12-31-2025, 01:10 PM
Quote:I really liked this poem. The level of detail is great and I especially appreciate how you can kind of follow the narrator's subconscious train of thought.
I find it difficult to be left with a solid interpretation because, after really reading through the poem multiple times, I still don't know who is unwell. As far as I can tell, there's nothing that definitively indicates whether it is the narrator or the subject, which left me feeling a little like I'd missed something (which I might have), although I am leaning slightly towards it being the subject who is sick. I think a lot of the ambiguity could be cleared up with a little punctuation, word choice, and use of active instead of passive voice.
My interpretation is that someone is in a hospital for a trauma/mental illness-related ailment. The narrator and subject seem to be repeatedly dealing with people (men) who project their own meanings onto others. War is also associated with some kind of weakness, whether it is soldiers lacking meat on the hips (and possibly subtextually the less-violent maturity of womanhood), a "softened" head, or the title of the poem itself.
If I may offer some structural feedback beyond my interpretation, I think that this poem is stronger than the "I think about the way you laugh" line. I feel that the poem is organized by a fairly followable train of thought, and doesn't need the repeated line to organize it. I also think the repetition sets up a payoff that never happens. I expected some lines describing the laugh, or at least some callback to the line in the final stanza, but that doesn't happen. Instead, the dough-boys line is the payoff of the poem, and I feel it is much stronger and more unique. "I think about the way you laugh" may have been central to how you conceptualized the poem, but I think the poem no longer needs favorites I've read on here so far.
Thanks for your kind words and valuable critique! It will be helpful as I revise, revise, revise. My weakness is using “I” and “you” interchangeably. Trying to convey emotional distance? Or lazy writing!