*poof*
Probably everyone knows this poem and this book very well. Kinnell isn't exactly invisible in the poetry world. I loved this poem and this book from the very first time I read it, while I sat on the floor in the old Emerson College at 150 Beacon Street. I've loved kids from a time well before I had any of my own, and I could put myself in this narrator's perspective so easily it was as if I'd suddenly slid from my own life and become a real poet. ;-) I hadn't really read anything that used linebreaks so seemingly haphazard, but powerfully --I got a charge as I read it-- or a voice that seemed so assured of its right to the sentiments expressed. Irony is the rule of the day for many poets, and I don't necessarily cotton to it all the time so Kinnell is a balm for me; I can go back and read BoN and remember how it lit me up the first time and have energy to go back the page with. I'm sort of over his poems now, but the feeling comes back just a little every ti...

Nice bomb although I suspect the eventual explosion to be mild and quickly doused with mist. If the world was filled with fathers like you, my, what a better place it would be.
ReplyDeleteFrom a technical perspective I think, at least from my reading, that the 'unfortunately' in the last two stanzas do not do the work that you intended, unless you intended the ambiguity. You wanted to mean that it is unfortunate that is was necessary to teach that lesson, right, not that it was unfortunate that you did? The quick fix 'I have had to..' breaks the repetition though, unfortunately. ;-)
Again, beautiful writing. Bravo!
I think you're right. When I recast it's probably going to be a couple stanzas longer, as I've had some ideas since writing it. I wanted the ambiguity at first, now I'm not so sure. Thanks Gerry!
ReplyDeletenot sure i understand the bomb idea but i love this, especially the last line
ReplyDeleteWell, I sort of thought it was a weakish poem that I could improve later, ergo poetry-bomb. I'm glad you like it though!
ReplyDelete