Your poetry is broken, please fix it

[j4]

A bug appeared in our tracking database the other day:

Title: Poem text is jumbled.
Description: Peter Reading's "And Now, a Quick Look at the Morning Papers".

Here's the full text of the (actually rather good) poem in question:

1 lled in
2 ar smas
3 e freed b
4 iremen from the wreckage of his Ren
5 fter both had been in collision wit
6 hrysler Avenger. The A49 was blocke
7 en to cut both drivers from their v
8 dition of the other driver as 'sati
9 rsday---the day after his fiftiet
10 or alcohol proved positive, a p
11 juries to his head and left l
12 mproving' said a hospital o
13 lso certified dead was Do
14 eaves a wife and two chi
15 aid 'He just drove ou
16 othing I could do.'
17 Parochial Church
18 early retire
19 any year
20 fini
21 ha

I spent the next 10 minutes alternating between re-reading the poem and trying to think of a tactful way of saying "It's meant to look like that, you philistine."

Future bugs expected include "Poem entitled 'Sonnet' has extra line"; "'Four Quartets' is missing 8 violins, 4 violas and 4 cellos" ...

Amused me, anyway, so I thought I'd post something amusing to counterbalance the previous miserable entry. Although, of course, the "amusing" post contains a more serious poem... does the comedy frame the tragedy, or vice versa? Half empty. Half full. Half past six, and time to go home.

Comments

[chrisvenus]

OK. This is where I fall into the philistine camp I guess.

What the hell is that poem meant to be? I get the impression that it is random bits of things in a newspaper but I really don't get it. What is the point of using that structure? What message is it trying to get across?

As I re-read it is starts to make a bit more sense but I ahve to admit that on a single reading I would think something was screwed. Of course I would check this before submitting as a bug. :)

But yeah, what's with the structure, why does it start with some really short lines, get bigger and then reduce. I could understand if it started with long lines and got shorter... Oh well. Can you spare the time to give me a couple of paragraphs discussing the poem? If not then don't worry, I'm not overly bothered but I figured you'd like the chance to educate me further. :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It's the text that you might see on a scrap of paper torn from a newspaper. Perhaps the destruction of the newspaper is supposed to mirror the death and destruction documented in the poem.

[j4.livejournal.com]

What ewx said, basically.

I get the impression that it is random bits of things in a newspaper

Okay, I've filled in what the missing bits of words could be, in some places I'm guessing, but you get the gist of what the "article" would have said:

1 lled in
2 ar smas
3 e freed b
4 iremen from the wreckage of his Ren
5 fter both had been in collision wit
6 hrysler Avenger. The A49 was blocke
7 en to cut both drivers from their v
8 dition of the other driver as 'sati
9 rsday---the day after his fiftiet
10 or alcohol proved positive, a p
11 juries to his head and left l
12 mproving' said a hospital o
13 lso certified dead was Do
14 eaves a wife and two chi
15 aid 'He just drove ou
16 othing I could do.'
17 Parochial Church
18 early retire
19 any year
20 fini
21 ha

...

The lengths of the lines aren't really the point -- it's supposed to look like it's been ripped from a newspaper (the hint's in the title, "And now, a Quick Look at the Morning Papers") so that only a bit of the article remains. (This fragmentary story isn't so far from the way we actually read/hear news stories -- we skim over them before throwing the free paper away, or we hear them in the background on the radio while we're doing other things.)

I'm not sure the destruction of the newspaper is quite the word I'd choose -- to my mind it's more that newpapers end up getting torn and thrown away and forgotten, news stories get forgotten, just as the local man who dies in a car-crash (whose name we don't even know) is reduced to a fragment of a story, and it's a story so clichéd, so common, that we can even fill in the blanks around the sides of the torn-away words. He's died just after his 50th birthday, (possibly) just after taking early retirement, just at the beginning of a new start in his life, he's been a member of the local community, and all that's left of any of that are a few platitudes in a newspaper. And his wife and two chi[ldren], who are (as always) just out of the picture.

I'm sorry this isn't a very polished discussion of the poem, but it's the best I can do off the top of my head while I'm supposed to be working. ;)

[chrisvenus]

The scrap of newspaper makes some kind of sense. My first glance at it (and the title was my guide here) was that it was somebody picking up a newspaper (complete) and glancing through. Having given it some thought I was thinking that the structure was there to represent the fact that he was skim reading it and that the lines were getting shorter as the reader cared less and less about the content as he skimmed through it. The idea being that somebody died and the person reading it just can't bring himself to care enough to even read the details. However, I wouldn't be able to tell you in that idea why the lines start off so short. :)

Anyway, thank you (and ewx) for taking the time to further my education. As I re-read it it is more and more interesting. Well, that is probably this years culture for me sadly enough. :)

Cheers

Chris

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the local-paper report of a work colleague who died a few years ago, actually. Something the poem doesn't tell you is that the report is not only a rather transient memorial, but might even get some of the facts wrong.