Stream

[DieterM]

She talks and talks and talks,
And when I nod, she talks some more;
About the daughter-in-law
Who plans to sell her house the day she;
About the frogs and birds in June, July;
About the knitting needles she has purchased from;
About the recipes that she has pasted in a special folder,
Would you like to see it?;
About her husband who is wandering
Through the forest and searching for mushrooms
But it hasn't rained enough this year,
And about flowers and rainbows
And the burden of getting old.
When she senses that I slip away,
She talks about the neighbour's son
Who has comitted suicide because.
I nod and say "Aha" and breathe.
Then I remember that I've come to help,
And when at last I can without being too impolite,
I go upstairs and vacuum her rooms.

[hannah_arendt]

What do you want to say in this poem? I would add something more. It seems to me as if it was something from the middle without the beginning and the end.

[Hawkman]

Hi Dieter, nice poem but spoiled a bit by over extending the lines:

"She talks and talks and talks,
And when I nod, she talks some more;
About the daughter-in-law
Who plans to sell her house;
About the frogs in June, July;
About her knitting needles;
About the recipes that she has pasted;
About her husband walking through the forest
In search of mushrooms
but it hasn't rained enough
this year, and sun, and flowers, and...
I nod and say "Aha" and
when decency allows me to,
I flee."

Would be my recommendation. The universal dilemma of the buttonholed! :D

Live and be well - H

[Haunted]

This is a great poem and very clever, D. The metaphor in the title and the first line are seamless. As soon as I read the first truncated line, I got it immediately. It brings a sense of annoyance and poignancy all at once. The truncation technique is brilliant, and you break it off in the right spots. Whether it's her dementia that caused the line to stop abruptly, or N losing interest and not registering the rest of what she is saying, it is a deep moment not lost on this reader.

[Hawkman]

Ah, well that's a different poem...

[cafolini]

This is a good poem. Plus I think it's somewhat 0-moment historical. Perhaps it marks the moment of the birth of aha psychologists when they figured out a way to deal with this. Good stuff.

[DieterM]

@hannah, yes you were right, I hadn't quite finished the poem, had scribbled some lines in a flurry. But in the meantime, I have found time to finish and "polish" it a bit.

[DieterM]

@hawkman, sorry that you went to all that trouble of re-phrasing the entire thing just when I was rewriting it myself! But, as always, your input was and is very much appreciated!

@haunted, ty for your kind words... I was writing about someone not so much demented but really really talkative (and I guess the bit about vacuuming rang a bell with you, didn't it?). As for my reaction, I didn't even realize I was annoyed until I read your comment. If the lines read as if I was annoyed, then I guess I must've been, without wanting to acknowledge it ;-) a man can only take so much talking after alll ;-))

@cafolini, thanks a lot for commenting!

[blank|verse]

This is an enjoyable, lightly humorous but also slightly sad vignette of a poem, Dieter.

I strongly advise you to resist Hawk’s overly-literal culling of the poem. The flash of inspiration and originality in the poem lies in the abrupt endings, which catch the reader out at first, then raise a smile of recognition. It’s that use of syntax and form to reflect the content of the poem – along with the overly-long lines (perhaps some should be even longer?) – that tells us we’re in the hands of a poet who has thought about how to write, not just what to write. They are the outstanding features of the piece; to remove them would kill the poem.

If anything, I wonder if the semi-colons (which are a bit stuffy and slow – dashes are quicker and more ‘conversational’) and the capitalised first letters of each sentence (which again slows things down) could be replaced, so the lines really crash into each other, something like…

about the daughter-in-law who plans to
sell her house the day she – about the frogs and
birds in June, July – the knitting needles she
purchased from – the recipes she pasted in a special folder,
Would you like to see it?

I’ve also silently changed the tenses of some of the phrases, from present perfect to past tense (eg. ‘that she has pasted’ to simply ‘she pasted’), and dropped some of the ‘abouts’, again for speed, and made the line-breaks more irregular, less predictable.

You might also consider a stanza break after the line ‘And the burden of getting old.’ (And there’s a typo: ‘committed’ has two m’s, line 16.)

But the last section of the poem gives us the humanity of the situation; the woman who has hired a ‘home help’ doesn’t really need her carpets vacuuming as much as a bit of company, and the reader is forced to reconsider his/her opinions of the woman as a bit of a windbag and bore, to someone who’s just a bit lonely, which is nicely achieved.

[Hawkman]

I strongly advise you to resist Hawk’s overly-literal culling of the poem. The flash of inspiration and originality in the poem lies in the abrupt endings, which catch the reader out at first, then raise a smile of recognition. It’s that use of syntax and form to reflect the content of the poem – along with the overly-long lines (perhaps some should be even longer?) – that tells us we’re in the hands of a poet who has thought about how to write, not just what to write. They are the outstanding features of the piece; to remove them would kill the poem.

Just to clarify b/v The poem as posted when I commented was very little different from my suggested minor alterations. I only trimmed tiny (seemingly) unnecessary extensions to the odd line which put them out of balance. The flavour and interpretation of the original being very much more geared to someone being buttonholed by a garrulous old dear and not one with dementia, which is now clear from the poem in its current version. Hence my remark, "Well that's a different poem..."

It is, as it stands, pretty good but I agree with your suggested modification.

Live and be well - H

[AuntShecky]

Hey! I know this woman!

This piece shows keen observational skills, a good "ear," as well as kind instincts. The closing line is a powerful punch line.

This one's a "keeper", Dieter.

[DieterM]

Ty everyone for commenting, especially b/v - you prove that, unlike what has been said elsewhere on these forums, critiques are often to the point and very helpful. As far as the formatting is concerned (and the typo as well), your ideas are really very good, and I'll give it a try as soon as I can work on my computer again. As for now, I'm still on holidays and rather limited, format-wise, with my ipad. A good enough contraption for reading and shooting at pigs with angry birds, but when it comes to writing and formatting...

[hannah_arendt]

@hannah, yes you were right, I hadn't quite finished the poem, had scribbled some lines in a flurry. But in the meantime, I have found time to finish and "polish" it a bit.

I have the same problem. I have written about it because very often I received notes from editors that my texts seemed to be unfinished. I am very ratty sometimes, I cannot focuse on one thing only as if had a adhd.

[hannah_arendt]

Ty everyone for commenting, especially b/v - you prove that, unlike what has been said elsewhere on these forums, critiques are often to the point and very helpful. As far as the formatting is concerned (and the typo as well), your ideas are really very good, and I'll give it a try as soon as I can work on my computer again. As for now, I'm still on holidays and rather limited, format-wise, with my ipad. A good enough contraption for reading and shooting at pigs with angry birds, but when it comes to writing and formatting...

So have a nice holiday :)

[Haunted]

@haunted, ty for your kind words... I was writing about someone not so much demented but really really talkative (and I guess the bit about vacuuming rang a bell with you, didn't it?). As for my reaction, I didn't even realize I was annoyed until I read your comment. If the lines read as if I was annoyed, then I guess I must've been, without wanting to acknowledge it ;-) a man can only take so much talking after alll ;-))


oh yeah that vacuuming bit, I knew it instantly ;). I have less and less tolerance for nonstop garbage about people I don't know, and why do I need to hear about their hairdresser's daughter's incarcerated boyfriend? I had a friend who would be my mother's age, she was just like that and I tuned her out after 2 sentences, much like truncating the lines as you did here, except that I was doing it in my head. Now I have another friend who is getting worse by the day. After the first 8 words I stop listening — exactly as you write it.

Not to say you are annoyed, certainly justified, and you come across as much more patient than me, but instilling that annoyance into the poem is not only appropriate but makes the piece more colorful. I threw dementia out just as a possibility, but glad it isn't with the subject you were writing about. I just think the poem is really clever. It's not what she has to say, it's not about writing out the list — but how N stops listening to each item and how to illustrate that. You tell it like it is, but very creatively. This has to be one of my favorite poems I've read here.