Senescent - edit 2

[milo]

Hello duke, I have read through this a dozen or so times now and I can't see anything else to add so I will just comment on what works for me.  1.  The pacing seems just right, the poem the perfect length.  Phrasing is neither too sparse nor too verbose striking the perfect balance.  The content is deliberate and well thought out.  It doesn't ramble endlessly but it also allows time and space to enter the poem, enjoy it and leave. 2.  It uses a lot of bridge metaphor without being overt about it.  Choices seem to fall in place naturally and effortlessly.

Senescent


My mind’s escaping, entering
a space I only notice when
it’s gone

It is strange the effect a single word can have but I had to go back and compare the original to this version several times to reassure myself.  "Escaping" - it communicates so much. It really conveys the lack of agency with that one thought.

These last three days
three words returned too late
they’d each been inaccessible
not found by thought
or alphabet
when concepts needed names

"each" is such an important word here and I am glad you didn't try to sanitize it.  Once again - the concepts "needed" names - there is an urgency to it.  Rhythm and word choice all good through here.

snare: caught out, I couldn’t name
simple rabbit-catching
anchored loop of wire
when a child asked how
to trap a leprechaun

This part here as well - there is a panic to the phrase "caught out".

Kurds: buried name
one brave people snared
in four countries
and their aspiration
to restore a nation

Etruscans:  secret name
tribes of smiling mystery
exhumed from Tuscan provenance
rising in dream-murmurs
as lost words do

The polish throughout both if these is very nice.  You have made subtle deliberate choices that improve the reading and solidify the metaphor without breaking any of your original architecture.

How much of my mind’s
refined vocabulary
has evanesced for good
hidden or erased
soft-sunk for what of life is left
in a room so finely
padded with absence
that its walls
cannot be seen or felt?

The ending needed the least and you were careful to keep what worked intact.

Overall, I think it's great.  I would spotlight it both as a poem and as a great example of workshopping if I could but, alas, those days are long passed for me.

Thanks for sticking with it.

edit1;

My mind is going, entering
a space I only notice when
it’s gone

These last three days
three words returned too late
that had been inaccessible
not found by thought
or alphabet
when concepts needed names–

snare: hand-twisted noose
caught out, I couldn’t name
that simple rabbit-catcher
when a child desired
to trap a leprechaun

Kurds: lost name for
one brave people snared
in four countries
and their aspiration
to restore a nation

Etruscans: secret name
lost tribes of mystery
awakening from murmurs
of Tuscany last night
as lost words do

How much of my mind’s
proud vocabulary
has evanesced for good
hidden or erased
soft-sunk for what of life is left
in a room so finely
padded with absence
that its walls
cannot be seen or felt?

original version;

Senescence Blank


My mind is going, going
but I feel it only when
it’s gone.  Just in
these last three days
I rediscovered three words
lost for hours that
had been inaccessible
not found by even
alphabetic search
and prompting when their
concepts needed names–

snare: I could not express
how rabbits are caught
when my grand-nephew wished
to trap a leprechaun
only make pulling motions
with my fingers

Kurds: (just had to alphabet
again) when discussing
their place in Iran,
their aspiration
to be a nation

and Etruscans: wondered
how they related
to Sea Peoples of
a YouTube documentary
(and just had to find
them now, minutes later
yet again by way
of “Tuscany”)

How much of my mind
my vaunted vocabulary
is gone this present moment
hidden or erased
absence unremarked
senescence-walled forever?

---

This is pretty raw, from a succession of unnerving experiences (of being "at a loss for words").  I expect the first suggestion will be to remove the examples.  Almost a journal entry... worth editing?

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