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Sometimes, to earn a few pennies in a desultory way without doing something unpleasant or illegal, I resort to the teaching of littachur in the halls of higher learning. An exercise that often proves interesting and profitable, and stops students from tearing off hell-bent in agonies of premature criticism, is a step-by-step approach to looking at a work. The first step is to look at what is actually there. Sorry, campers, no interpretation at this point. You just state, ad infinitum, what is there. Examples: “This poem has eighteen lines. “ “There is an internal slant rhyme in the second, fourth, sixth and eighth lines. “ You must be very strict while doing this part of the exercise; you can be ridiculously petty and pedantic. Even something like “the subject is unrequited love” is not allowed. Would anyone like to try this with one of Leonard’s poems? When no more more-or-less objective observations are to be made, we can branch out into the headier joys of talking about how and why the poem grabs us where we live (or not). I was rather taken with one he posted a year or so ago, called, A Life of Errands, to be found on The Blackening Pages. P.S. I don’t want to moderate this. I’ll get it started and it can just meander on in the way discussions here do. Since I have a notoriously short attention span, at a certain point I may even wander away to watch a tree grow or something. At any rate, I will begin and we will see if this idea turns anyone on. One or two observations is all you need to offer; let others have their turns, kiddies.

This poem has fifty-eight lines. It is printed in font Times New Roman. Each word is capitalized.

Hi Sohbet ~

What a great idea!!!

As one [notoriously known to be ~ to myself ] intimidated by the idea of interpreting Leonard's poetry [as doing so, so often seems to benefit by/require fore-knowledge of additional literary/historical/cultural/religious/spiritual facts, etc., ad infinitum ~ for which I obviously don't feel up to the task ], I would love to participate in this exercise, Sohbet ~ even if my participation proves to be short-lived .

My input:

The lines of the poem are relatively short, the longest ones being comprised of six words.

Of course, now, I'm wishing you hadn't done a 3-in-1 observation of your own

This well stands a chance of running dry pretty quickly on this end, with the technics of "official" poetry observation . However, I'll keep trying !

~ Elizabeth

the poem is written in 'you will' form, as if a poet is telling someone what is going to happen in future.

Thanks, Lizzytysh and Jurica, It looks as if people may find this fun. Just to get us started right, at this point, we should make an observation such as "the poet uses the "will" form" but not say as if he is talking about the future, because that is interpreting what the words might mean and we are not doing that at this point. I don't want to be pedantic, just the rules of the game!

Thanks, Jurica! I was wondering how many Views we needed to allow before making another observation. I still may need to wait awhile Sohbet

In case it's not okay yet, I'll venture with something seemingly "borderline," so if I am going "out of turn" [too soon], it may at least be with something that doesn't "qualify" at this juncture ~ because it's not literally within the poem.

My observation, in light of all that, is:

The poem was written on New Year's Eve, at the turn of the century, on the eve of the new millenium.

Shall we strike it, or can it stay? I can delete this post, if it's outside the rules, as well .

~ Lizzytysh

Where's Tom Sakic He oughta be interested in something like this .

Dear Lizzytysh, Seems good to me. That struck me as well. I suppose a really strict referee might not allow something outside the poem, but what the hell, we're all adults here! We can bend the rules just a teensy for a good cause. But let's not go wild doing such things!

Yeah, Sohbet, it's definitely borderline ~ but thanks for letting it stay . Now, I'll go to the back of the line and wait my turn again . I have my printed-out copy and red pen at work. It's rather surprizing how many purely-objective observations can be made.

Kush How about you

~ Lizzytysh

Some sentences are ended with periods (full stops) and some are not. I'm editing to retract this statement. My printer cartridge is old and some characters print very lightly. Since I'm babbling on about punctuation, instead I will point out that about halfway through the poem, standard punctuation would require a comma after "To Enlighten Yourself."

Well, I've been waiting for Jurica [or anyone] to reappear [or appear]. However, at 64 Views, I'm going to proceed with:

The longest word in the poem is 12 letters long, and there is only one of that length.

J-u-u-u-r-r-r-i-i-i-c-a-a-a-a-a...................

~ Lizzytysh

I'll post this and then go away to get some work done.

This poem consists of ten sentences. Their word lengths are 14, 12, 24, 23, 44, 27, 13, 20, 14, 6. If we cut a little slack, we can see it begins with a 14-word sentence, swells through 20-something sentences to a 44-word sentence, then subsides, again through a 20-something sentence, to a 14-word sentence, with a strongly-stressed 6-word sentence as the final one. The sentences are diverse, each one quite a different construction, with examples of simple, compound, and complex structures. There are, however, no compound-complex sentences although the third sentence could be considered compound-complex if the elliptical “delivering and fetching” were expanded to its full length: “while you deliver and fetch,” which, of course, doesn’t sound very good—I just wanted to point out the structural underpinning.

~ Well, you captured my sentence-length observation. The nature of the sentences, was somewhere that I wouldn't have thought to go, anyway[!], so no "loss" to me there !

I'm going to wait for Jurica [or someone else] to appear, before I give another one....unless the views and the time goes on and on and on. We still have a long way to go, anyway, per your original criteria of "ad infinitum......ridiculously petty and pedantic." So, plenty of observations waiting in the wings .

~ Lizzytysh

Greetings to all,

This has finally tempted me out of lurkdom. I don't wish to jump ahead but as this is one of my favorite recent poems of Leonard, I have to point that the lines, "You Are No Longer a Boy
Or Even a Man"

indicates that the narrator is male.

Joe

P. S. Sohbet, I've enjoyed your posts from the early days of the board, and I have to say that even despite the swirling controveries of Leonard's birthday greeting, the ongoing nashing of teeth over the quality of posts and poetry, and the comings and goings of posters (posteurs) old and new, this board has become an energetic and fun place to be. Thanks to so many of the new people who have injected wisdom and fun back into a place where Leonard wouldn't be bored silly to lurk(not that he does, of course).

I was hoping that this is where you'd posted, Joe, when I saw your name.

My next observation is that Leonard uses "I" only one time, and in his last line.

Ciao Poetry Critics!

Excellent idea! In the first line, you can contract You Are and give the line one and a half feet of spoken text:

X / X
If You're Lucky

or treat the line as headless with two feet of spoken text:

X / X / X
(pause) If You Are Lucky

Either way most of the line is silent. Perhaps Leonard uses the pause to build anticipation in his readers. Or perhaps he is trying to decide which magnificent detail to re-create first.

Vesuvius

I'm not the professor here, so I won't comment on some of the cozying up to "interpretation," that I'm noticing coming a tad too soon.

Even so, I feel my most recent observation was [again] borderline in that regard, as it's not strictly addressing the "mechanics" and "visuals" of the poem and may still be too "subjective" . Since I haven't been tapped with the ruler ["ouch!" ] on it yet, however, my next observations will be soooo "borderline" [again] ~ Sohbet ~ please nudge me back onto the track, if I'm on the shoulder. I'll self-correct immediately, with the clarification:

There are 18 "others" words [11 "you"s, 6 "your"s, and 1 "yourself"], with 1 [already-noted "I"] "self" word. Maybe I should just stick to the count, and leave off that the one set has to do with "others" and the one word has to do with "self"

The poem is introduced with "If."

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[Vesuvius ~ Being a cat person myself, I like the way you couch your observations through your own, self-absorbed (after all, felines do define the world view ), animal-way of seeing the poem.]
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~ Lizzytysh