{"id":203,"date":"2014-06-18T23:07:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-19T05:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/?p=203"},"modified":"2014-06-18T11:08:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T17:08:11","slug":"poetism-commentary-o-do-not-forsake-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/2014\/06\/18\/poetism-commentary-o-do-not-forsake-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetism Commentary: “O do not forsake me”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The poem in question: O do not forsake me<\/a><\/p>\n

This is one of my poems that I thought was good then, and I still think it’s good now, and am not ashamed of it.\u00a0 (I’m not really ashamed of any of my past works now.\u00a0 I’ve entered the stage of life where I can look back and recognize the silliness, sweetness, stupidity, and self-aggrandizement of youth without too much embarrassment. \u00a0And by youth I mean longer ago than yesterday. \u00a0The recent past can still be recent enough to sting.)<\/p>\n

This poem is quite simply a plea to the Almighty for help with life, though I suppose it could be just a plea for support and help in general.\u00a0 It starts out examining regret for wasted time or poorly made choices, and yearning for what might have been.\u00a0 This is something that I certainly still experience, and I expect that everyone does to one degree or another.\u00a0 There’s always something we feel like we could have done better, or just differently, and that the outcome may have been an improvement on our situation.<\/p>\n

From there it starts a descent into questioning: “Is this worth it?\u00a0 Am I going to come out of this whole?\u00a0 Am I alone here?”<\/p>\n

Finally the questioning turns to despair, in the form of comparison to everyone else.\u00a0 I touched on this briefly in my last commentary<\/a> when I mentioned “the inevitability of not always being perfect, while thinking everyone else is.”<\/p>\n

you look all around yourself and
\neverything you see is in place and
\nyou’re not and you can’t see why and
\nit hurts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is something that I think everyone deals with on some level.\u00a0 For the past several months I’ve been working with one of my boys on the concept that just because someone else has something or gets to do something, it doesn’t mean that it’s unfair that you don’t have or get to the the same thing, too, and that’s okay<\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a difficult concept for a six-year-old to grasp, and I’m not sure how much easier it gets; as we grow we just channel the emotion differently, or prioritize alternative perceived inequities.\u00a0 For my son, it’s something like “Why does my sister get that treat and I don’t?\u00a0 IT’S NOT FAIR.”\u00a0 For my seventeen-year-old self, it was probably something like “How come no one else has a problem controlling their thoughts about hot girls?\u00a0 IT’S NOT FAIR.”\u00a0 Today it’s “How come my friend saw the new X-Men movie on opening night and I had to wait two weeks?\u00a0 IT’S NOT FAIR.”<\/p>\n

In any case, the emotional burden can be, and often is, very real, hence the interspersed, repeated cries of “O do not forsake me.”\u00a0 The idea that even though life is not perfect, and oftentimes it is really really hard, there is someone there to help during the bad times is comforting, because as I said,<\/p>\n

I’ll never make it by myself
\noh please have mercy on me<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now a bit about the writing style.\u00a0 I really like what I did here.\u00a0 The rhyming patterns, as well as the alternating stanzas ending lines in “and” and “or,” please me.\u00a0 I also like the narrative progression.\u00a0 The complete lack of capitalization or punctuation also works to emphasize the lost, lonely, and overwhelmed nature of the speaker.\u00a0 This is only offset by the word “O,” which to me invokes the symbolism of a higher power being greater than the petitioner.\u00a0 The only thing that bothers me a little bit today is the final line “before it grows too late.”\u00a0 It reminds me of the Primary song I Am a Child of God<\/a>, the tone of which doesn’t fit with my poem.\u00a0 I don’t recall if I made the connection when writing the poem, but I suspect that it was kicking around in my head somewhere.<\/p>\n

Finally, the title is probably a nod to the They Might Be Giants song of the same name, though definitely not of the same subject.<\/p>\n

(Speaking of the self-aggrandizement of youth, it’s totally different than the self-aggrandizement of the present, wherein I marvel at and boast of my past awesomeness.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The poem in question: O do not forsake me This is one of my poems that I thought was good then, and I still think it’s good now, and am not ashamed of it.\u00a0 (I’m not really ashamed of any of my past works now.\u00a0 I’ve entered the stage of life where I can look […]<\/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\/203"}],"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=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grassmonk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}