Today's Poetry Daily poem, like much of Goldbarth's work, strikes me as being just a bit overly verbose -- but I'm glad I read it for this one image: "the volts that bump in the heart / like small trapped minnows of longing" -- an image that's saved from being just a bit too much by its placement directly after the utterly mundane "groceries leaking / out of the paper bag."
I'm a sucker for bits of science and medicine in poems, like volts in the heart; that's something Goldbarth seems to like as well. I know I said he's often overly verbose, but I'm often willing to sift through his poems because I find these little gems that thrill me.
2 comments:
But is it redundant or unecessary to describe minnows as "small"?
Charlie: Yeah, probably... Syllable-wise, "like trapped minnows of longing" doesn't work as well for me as "small trapped minnows of longing"; the extra syllable seems to help somehow. But he might have found a better word than "small"...
I still like it though :)
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