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Moments (or) Suicide (Free verse) by Dovina I made a list
as you could do
of ten events
so brief, profound
they rest as Moments
vividly recorded
for a Moment cannot be mundane
Seven remain as wonderful
three as terrible.
If the list continued
Iâd like to think
seventy percent
could be maintained
as great
My life reviewed and judged
like this
might be considered
in some dark hour
not just bunk, but
as in this ordinary time
for its just worth
Up the ladder:
Down
Down the ladder:
Plastic Ideals
Votes: (green: user, blue: anonymous)
Arithmetic Mean: 4.25
Posted: April 4, 2005 8:39 AM PDT; Last modified: April 8, 2005 7:39 AM PDTWeighted score: 4.910598 Overall Rank: 9623 Comments:
[4]
Stephen Robins @ 213.146.148.199
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6-Apr-05/1:06 AM
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Reply
The once warming, nay, comforting shroud of guff that surrounded your work, like a brown halo, has been penetrated by a sharp incision of failure hence the above poem receives a fitting vote of -4- :{
I don't follow the last sentence. Are you going to be evaluated for the 70% ratio, or for your failure to have more Moments in thirty-something years of existing?
My life evaluated like this (according to the ratio of good Moments to total Moments that Iâve remembered) might be considered, in some dark hour, (perhaps an hour in which suicide seems appropriate) not just bunk, but as in this ordinary hour, for its (my lifeâs) just evaluation.
By the last "evaluation", do you mean something like "value" or "worth"?
If so (and that's not at all clear) maybe it would be better to use the word "valuation" instead. PS-I don't see why you don't have to judge your life by all the times that weren't Moments. I imagine if I were some total slob with no Moments except for achieving a single spectacular "arrival", which also happened to kill me. Would I go to heaven?
To justly evaluate a life and thereby judge its value or worth is the thing Iâm trying to get at. Nobody does it right in the angst of suicide. The method Iâm proposing isnât very logical, and your complaint about it in your PS is valid, but itâs easy to do. And it turns out, quite interesting in my case. You simply write a quick list of ten Moments, taking no more than five minutes. Then put a + beside the wonderful Moments and a (â) beside the horrible ones. (A Moment cannot be mundane or you would not remember it as important.) Then do the math. Iâd be interested in seeing the averages.
Then I think the sentence is unnecessarily jumbled to the point of incomprehensibility. It starts off well enough
"My life reviewed and judged like this might be considered in some dark hour not just bunk" is fine, and seems to get at the point you want to make, which from what I gather is that people SHOULD do it in suicidal moments, but don't. Even adding "but as in this ordinary time" works - your life might be considered not just bunk but as [it's considered] in this ordinary time [i.e., worthwhile]. But you can't say, for example, "my life might be considered not just bunk for its just evaluation" which is grammatically, semantically, or whateverally equivalent to what you're saying. Do you see what I mean? To parse even further (but keep the grammar) you've got "My life might be considered for its evaluation". There's the problem. You can say "My life might be considered for its just value" or "My way of evaluating my life might be considered a just evaluation", but your life itself isn't being considered for evaluation. At the very least, you'd have to change "for" to "by" - and that's neither poetic nor particularly meaningful. Me, I'd change evaluation to "value", "worth", or "valuation".
Yeah, for perhaps the first time in my life I agree with you. See the edit.
Better grammatically.
Except I don't think it's a just worth. Still, you've dealt with that well enough; the narrator's obviously supposed to be a suicidal loser.
Last stanza, 2nd to last line, "as" seems like unneeded filler. Same with S2 L1. Last few lines seem a little convoluted. I get your meaning, but... there has got to be a better way of getting your point across.
The last verse is held hostage to a poeticism called "Internal Punctuation." Some poet had convinced me that itâs ok to leave out commas and periods at the ends of lines, and to include them only if they fall within a line. I think the idea might be bunk. The last verse, properly punctuated, is:
My life reviewed and judged like this might be considered, in some dark hour, not just bunk, but, as in this ordinary time, for its just worth.
"Internal punctuation" only means punctuation that occurs in the middle of any sentence, i.e., commas, semicolons, colons, and so on. Yes, there is a tradition in poetry of not always punctuating at line-ends, but that's not it. The "internal" doesn't mean "in the line".
Are grading your life on strict percentages or are you willing to use a curve?
Well, I guess I didn't make that clear. I graded my life on a straight-line percentage basis. Please grade yours on curves witnessed, curves felt, curves entered, or any other basis you choose for counting Moments.
Are we supposed to give a numerical vote on your life, or on the poem? Life: 2.1, poem: -0-
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