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From section 2, Childhood, of Saltian
Dysfunction
By Alice Shapiro
1.
Upon the resolution of a fight
between two adults in the clan
a child a-shiver in the corner
tries to understand
a frown or sneer
appearing on the mouth
that spews a happy word,
apologies, honor
after miscreants confuse the matter
saying one thing
harboring another.
Can you set the world aright
if ancestors mold it muddled?
2.
It is almost fun to solve a puzzle
unravel strings of life’s impeccable moments
an Aha! a Wow! the
how you fit together.
And when you put a name to it
call it gone
embellish or employ it
in dance or song
the dazzle rights a wrong
sanctifies
a long-suppressed muddle.
Critique
By Scott Owens
Coming in the Childhood section of Saltian, “Dysfunction” certainly captures the dynamics of a situation we, as children, commonly find ourselves in, making sense out of sarcasm. In my own experience, it seems to be something children are quite gifted at, even at very young ages, almost as if it is second nature, or instinct, for human beings to comprehend the potential for language to be duplicitous. Thus, the second stanza seems quite true, that we, even as children, relish in the understanding of sarcasm as much as in the creation of it.
As a poet, my instincts towards revising “Dysfunction” are almost entirely technical. I don’t think the question that separates the two stanzas is necessary at all. It seems intrusive and untrusting of the reader’s ability to apply the story being told to the world we inhabit. Additionally, I think the lines would be stronger with some changes in line breaks. The first four lines feel like trimeter to me, and I think the next line is more interesting if it continues that pattern: “a frown or a sneer appearing.” There is obviously a great deal of sound play going on in the poem, and placing “sneer” and “appearing” in closer proximity further enhances that element. Continuing with this idea, I would relineate the rest of the stanza thus: “on the mouth that spews a happy/word, apologies, honor,/after miscreants confuse the matter/saying one thing harboring another.” I enjoy the odd sense of “spewing a happy,” the list of possibilities that follows, and the one tetrameter line coming at the end as a sort of resolution.
Similarly, I think the final stanza becomes stronger with a relatively consistent trimeter line throughout. Doing so will deemphasize the end rhyme of “gone,” “song,” and “wrong,” but I find such triple rhyme more effective when presented with the subtlety of internal placement. With this in mind, the stanza would be as follows:
It is almost fun to solve
a puzzle, unravel strings
of life’s impeccable moments,
an Aha! a Wow! the how
you fit together. And when
you put a name to it, call it
gone, embellish or employ it
in dance or song, the dazzle
rights a wrong, sanctifies
a long-suppressed muddle.
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Born in Greenwood SC, Scott Owens now lives in Hickory NC, where he coordinates the Poetry Hickory reading series and Writers’ Night Out, edits Wild Goose Poetry Review and 234, writes the weekly poetry column Musings in Outlook, and is the regional representative for the North Carolina Writers’ Network and vice president of the Poetry Council of North Carolina. He holds degrees from Ohio University, UNC-Charlotte, and UNC-Greensboro. He is the author of Something Knows the Moment (Main Street Rag, August 2011), Paternity (Main Street Rag, 2010), The Fractured World (Main Street Rag, 2008), and three chapbooks. He teaches English and creative writing at Catawba Valley Community College and more than 800 of his poems have been published in literary journals. His work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize, the NC Writers’ Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC, has been nominated for 7 Pushcart Prizes and 7 Best of the Net awards, and has been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac.
