Poem of the Week

Enjoy a poem today, which is an excellent example of "synesthesia", or mixing sensory imagery to create a more vivid effect. I love a good poem that is rich with sensual details and makes me feel able to experience the poem as though I were the poet or observer myself.

All Things End in Fragrance

Out the window, starlings
fidget in the wasted eaves

of a bar burned down last summer.
They pilfer, figure,
engineer

charred wire, booth cushion,
anything light enough

to haul by beak, wedge high
between blackened 2 X 4.

A nest,
a bed for the dying
or just born—
The birds shuttle,

their feathers taking on
what they inhabit,

the way, Dear Witness, the silk
in your shirts took asafetida,

mustard oil burning
in a skillet, as this letter

makeshift and late
receives
the leaden face of broken type,

a shape which, for now, says
Stay. Live here awhile

before rising into some other sorrow.

James Hoch

Comments

[Kira Cato]

Unlike the blog author, I am having a hard time "experiencing the poem as though I were the poet or observer myself." I simply cannot imagine a bunch of starlings "fidgeting" at a burned bar and especially actively "pilfering" from it. Blame me for lack of imagination, but this bird is of a different character. It sounds more like a magpie and nothing like a starling.

Plus taking extra effort to decode a badly punctuated message with no rhythm (no matter how much sensory imagery is in it) kills everything that could be romantic about this poem.

I wonder what could be so exceptional about this piece that it deserved to be nominated "Poem of the Week" for the second time (for I notice it was also posted on Sept. 26th, 2007)?