Rerun #1, "The Gift"

Big Frank has been thinking of reruns. He doesn't actually have a TV, but he used to, and he can remember watching reruns of programs that were trotted out after the season's fare had all been run through. The reruns were the best what had been broadcast. So, Big Frank is going to run a few reruns of his posts. These are, what he thinks, are some of his best. Well, to be frank (Big Frank) they are his favorites. Here's the first:
________________________________________________________
Big Frank has been thinking lately about poetry. Why is it that the content of the poem is relayed at a slant? With prose the thought or feeling is laid out directly. The person says that they have this kind of idea or this kind of feeling. There is a label put on it and some examples and explanation put to it. With poetry there is a recognition that the idea or feeling is bigger than the explanatory power of words -the lexicon cannot carry the load. It is bigger than words, and so something more resonant is sought - images, symbols, metaphor, or ancedotes. It is the first three that most poets rely on, but the anecdote is very powerful when applied to something different. Here's an example from a great poem by Don Paterson:

The Gift

That night she called his name, not mine
And could not call it back.
I shamed myself and thought of the blind
girl in Kodiak

who stood on the stoop each night
to watch the daylight fade
and lift her child down to the gate
cut in the pallisade.

And what old caution love resigned
when through that misty stare
she passed her boy not to her bearskinned husband
but the bear.


Here we have a horrific story that is linked to one lover calling the other by the name of a previous lover. The irretrievable loss of that "gift" is captured in all its intractability in the story of the blind woman mistakenly handing the child - out of love - to the bear. This is poetry. It cannot compare in force or poignancy to a simple prose summary of the slip of tongue. Such poems are rare