DDCPoetry

This is a question and response poem.  Question and response is a rhetorical device that plays with anticipation,  When the question is asked, the reader naturally assumes there will be something to answer; however, the first thing that I noted with the question was how condescending it reads, "Does it make you sad to see the close / of the family romance" Maybe I'm reading the tone wrong, but with the poem called "Child" and the first question being so probing that it feels like an attack on emotions like, "oh are you sad that you didn't get an ice cream cone -- how tragic."  There's a sense of irony and sarcasm with the first two lines for me plus the content  of close of the family romance adds a tinge of bitterness which feels directed towards the child. "to know the house is grounded in the flow / and left to chance / by currents you never had control of?"  Yes, the image of the broken home as a natural disaster is a common compa...

Original poem reprinted online here:  "The Teller" by David Mason Originally read: January 14, 2013  More information about the Poet: David Mason So this poem is tricky.  Yes, indeed that these is a narrative.  Also this is a Elizabethan Sonnet (even though the construction is separated in eight and six), so the volta in the poem is the couplet at the end.  So within the form already there's a bit of a sleight of hand. However, it's not really realized in the first eight lines.  The poem starts off like a regular narrative about how an Eskimo named Jack got lost at sea while fishing.  This all feels like back story, but what makes this poem work for me is that the back story is literally eight lines -- all I need to know is there. Then the next five lines, I believe, chronicle the five years the Eskimo took to go back home.  I write this: The anaphora matches the passage of time.  Technique wise, it's pretty brilliant. 1 [year one] Did the En...