Break by Dorianne Laux
There are a lot of “puzzlers” in my family, and when I was a child, I really enjoyed doing jigsaw puzzles. I like challenges (at least those that aren’t impossible) and I hate leaving things unfinished. I don’t really enjoy jigsaw puzzles any more, preferring crossword puzzles instead. At any rate, I like how Laux juxtaposes the jumble on the table with the inner turmoil of coming of age.
Break
By Dorianne Laux
We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.
I’m a faithful reader of your blog. It’s so great to have a poem just waiting to be read when I log on to the internet. I’ve heard of people leaving bibles on windowsills so that the wind might turn their pages and thereby give some divinatory significance to the events of the day. These poems have sometimes acted in such a way, being just right in ways hard to believe.
I just have one request. How would you feel about experimenting with placing the related comments after the poem? It’s hard not to read them when they’re on the screen, and sometimes they act like an explanation before the poem they explain. Good poems hardly need explanations, and sometimes it feels like watching a trailer that gives away some of the plot to a good film. Thanks for considering.
Your Reader,
roman
Roman,
Thanks for your comment. I’m so glad that you get something out of the poems!
I hadn’t really considered changing the order of my posts, and you are the first reader to make the request. (Indeed, some have asked me to expound more about what a poem means.) While I agree that poems (good or bad) should speak for themselves, I merely like to share what a poem means to me when I feel so inspired. Often I don’t have anything in particular to say about a poem I post. I am a huge proponent of the subjectivity of poems and one of the reasons I enjoy poetry so much is that a poem can mean ten different things to ten different people. I hope that good poems can still speak to you, even if you happen to see what someone else thinks about them first. I’m going to stick with my current format because it’s my preference. Though I am sorry that I can’t please everyone all the time, it’s really inevitable.
My two cents. I kinda like the existing format. It’s easy enough to skip, and anyway, I don’t mind a little background when being introduced to a new person or a new poem. Or maybe I’m just lazy, and need that extra push to inspire me to read a whole poem when I often don’t recognize an author. :)
Thanks for sharing your opinion, Doug.