[Julie Steiner]

DRAFT THREE (basically, Draft One minus epigraph, and with S1LL3-4 as in Draft Two)

Infant

I’m carried through the muggy night
on Da-Da’s shoulders, at a height
where nothing blocks new waves of smell,
new bursts of sound, new blasts of light.

Calliope and carousel
might be (as near as I can tell)
another concept past my ken —
the pandemonium of Hell.

I have no words to wrap this in.
Its contact burns my eyes, my skin,
my nose, my ears. I can’t grasp why
incisors all around me grin.

My universe has gone awry,
unspeakably. So I apply
the only spell that I can try:
Bye-bye! I sob. Bye-bye! Bye-bye!


DRAFT TWO

Pandæmonium

I’m carried through the muggy night
on Da-Da’s shoulders, at a height
where nothing blocks new waves of smell,
new bursts of sound, new blasts of light.

Boiling oil, balloon, beer, bell,
marquee bulb, Skee-Ball, carousel,
remain as far beyond my ken
as the machinery of Hell.

I have no words to wrap this in.
Its contact burns my eyes, my skin,
my nose, my ears. I can’t grasp why
incisors all around me grin.

My universe has gone awry,
unspeakably. So I apply
the only spell that I can try:
Bye-bye! I sob. Bye-bye! Bye-bye!


DRAFT ONE

Infant

     from Latin in- ‘not’ + fans, fant- ‘speaking’ (present participle of fari, ‘to speak, to say’)

I’m carried through the muggy night
on Da-Da’s shoulders, at a height
where nothing blocks assaults of smell,
cascades of noise, and blasts of light.

Calliope and carousel
might be, as near as I can tell,
another concept past my ken —
the pandemonium of Hell.

I have no words to wrap this in.
Its contact burns my eyes, my skin,
my nose, my ears. I can’t grasp why
incisors all around me grin.

My universe has gone awry,
unspeakably. So I apply
the only spell that I can try:
Bye-bye! I sob. Bye-bye! Bye-bye!

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Julie,

I like this a lot! I really love the ending.

The only thing I would suggest is to stick with more naive diction. Somehow skirting the modifiers like assault, which complicates with its evocation of "infantry", seems like a good move. I think "blasts" is a lot better than assaults and cascades, which are less immediate.

But N's reaction to the toys and gadgets and parent-handling is well done. It's the right length, and, wow, the ending.

[My grandson (6 months) was in for a week last week, and my wife stocked up on borrowed toys and play apparatuses. I wondered the whole time what he made of it all. I was just sent a photo of him on the lap of a man dressed as a rabbit.]

Rick

[Glenn Wright]

I’m a big fan of the rubaiyat. It works particularly well here because the four-beat, strongly marked rhythm imitates the bouncing of a small child on her father’s shoulders.
Nice job!

[John Riley]

I love this, Julie. It would stand out for me if I read it in any journal. The rhymes aren’t too loud, which I like but most of all it creates the experience of being on a dad’s shoulders at an amusement park. (That’s my reading FWIW.) But if I’m wrong about where it is set it doesn’t matter. What it is, the experience, is what makes it great. Excitement, some confusion, a young consciousness working to make sense. Well done. I love it. I already said that but I love it. Oops!

[Rick Mullin]

Julie,

I don't think you need the epigraph. In fact, I think you need to remove it.

Rick

[Carl Copeland]

Delightful, Julie. I’d replace the comma at the end of S2L2 with a dash to make the following line clearly parenthetical. Otherwise, the doubt of “might be, as near as I can tell” is cast on something that’s obvious—that it’s “another concept past my ken.” As for the epigraph, I’d at least cut the parenthetical part. I love the incisors giving savagery to the grins.

[Jim Moonan]

.
It is astonishing, when I stop to think about it, how utterly strange the new world must seem to infants. Research has shown what shapes, colors, sounds, etc. attract a newborn's senses but what it cannot tell us is how the baby perceives and reacts to them

You've captured the quintessential perspective from which the young child views the world by placing them on the jostling shoulders of an adult.(Another would be from the position of lying supine on the ground looking up at the world from every angle.)
There is a point in childhood when riding on the shoulders of an adult is no longer physically possible and it just now occurs to me that it is a pivotal moment in our existence. I think I can almost remember that day when I said to each of my children, "No, you're too big for me to put you on my shoulders (to which they no doubt replied, "piggyback ride!"). But the day comes when it becomes impossible.

And the setting of the poem is perfect; Felliniesque. I've definitely watched as my young child reacts in horror to something we adults see as harmless fantasy. It's as if they see a deeper message in it.

I think Carl might be right about the comma in S2L2.

Glenn's eye for rubaiyat seems well-placed. I hadn't even heard of it before...

My only question has to do with the title. "Infant" has a very specific association to "newborn" and the child in the poem is obviously not a newborn. At the very least, the child is able to speak the words "bye bye". So there's some incongruity in the title. (though the full definition of "infant" seems to make some concessions for age.) On the other hand, I love the sound of the world "Infant".

As Rick suggests, the epigraph is not needed. If anything, it reinforces my contention that "infant" refers to a newborn vs. a one/two year old.

The rhyme pattern is perfectly locked into the rhythm of the poem.

Beautifully rendered vision of an infant's perspective.



.

[W T Clark]

For something, with no words, the infant is almost gorgeously eloquent. That is the thing which breaks the poem for me. As a monologue, it expresses ideas about being an infant, very well; but it does not express feeling. For that you'd need a language which in its very weft expresses inarticulacy. Not something elegant but rather savage. As I say, Julie, you have put ideas very well into rhyme; but I want to know in language, the feeling of languageless raw stunned puzzllement; I want to know the FEEL of being an infant. Good luck with that poem.
Another way of putting it: the poem sounds like a monologue by a clever adult aping imaginatively what it is like to be an infant. You need to annihilate yourself more.

Hope this helps.

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Julie

W T expresses more fully what I meant by naive diction. Any language at all is out of reach of an infant (by definition), but the reader makes distinctions. Eloquence is the wrong approach, I think.

And since I've already repeated myself, I will again say the definition I mention in the paragraph above does not need to be given in an epigraph.


Rick

[Susan McLean]

Julie, I like it. I think Rick has a point about your not needing the epigraph. The title alone tells readers all they need to know about the age of the child. I don't agree with Cameron and Rick that the language needs to be naive. We can't write in the language of the nearly wordless. Instead, you are doing your best to express the pain of the intense and not-understood, from the point of view of an infant. I loved the way the last line works, saying "bye-bye" in the hope that the painful experiences will go away.

Susan