Comments on: “Repairman” by Dave Morrison

By: hydraulic car jack

hydraulic car jack — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 12:49:44 +0000

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By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:42:35 +0000

This is just a personal reaction, but to me, even regardless of where the line breaks are, the spatial arrangement on the page serves as a kind of pace car for reading. Poems with very short lines and a lot of white space I read much more slowly than poems that are dense with text. So that’s one thing adding line breaks does, even when the intent of the breaks is to make them feel unimportant.

But again, I’d have to point back to a poet like James Tate — of course you’d have the same complaint reading him, but I find his work very enjoyable:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16447

Do I prefer careful line breaks, and more attention to the music of the language? Yes, actually, I do. But I think it’s also important to accept the spirit of what the poet is trying to do, and enjoy what’s going on, even if you might not have chosen to do it the same way yourself.

By: Cafais

Cafais — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:28:56 +0000

Imagery aside, I really think my biggest problem with this poem are the line breaks. It seems to me that if you are going to break up a perfectly good sentence, you should have a good reason. Just breaking up sentences so you get something that “looks” like a poem does not seem to be the best artistic decision. I believe that poetry should have certain rythmn (or music) and that is achieved (largely) through the line. I also appreciate prose poems; however, prose poems (as far as I know) don’t have seemingly random line breaks. Do they?

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 21:31:06 +0000

I’ll assume that the above comment is genuine and not just deliciously ironic…

On why it’s poetry and not short fiction — I’d say it’s both. It’s the kind of poem that shows how gray the lines are between poetry, prose poetry, and flash fiction. Why is it the former, and not the latter? Maybe just because Dave added line breaks, and this is a poetry journal…

On the line breaks — there’s a whole school of poets who feel like line breaks are inherently pretentious. James Tate and Phil Levine have been writing like this for awhile, and on certain days I can really see where they’re coming from. The whole point of the structure of a poem like this is to make them seem random and not-well-considered, so you don’t pay too much attention to them. I guess maybe they just weren’t random enough?

As for the meaning and imagery, if you don’t enjoy them, I can’t say much, other than that I do. Maybe the men had talons all along?

By: Cafais

Cafais — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:27:23 +0000

This is a decent little story, but why is it considered poetry rather than short fiction? The imagery seems nice, but does it really make sense? The men drop hatchets and become hawks. But hawks have beaks and talons, right? I kind of have trouble with the notion that bad thoughts are just the result of bad circuitry. Life seems to be a little more complicated than that. Also, the line breaks seem to be pretty random and not really well-considered.