[Barbara Baig]

Hi Glenn--A contrary viewpoint here: I know that generally specifics add to a poem, but I'm not convinced that would be the case here. If you add more specifics to the second stanza, I think you will narrow the focus to this one particular child, to his particular story. Perhaps that's what you want.

However, I think that focus would limit the reader's ability to open to the wisdom the poem presents. And you'd probably lose some of the poem's present hypnotic rhythms. --
Barbara

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Carl, Jim, Marshall, and Hilary—

I’m glad you found something in my poem that you responded to, Carl. I didn’t envision a sexually explicit science fair project. Rather, I imagined a rather cynical older sister who was embarrassed by her brother’s enthusiastic and geeky participation in the fair. I can see, though, how it could suggest something more suggestive. I took your advice on “naught.”

Thanks for the encouragement, Jim. I hadn’t thought about the William Blake connection until you pointed it out.

I’m glad the structure works for you, Marshall. I agree that the reasons for his disillusionment need to be specific and concrete. Easier said than done.

I found Kavanaugh’s poem, Hilary. I was not familiar with it. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. “Innocent” is a surprisingly multivalent word. Its Latin roots mean “harmless.” John Donne uses this original sense of the word in his “Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” when he discusses an earthquake, which “brings harms and fears,” contrasting it with the trepidation of the spheres, which “though greater far, is innocent.” Somewhere along the way, “innocent” acquired its most common current meaning, “guiltless.” It is also often used ironically to mean “clueless.” I wanted to play on all three meanings in my poem. The boy in S1 is “harmless” because, as Jim points out, his parents failed to provide the armor and weapons needed for self-defense. He is “guiltless” because his parents have sheltered him from sin and the seamier side of life. They have not given him refusal skills nor trusted him to develop moral convictions beyond cheap slogans. He is “clueless” because he has not brought into adulthood the knowledge of the snares that await him. I wanted to show that the boy’s parents have done him a disservice by sending him into adulthood unarmed, inexperienced, and unsuspecting—unready to leave his protected childish worldview behind him. Kavanaugh’s poem strikes a similar chord, I think:

     . . .I know nothing of women,
     Nothing of cities,
     I cannot die
     Unless I walk outside these whitethorn hedges.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Barbara—

Thanks again for weighing in. I minimally tinkered with S2, but kept the rhythm and repetition. I got rid of “that he would struggle with many limitations,” which didn’t seem to add any real value, and added the reasons for his inability to be an astronaut or pro athlete (nearsightedness and asthma).

Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Barbara Baig

I know that generally specifics add to a poem, but I'm not convinced that would be the case here. If you add more specifics to the second stanza, I think you will narrow the focus to this one particular child, to his particular story. … I think that focus would limit the reader's ability to open to the wisdom the poem presents.

What Barbara predicted has proved true for me. In S2L4 I start feeling sorry for this poor, sick kid, which lets me off the hook a little. It’s only one line, of course …

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright

I wanted to show that the boy’s parents have done him a disservice by sending him into adulthood unarmed, inexperienced, and unsuspecting—unready to leave his protected childish worldview behind him.

Touché. Me to a T.

[Hilary Biehl]

Glenn, I don't want to derail your thread with a discussion of Kavanagh's poem, so I'll say only that I think he is getting at a different, perhaps mystical ("I am no mortal age") sort of innocence, one which can be knowingly embraced ("But now I am back in her briary arms") after its initial rejection ("I flung her from me and called her a ditch").

That's not where you were going, though, and that's fine. Apologies for what was possibly an irrelevant tangent.

[Julie Steiner]

As long as we're diverging a bit from the poem, per se:

Originally Posted by Glenn Wright
I wanted to show that the boy’s parents have done him a disservice by sending him into adulthood unarmed, inexperienced, and unsuspecting—unready to leave his protected childish worldview behind him.

And Carl says he relates to this as well. I hear you.

That said, I have a dear friend of 30+ years who was concerned when I was homeschooling my kids, because she felt that while she was homeschooled she missed out on important "socialization," so that when she attended public high school she felt socially awkward, never knew at which table to sit in the cafeteria, etc. She had been raised as a de facto only child (10 years younger than her youngest older sibling), as well. For decades, she was still very angry with the disservice she felt her parents had done her, which she believed had saddled her with a lifetime of not knowing how to fit in.

I countered that, even though I had not been homeschooled and even though I had been raised with siblings, and even though I had received the usual "socialization" (i.e., had been a regular recipient of teasing and bullying), when I attended public high school I had still felt naïve, unprepared, socially awkward, never knew at which table to sit in the cafeteria, etc.

So it's quite possible that, regardless of her homeschooling and only child status, she, too, would have felt naïve, unprepared, socially awkward, and lost in the politics of cafeteria protocols.

I suggest that the same might be true for all but those few lucky souls who seem to fit right in in any crowd...although I suspect that many of them are just better at hiding their insecurities.

It's comforting to blame our parents for screwing us up, but I like the perspective of Larkin in "This Be the Verse" — i.e., that all parents are screwups. Some more literally and seriously than others, of course. (My non-immediate family has had more incest in it than most, with multiple people having gone to prison for it, so that Thanksgivings and weddings and funerals are a logistical nightmare while we juggle generations and who is not allowed within so many feet of minors, even with many others present.) But, without minimizing the lasting damage of that sort of abuse and neglect, I think it's important to recognize that sometimes life is challenging simply because life is challenging, and we are drastically unprepared for certain aspects of it no matter what.

Not that the poem should be changed in any way. Just thinking with my mouth open here, in case it's helpful.

~~~~~

Returning to the poem — I like the addition of specificity (myopia and lack of athleticism) to S2. I don't think you need more specifics than that to make it feel real.

[Hilary Biehl]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

But, without minimizing the lasting damage of that sort of abuse and neglect, I think it's important to recognize that sometimes life is challenging simply because life is challenging, and we are drastically unprepared for certain aspects of it no matter what.

Absolutely. Well said.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Julie—

Indeed, we all have to work out our adolescence in fear and trembling (to paraphrase St. Paul). All parenting decisions are fraught, and I did not intend my poem as an indictment of homeschooling. I had in mind an experience from when my children were teenagers.

I attended a high school graduation ceremony for a friend of my daughter, whom she had met singing in the community chorus. The ceremony was arranged by the parents of a half-dozen students who had been homeschooled and most of whom belonged to the same close-knit religious community. Each graduate gave a speech. Almost every speech revealed the graduate’s view of the world as a dangerous and threatening place which could only be survived by undeviating adherence and obedience to their parents’ tenets. I worried about my daughter’s friend, who was eighteen years old, excruciatingly vulnerable, and about to leave Alaska for college in a large city somewhere on the East Coast.

In all likelihood, she turned out fine—or at least no more screwed up than the rest of us. I don’t know. But my poem was suggesting that exposing children to a wider reality, even though risking that they may be hurt or confused, may serve to inoculate them somewhat from catastrophic disillusionment, provide them with a roadmap and set of options that they can use to plan their attack on life, and give them some armor to hide their vulnerabilities.

Thanks, Julie, for your openness and generosity in sharing your personal experience. We may make different decisions in bringing up our children, but we all love them and want to help them find happy and meaningful—if challenging—lives.

Glenn

[Max Goodman]

I like the ending place (the last three lines) a lot.

The first stanza feels too pat for me to trust: because this, this. The sister and the science fair project engage me more than the rest, which are more familiar.

The second stanza has too few surprises to engage me. I'm not sure what would make it more engaging. Showing his life more specifically, as some have suggested, is probably what I would try if the poem were mine.

FWIW.