Pierce the Fog

I’m going to do something a little different here. I want to talk about how I read this poem out loud. To get there, first I’ll talk about its structure and the narrative it tells, and how one affects the other, and how these all combine to inform how I read it. I’d love it if you’d join me in this exploration.

With that purpose in mind, if you haven’t listened to the reading above yet, don’t. First, go back to the written poem and read it again, for yourself. A couple or three times would be great. Reading it silently, in your mind’s voice is fine, but out loud tends to change the reader’s experience of a poem, so maybe try that too.

On the last read, pay attention to how you read it. Try to imagine reading it if you were reading it out loud to an audience, or how you would think Morgan Freeman would read it.

OK. Done? Now, listen to my read of the poem. Even if you have already, I invite you to listen to it again. Then come back here.

Yesterday’s post, Inviting Clarity, used a favourite format of mine: three or more stanzas with decreasing line counts for each successive stanza. For example, four lines, then three lines, followed by two lines, followed by one: 4-3-2-1. With each stanza, the poem’s narrative thrust moves inexorably toward a single, stand-alone line. Of course, this line needs to be a strong one for this poetic form to really sing. That is, the poem must land hard on its conclusion.

Today’s poem relies on a variation of that form: the stanzas narrow down to a single line then expand out symmetrically until the final stanza contains as many lines as the first. That’s 4-3-2-1-2-3-4 for Pierce the Fog.

While the single line in a 4-3-2-1 form reaches the poem’s climax or denouement, with a 4-3-2-1-2-3-4 form that single line falls squarely in the narrative’s center. The single line here serves a much different narrative intent. About the only thing I ever do with this line is use it to turn the incoming narrative on its head. Rather than denouement, this single line is a turnaround. Some significant aspect of the narrative changes, forcing the story/narrative/poem to take a new direction towards conclusion.

A slightly different way of looking at it, with a 4-3-2-1, the narrative’s form is increasingly confined to a blunt conclusion. With 4-3-2-1-2-3-4, the narrative is increasingly confined to a singular turnaround or insight which forces or invites a new approach to resolving the conflict. After the turnaround, the narrative reaches out and explores an alternative path as the narrative form itself also opens up to longer stanzas.

So, Pierce the Fog‘s structure lays out the poem’s narrative in a visual form. But you’ve probably noticed I didn’t confine my reading of it to mirror that structure.

Typically, the formal placement of words in a poem offers cues or insights to the writer’s intentions for reading it. For example, the end of a line generally earns a slight pause, and the end of a stanza a small break, something a little longer than a pause. Mentally, I look at the end of a line in a verse and see a period, a comma or some other form of punctuation. A stanza is the poetic equivalent of a prose paragraph.

But that’s just a suggestion, not a  hard and fast rule, especially with  many of my poems and definitely with this one. In Pierce the Fog, the placement of lines and stanzas visually represents the organisation and flow of the poem’s narrative elements.  However, reading a narrative aloud requires an approach  much different than formatting the poem’s narrative in a visual form, sort of like the way a novel adapted to film requires a script that may depart significantly from the novel. Novels and films tell stories using very different languages. Similarly, a written poem engages and informs readers, while spoken word poetry must engage and inform listeners. These are two very different audiences experiencing the poem in two very different venues. Written and spoken forms use very different storytelling languages.

One final narrative element: meter. You probably noticed, both while reading and listening, that this poem’s meter is all over the map. Some stanzas or individual lines emphasize odd or even syllables within. da DA da DA da, DA da DA da. More of the lines and stanzas, though, have no visible or audible meter, and some are just downright awkward to read or speak at all. This was a more-or-less conscious choice. While the initial rough draft formed as a stream of consciousness, in the edits that followed I soon realized the pattern/anti-pattern of meter served the narrative purpose. I decided not only to keep these patterns, but enhance them.

So, how did all this inform/guide my spoken word reading of the poem? I’ll go through it stanza-by-stanza and explain.

The first stanza sets the scene: an idyllic sunrise breaks through a morning mist… a beautiful beginning to any day. It also introduces all the metaphors which will come together in a new form after their transformation at the middle line’s turnaround.

This entire stanza should be read in an iambic meter, emphasizing every other syllable beginning with the second in the first line. So, a bit of English Romantic meter, fitting a lovely scenic description. Mind you, this is not the idyllic meter of Iambic Pentameter, and the harmonious rhythm is set a little off-kilter by the second line. Three of the lines have an odd number of syllables while the third line has an even four syllables. The meter shifts from Iambic’s even syllable emphasis on the first line to odd emphasis on every line following.

The intention is this: all is not quite so idyllic — or Romantic — as it seems.

Here, the anti-idyllic hits with some violence. There really is no lyrical way to read this stanza. It just plonks down there like bad news at the dinner table. How dare the world be so beautiful while I’m in this funk? It’s a brutal break, even to the already off-kilter rhythm established in the first stanza. 

The assault on meter reflects the narrator’s extreme mental state, which itself is a complete break from the idyllic scene described above it. I’ve tried to read this with all the long-dark-teatime-of-the-soul angst I can muster.

Grammatically and syntactically the two stanzas span a single sentence, despite the formal structure of stanzas suggesting separate paragraphs. I read these two stanzas essentially as one, with a hesitant pause following the first line and none at all between the two stanzas. The longest pause, or rather a prolonged hesitation, begins with the very first word, “So…”

The aural and structural break of this elongated “So” serves a couple functions. First, it mucks up the first line’s meter, stalling the full return to Iambic in the second line. In turn, it emphasizes the narrator’s conscious but hesitant decision to try and engage with that beautiful world. The hesitation signals the narrator’s lack of any hope that nature’s rising mood will improve their own state of mind to any degree. They’ve reached that level of despair and frustration that forces someone to do something, anything, if only to change the scenery of their funk.

The second line returns to Iambic meter after the first line’s hesitation. However, the nature of these lines needs to be read in a light, self-discrediting meter, and with all the irony I can muster. “Well, even if I’m stuck in this eternal internal fog, at least the mist will rise somewhere.” Eeyore would appreciate these lines.

That said, the listener should well understand where we are in the narrative, and see the “rising mist” for the hopeful metaphor it is. This, precisely, is the turnaround. The possibility for something new in the narrative begins right here. And while this turnaround gets its own line in the written version of the poem, in the spoken version that turnaround follows hot on the heels of the choice to change scenery. That is, aurally, I don’t want to dwell on that single line, but get there quickly once the narrator finally makes the choice to go there.

This stanza is spoken after a brief but ever-so-pregnant break.

That hopeful, metaphorical turnaround — much to the narrator’s surprise — delivers. The Iambic meter continues in the first line, but I try to speak it as a dawning realization.

The second line breaks the meter, again. That “Find” is just plain awkward. It’s the stunned response to a small epiphany. This takes the walking narrator off-stride, and to a stand-still. A pregnant pause follows as the insight evolves…

The first line remains off stride, but with a burgeoning wonder. The meter in the second line begins to reassemble and in the third line fully resolves again. The whole stanza builds toward the the possibility of hope.

There is a lot going on in this stanza, and it all evolves quickly.

The meter breaks again for the fist two lines as the narrator takes a cue from the sun and finds faith in the possibility of their own tenacity. The first line is a complete break. The second struggles for meter, only beginning to find it with the final four syllables.  Then, the hesitant “Now” throws confusion on the third line’s meter all over again. The fourth and final line finally returns to even syllable emphasis on the final line.

So the final stanza reflects the narrator rediscovering faith in themselves, coming to the sudden realization they, too, can burn through the fog. This resolves the revelation. Following that comes the narrator’s own resolve to act.

Recall the drawn-out “Soooooo…” from the third stanza.  That aural form returns here, with the prolonged “Now” beginning the final stanza’s third line. This mirrors the choice made with “So,” which marked the decision to act, to do something other than dwell in the funk. In turn, that action lead to the mid-point’s turnaround. “Now” leads to the action that may eventually resolve the conflict of mental-distress introduced in the second stanza. And as with “So”, the prolonged “Now” also forces the remainder of the third line’s meter to emphasize what becomes the third line’s odd syllables. However, the final line returns to Iambic at the end, this time read with hope and growing faith that, with some tenacity, the path out of the internal fog will be found.

Note that this isn’t an entirely happy ending. The story does not end with the narrator ending their funk, which was the conflict introduced in the second stanza. Instead, it ends with their discovering hope and, perhaps, embodying the sun’s tenacious nature to pierce the murk and find their inner light again. 

If it does feel happy, that’s a subtle result of the mid-narrative turnaround, which serves to re-examine the original conflict and redefine it.  That is, it asks the question, “OK, you tell me that this is your problem, but what’s the real problem?”  Well, here the problem isn’t that the narrator is caught in a deep, hopeless funk. The real problem identified by the turnaround is the narrator’s complete lack of hope, of any faith in self to change the condition of their mental state. Recognizing the power of the sun’s tenacity to pierce the morning fog rekindles the narrator’s hope and faith in their own abilities and tenacity.

I’m glad I took on this challenge to myself. Much of whatever insight you may have gained here, I learned myself in the process of examining and writing about this poem and why I read it the way I do.  There are a surprising number of nuances which inflect both the way I write a poem and the way I read it, and many of those linger just below my own conscious awareness. I wonder if this isn’t true for all writers, especially poets.  There’s a — probably apocryphal — quote I once saw attributed to Robert Frost.

I hope you gained at least as much as I did, or at least enjoyed the read. Do let me know what you think. ❤