{"id":121,"date":"2009-09-14T16:25:55","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T22:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/?p=121"},"modified":"2009-09-14T16:25:55","modified_gmt":"2009-09-14T22:25:55","slug":"poetism-commentary-disillusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/2009\/09\/14\/poetism-commentary-disillusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetism Commentary: “disillusion”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The poem in question: disillusion<\/a><\/p>\n

This is an interesting poem to me, and I may have a tough time explaining it, so I’ll just do what I can, I suppose.<\/p>\n

It’s not based on any personal experience or any particular events or circumstances that I can think of.\u00a0 It’s more of an “idea poem,” if you will.\u00a0 If you won’t, that’s fine, too.<\/p>\n

The basic message I was going for is that people need to work together regardless of their differences to accomplish good things.\u00a0 When people decide to do things on their own and ignore the help of others (or don’t offer their own help to others), maybe good things can still happen, but certainly not at the same level.\u00a0 I don’t know if that’s what got through, but now it’s been established.<\/p>\n

As the poem begins, different people are facing a common enemy, but they don’t realize they need to work together to defeat it.\u00a0 Everyone is doing his own thing, and nothing effective is being done to stop the advance of the enemy.\u00a0 Later on, the people start to get scared–hysterical, even–and it looks like they might not be able to win this fight, but still they refuse to work together.<\/p>\n

By the time they realize that they have to work together, it’s too late.\u00a0 The enemy has won and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it now.<\/p>\n

Interstitched in the narrative stanzas is a description of the enemy.\u00a0 It seems like a bunch of nonsense; really just words that I liked that rhymed and sounded nice together.\u00a0 But the point of these descriptive stanzas is to establish that Disillusion is just a regular guy, metaphorically.\u00a0 He’s not some crazily powerful, unbeatable enemy, though he is a crafty one.\u00a0 The lines<\/p>\n

disillusion exists only in the eyes of the beholder<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and<\/p>\n

we talked
\nI was shocked<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

are meant to convey this, albeit ambiguously.\u00a0 The problem, as previously stated, is the that people wouldn’t work together, and Disillusion was able to use that to his advantage, up until the point where he won.\u00a0 The writing style in these second and fourth stanzas seems somewhat corny, but I liked it then (and used the same approach at least one time in a future poem), and I still like it now.<\/p>\n

So what is Disillusion, or what does it represent?\u00a0 To me, it’s what happens when your focus is on the wrong things.\u00a0 You try so hard to do something, but (unaware or not) you are going about it the wrong way, and so it never gets accomplished.\u00a0 Eventually you conclude that it can’t be done, or that your time was wasted, or whatever else, and you give up on it.\u00a0 There are few things sadder than being disillusioned of a truly good and noble thing.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure that I’ve adequately commented on this poem, or that what commentary I have offered makes any amount of sense.\u00a0 But I’ve done what I can, and that’s enough for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The poem in question: disillusion This is an interesting poem to me, and I may have a tough time explaining it, so I’ll just do what I can, I suppose. It’s not based on any personal experience or any particular events or circumstances that I can think of.\u00a0 It’s more of an “idea poem,” if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}