Poem Found Here: "A Bewilderment" by Bianca Stone
This poem plays with images and memory, and the title of "A Bewilderment" fits the way on how the images are structured and shown. But we start with a hyperbole first, "I have lost all luscious dreams / beyond all kingdoms of thought." What's accomplished in the hyperbole is a set-up for the reader -- we're not in a narrative structure, but more of a lyrical one focusing on dreams and thoughts.
"But then I feel happy thinking of you / the way we invite our love to the table / to eat what's left" I like these lines since these lines are trying to bring in the conceptual -- the love of the "you" figure and bring it to something more, something concrete as the images continue on with the you.
"I make a stream / connecting the baseball card in my wallet / with the you in my mind." I think these lines are essential in the poem. Here is the display of the signifier "baseball card" with the signified "you in my mind." There's something happily tragic about this concept of trying to bring the ideas to something more concrete.
And even though the next rhetorical question seems innocuous, "See how the sun carries certain weight?" To me, there's something desperate about the line. Not in an obvious way, but it's a line trying to get on the same page, to see the same things.
But the follow-up deflates any sort of weight and seriousness of the line with the simile of, "It looks like a wild egg / from a prehistoric bird broken open / on a baffled hill." The image taken to far when meaning isn't there. And in that instant, the focus goes back to the I speaker.
"I want to go out / and ride the back of a parable"
"or walk up and down the city looking / for something that thrilled me back in the day"
The speaker is moving on. Not with emotion, but with momentum to find that thrill.
"Back in the day I tore / jubilant Edwardian script / across a savannah."
"I wrote that there was no / stopping a forest / from taking what I wanted."
I'm not good with my memory of Edwardian scripts, but, to me it's the indication of wanting something written that sticks and nothing truly sticks if it's just words and an image. Those wants and emotions long gone from the image.
This poem plays with images and memory, and the title of "A Bewilderment" fits the way on how the images are structured and shown. But we start with a hyperbole first, "I have lost all luscious dreams / beyond all kingdoms of thought." What's accomplished in the hyperbole is a set-up for the reader -- we're not in a narrative structure, but more of a lyrical one focusing on dreams and thoughts.
"But then I feel happy thinking of you / the way we invite our love to the table / to eat what's left" I like these lines since these lines are trying to bring in the conceptual -- the love of the "you" figure and bring it to something more, something concrete as the images continue on with the you.
"I make a stream / connecting the baseball card in my wallet / with the you in my mind." I think these lines are essential in the poem. Here is the display of the signifier "baseball card" with the signified "you in my mind." There's something happily tragic about this concept of trying to bring the ideas to something more concrete.
And even though the next rhetorical question seems innocuous, "See how the sun carries certain weight?" To me, there's something desperate about the line. Not in an obvious way, but it's a line trying to get on the same page, to see the same things.
But the follow-up deflates any sort of weight and seriousness of the line with the simile of, "It looks like a wild egg / from a prehistoric bird broken open / on a baffled hill." The image taken to far when meaning isn't there. And in that instant, the focus goes back to the I speaker.
"I want to go out / and ride the back of a parable"
"or walk up and down the city looking / for something that thrilled me back in the day"
The speaker is moving on. Not with emotion, but with momentum to find that thrill.
"Back in the day I tore / jubilant Edwardian script / across a savannah."
"I wrote that there was no / stopping a forest / from taking what I wanted."
I'm not good with my memory of Edwardian scripts, but, to me it's the indication of wanting something written that sticks and nothing truly sticks if it's just words and an image. Those wants and emotions long gone from the image.
Comments
Post a Comment