Deep Analysis of 2 Poems

Below is a recent exchange I had by e-mail. My answers are interspersed. The poems themselves are not in front of you. I'm hoping the analysis is still inlightening to curious writer searching for such discussion or improving her voice.-----

Chrissy: I enjoyed reading your poems very much and like them a lot! Both are very creative, moving, vivid, appealing to senses and feelings, though sad but not despaired or completely depressing, i.e. with sense of hope and recovery. Both used interesting analogies and comparisons. However, they are different. I think "Ode to Sadness" is more abstract and romantic, and "Her Ghost" is more domestic and practical. I sense maybe "Her Ghost" was written at a later time than "Ode to Sadness", when you were a little more recovered from your sadness but still think of and miss her now and then, more so at certain moments of a day than others, especially at dinner time, etc. I like both. But, if I have to pick, maybe I like "Ode to Sadness" even better, as, to me, it's more interesting and with more emotional intensity. What do you say?

There are many things I like in the two poems. For "Ode to Sadness", six three-lined stanzas In !st stanza, it's interesting you set the tone here and take sadness as your friend and use the mud-bath to elephant analogy. But, I'm very curious about how you thought about this when you wrote it.

Rich: I’d like to grow at poetry so I don’t have to wait around for inspiration (just “being me”) and being able to write from other people’s or a hypothetical person’s view point, but until then, I write just as I feel. “Wallowing” is a kind of common phrase for me, especially in self-talk, “although like an elephant” is not particularly how I generally put it or visualize it. It could be a pig, or other, wallowing critter, I suppose. But I didn’t like visualizing a pig, which connotes dirtiness more than I wanted. So that never came to mind. I’ve seen wallowing elephants more than once on PBS, so it jumped to mind as a good metaphor (at least, okay), including the needing of the messiness and kind of lazy relaxation and taking the assertive action to assuage a longstanding, hopeless irritation. Elephants are big like sadness is big.

Chrissy: 2nd and 3rd stanzas are very important ones, as they make us feel your sad feelings. I like your pick "pillow". One key word promotes so much associations and truly invokes readers' feelings. A picture's worth a thousand words. "Wrap it around my face and breathe in her perfume", such a vivid image, successfully bring readers to your position and feel what you feel.

Rich: Yeah, I love it, too. But it does kind of clash with the preceding elephant image, probably the main problems with the poem. Still, I feel this poem is among my biggest creative triumphs.

Chrissy: It must be sad and miserable beyond words for a surviving lover or spouse tossing in bed endlessly during those initial sleepless nights. It expressed how much you missed her more effectively than words could. 2nd stanza uses image and 3rd summarizes it in words, both convey the sad sad feelings. I really like the image and think it's such a success.

Rich: It’s not as though my wife and I never clashed. We did in some areas; love kind of fades into an acceptable living arrangement, complete with obvious positives and unspoken negatives. Surprising, no, shocking, to me, in having suffered through her dying, is how change, especially very sudden change to whole life style, etc. is so very difficult for humans to go through—high on the stress-meter. A relationship breaking up is difficult the same way. But the focus of this poem properly remains how the emotion of feeling sad actually helps humans cope; even helps us to face our inevitably tragic futures. (I don’t intend that little statement to be a downer, just factual.)

Chrissy: The 4th stanza, I kinda like the analogy, but not really clear if it's fog or a seducing woman who leads you to a dark place (without sun) and played you, and like very much to hear from you about your thoughts on this.

Rich: I think I’ve taken poetic license to stray and explore some tentative thoughts, not necessarily truths for all time. Certainly, your mind is not as clear as it was (foggy) when sadness strikes. Then I’ve personified sadness--like a student of poetry, but hope it comes across as seamless--and I made "her" (i.e., sadness) a surrogate intimate entity. Intimacy can have traits other than purely sexual, and is important in a successful relationship between mates. To me, physical touching is important. Here, I attempt to tenderly show it.

Chrissy: For 5th stanza, I love all these comparisons. Very interesting thoughts!

Rich: Thank you.

Chrissy: For 6th stanza, as I mentioned before, I like your inner strength of seeing hope, thus making it a positive end ....

Rich: Yeah, some people interpret me as a gloomy guy, and I wanted to not end up there.

Chrissy: ... despite the fact that you still feel sad sometimes. Same as in 1st stanza, I'm curious about exactly how you take sadness, your attitude in general toward sadness. You call it your friend, you like it, need it or cannot help being with it?

Rich: I think I accept sadness as a necessary seemingly-evil thing, like, say, taking a poop. That is completely natural, normal, proves your getting well-nourished, and yet it is taken so negative by our society. I want to sell sadness as normal. My Aunt treats everything in public, social situations as having to be happy and have a happy ending. Then, she can't accept awful things, e.g., she can't talk about them or even allow others to. For example, recently she couldn't face telling me that her daughter was dying of cancer (I finally visited my cousin in her last miserable days). I like balance. I love life and the life force we have. But I don’t deny the “negative.” In a Buddhist sort of view, death (after a good, full life) is actually a good thing. I’m doing something similarly, but with a not quite as socially negatively-charged subject.

Chrissy: I think Ode is a very good choice of poem form for your topic. I wonder what's your definition of ode? From what I learned in my Creative Writing class, it has no fixed rules or format.

Rich: I couldn’t figure out a decent, all encompassing title by excising a few words from the poem, so “Ode …” helps me a lot. It implies, “Let’s analyze sadness”, but avoids people skipping reading the poem if I had just named it “Sadness.” The latter is perfectly logical, but pre-charges the discussion with negativity. Ode is more neutral and has the possibility for being positive subject matter.

Chrissy: Is that [i.e., no fixed form or format] what you think, too? You had six three-lined stanzas for your ode, was it your choice? For any particular reasons?
Rich: It’s just how it popped out of my brain—of, course, there were rewrites, to pare it down to the essentials. It could be a one very-long stanza poem, but I’m a lousy reader, and like a lot of white space. Stanzas help to break it up into bite sized chunks.. You will also note, I strive for clarity in the view I’m presenting. I’m an engineer. No artful mysteries added if I can avoid it. That’s just me. There’s room in the world for phantasmagorical writing, but it’s not where I want to be for my own work, so far.

Chrissy: Anyway, I like to hear your thoughts or anything you want say or explain about your poem. Oh, I'm too slow. I only talked about one poem and it's this late again. Alright, next time. The good thing is I don't need to get up so early taking kids to school. My daughter's 0 period, starting at 7am, is killing me, as I'm not an early person.

Rich: The ghost poem is much more difficult because it bumps up against fictional things, and needs to blend them optimally with reality to get across what I’m trying to. It’s a less important and less successful poem in my opinion, too, but there’s a place for what it touches on. Kevin Arnold work-shopped it at last year's Gold Rush Writers Conference and likes it a lot, but wished I had explained: Was the ghost a continuation of my wife—and in what sense—or was the ghost something separate, spawned by my wife’s death? Perhaps another way to say it, should I call the ghost an “it” or should I call it a “her,” meaning my wife’s "soul," perhaps a white sheeted floating thing, a Casper-the-Ghost with my wife's personality or a changed personality for having "crossed over." Kind of deep, but the way I did it begs that line of questioning. Another way to state it: I’m an engineer, okay? Never in my adult life did I believe in ghosts, angels, gods, such things. Is the ghost poems saying that now I do believe? And Kevin felt I should clarify that and why or why not. But more recently he said that poem in particular sticks in his mind. Quite a compliment.

Chrissy: TGI Friday!

Rich: Having bored you to death, I say have a good week. Hey, longer is okay, too! I need to get to work on Ode To Happiness. --the end--