Denial
January 14th 2009 14:48
I'm not going to talk much today; I'm mostly going to let the poem do the talking. I will say that "Denial," my poem for today, is written as a sestina. For those who don't know, a sestina is a non-rhymed poem of six six-line stanzas, and a final three-line stanza, also known as a tornada or envoi. Sestinas are traditionally written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), the form that Shakespeare made famous via his plays. The difficult and fun aspect of the sestina is that the end-words of the first stanza are recycled as the end-words for every other stanza, although in a different order. If the order of the end-words in stanza 1 is 123456, then the order of those end-words in the next stanza will be 615243, and then 364152, and so on. The tornada has 2 of these words in each line, one in the middle or beginning, and the other at the end (3/6, 4/1, 5/2 or really any order you want). So the sestina lends itself to a sort of obsessive narration and the tornada wraps everything up; if done well, a sestina can be very powerful and subtle. You can take "Denial" any way you like; I wrote it as sort of a puzzle that can have various valid conclusions. Look for the word repetition, and I would love to see what your interpretation is. Here's the poem, and have a great day!
Denial
Remember when the blizzard killed that man?
The news-reporter arrived at the scene
Soon after the corpse was taken away.
The local news won’t show the dead people
They speak of, but I see them in my mind,
Like I see the windows covered with frost.
That morning in December when the frost
Was on the window-panes there was a man
Who came to the door. I asked if he’d mind
Coming back later; I was at the scene
Of my film where all the hostage people
Escaped. I just want you to go away,
I said, why don’t you leave and go away
To some place where the weather’s nice and frost
Won’t cover your windows and strange people
Don’t interrupt your movie. Then the man
Began to try to speak of a crime scene
Or something. I don’t know. I think his mind
Was not all there, or something, like his mind
Was broken, shattered glass that fell away
From the mirror in my bathroom. The scene
Is almost over; will you leave? The frost
Had fallen thick the night before the man
Came to the door. It covered the people
Who found the corpse, screaming like the people
In my movie. I didn’t really mind
Not finishing it, although the news-man
Said things unfinished won’t just go away
Like the life did of the man killed in the frost.
I should finish watching my favorite scene
So I won’t seem like the man at the scene
Of snowed-in death whose warm life the people
Couldn’t save from the sharply biting frost.
The man at the door asked if I would mind
If he came in to help me take away
The thoughts of the dead and frost-eaten man.
I did mind that he would stop the best scene.
This man and the others should go away
And let people scrub off their window-frost.
Denial
Remember when the blizzard killed that man?
The news-reporter arrived at the scene
Soon after the corpse was taken away.
The local news won’t show the dead people
They speak of, but I see them in my mind,
Like I see the windows covered with frost.
That morning in December when the frost
Was on the window-panes there was a man
Who came to the door. I asked if he’d mind
Coming back later; I was at the scene
Escaped. I just want you to go away,
I said, why don’t you leave and go away
To some place where the weather’s nice and frost
Won’t cover your windows and strange people
Don’t interrupt your movie. Then the man
Began to try to speak of a crime scene
Or something. I don’t know. I think his mind
Was not all there, or something, like his mind
Was broken, shattered glass that fell away
From the mirror in my bathroom. The scene
Is almost over; will you leave? The frost
Had fallen thick the night before the man
Came to the door. It covered the people
Who found the corpse, screaming like the people
In my movie. I didn’t really mind
Not finishing it, although the news-man
Said things unfinished won’t just go away
Like the life did of the man killed in the frost.
I should finish watching my favorite scene
So I won’t seem like the man at the scene
Of snowed-in death whose warm life the people
Couldn’t save from the sharply biting frost.
The man at the door asked if I would mind
If he came in to help me take away
The thoughts of the dead and frost-eaten man.
I did mind that he would stop the best scene.
This man and the others should go away
And let people scrub off their window-frost.
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