over-used word in literature, and this lovely poem could be better-served! But that was just my initial reaction.

Agreed, and ironically I'm normally proud of how I title my things, though I often go with the honesty-in-merchandising route of using all or some of the first line as a title. "Aphorism" might have been a better title for this, do you think?

[paperleaves]

Holy hell. This is incredible. Although I'd like to believe that I refrain from doing this in my relationships, I know that there are many like this. Beautiful piece, Prince. :)

[PrinceMyshkin]

Holy hell. This is incredible. Although I'd like to believe that I refrain from doing this in my relationships, I know that there are many like this. Beautiful piece, Prince. :)

How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50........... 142

Yup, that's it: one hundred and forty-two ways!

[PrinceMyshkin]

I do love this. But I unfortunately have to agree with blank verse that it is a snippet or an aphorism simply begging to be turned into a "real" poem. I know you are resolute in your decisions, and this is not an effort to change your mind. But you have written poems with at least six lines. Seems like you could expend that much effort to hit this one out of the ballpark.

But you have done with this what someone said poems do: you have said in a new way that which we all recognize to be the truth.

Thank you for words that pierce the armor of our denial...

My apologies for being slow to respond to your comment (which in NO WAY offended me!). I don't know the whole story as to why I left this in such a brief (possibly enigmatic) state... The answer it embarrasses me to give is that I didn't know how to continue it and was and am afraid that if I responded to the several requests that it be fleshed out, that I would not be able to continue with quite the same epigrammatic authority. I was afraid that anything I might add might water it down.

[PrinceMyshkin]

"Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire,"

I was browsing and came upon this line and immediately thought of you, Prince.

I'll spare you the second line as it's reference to a harlot might not be seen as quite so complimentary. It's by Swinburne, from the 'Envoi' of "A Ballad of Fraoncois Villon"

H

I was browsing the responses to this poem when I came across this hitherto unacknowledged tribute of yours which flattered and amused the heck out me as there was a time - a very long time ago - when I thought that Swinburne's In a coign of the cliff between between lowland and highland was the nec plus ultra of poetry, whereas now I wouldn't want to touch it with a ten-foot Pole - or Latvian, for that matter!

[Hawkman]

Thanks Prince, glad it tickled you, but I did rather think it appropriate to the title verse of this thread. Could you expand it as qim suggested? Yes, undoubtedly, but should you? I would say not. I love it as it is. As for Poles and Latvians, ten feet does sound rather too many. You are probably wise to keep your distance. Chernobyl and all that...

Live and be well - H

[Apostrophe]

Damned good.

[Apostrophe]

Ah, I remember now what this reminds me of: Atwood's "You Fit Into Me" poem... the way, at the beginning of the poem, that you assume two things fit together so perfectly, they were MADE for each other...

but by the end, you realize that the two objects are separate, independent, and often at odds...

I like this one.

[AuntShecky]

I'm assuming that the title alludes to term as used to describe features in the works of Joyce and Yeats: a sudden revelation instead of the reference to the holiday celebrated on Jan. 6 (the setting for the story, "The Dead" by the aforementioned ex-pat Irishman.)

I'm a bit baffled by the first line, directly referring to Matthew 19:24, where the point is about the dubious heavenly prospect of being a rich man. So I wonder what it's doing in a short, aphoristic piece about relationships.

It looks as if you agree with Wilde's famous line from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."

Then again, yer ol' auntie may be wrong. Certainly wouldn't be the first time!

[Bar22do]

but WOUNDS connect them --
this poem is plain, harsh and what makes it so good is the extraordinary skill you involved here... kudos indeed. best from bar

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you, Bar, and


AuntShecky[/B];1106797]I'm assuming that the title alludes to term as used to describe features in the works of Joyce and Yeats: a sudden revelation instead of the reference to the holiday celebrated on Jan. 6 (the setting for the story, "The Dead" by the aforementioned ex-pat Irishman.)
I wasn't thinking of either of those writers but, loosely, of a synonym for "revelation," although I did not intend anything religious.


I'm a bit baffled by the first line, directly referring to Matthew 19:24, where the point is about the dubious heavenly prospect of being a rich man. So I wonder what it's doing in a short, aphoristic piece about relationships.
Again, no. That was a camel, wasn't it (although I think I read somewhere that "camel" may have been a mistranslation). I was thinking, more prosaically, of the difficulty I always have trying to thread a needle without one of those handy wire aids.


It looks as if you agree with Wilde's famous line from "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
Nope. It was rather to suggest the difficulty of piercing a beloved's deepest wounds, but that inevitably the effect of that wound or those wounds are sooner or later present in the relationship.


Then again, yer ol' auntie may be wrong. Certainly wouldn't be the first time!

But, again, thanks to both of you for your comments.

[Haunted]

Amazingly sharp imagery to show the much needed focus and patience and even then we might still fail in inserting ourselves in others' pain and bringing a positive outcome. Very memorable piece.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Amazingly sharp imagery to show the much needed focus and patience and even then we might still fail in inserting ourselves in others' pain and bringing a positive outcome. Very memorable piece.

Thanks, Ms. H. Writing this was a pleasure, which came about via the suspension of my consciousness and the discovery of something I didn't know I knew or thought until I had articulated it. To me it is a very sad poem, except for the satisfaction one feels when one has confronted and expressed a truth.