Thursday, September 4, 2014

Can you help me with the phrasing in "Black Monday Lovesong" by A.S.J. Tessimond?

In A.S.J. Tessimond's poem, "Black Monday Lovesong," I
believe that the author intentionally structures the poem, through phrasing and
line/stanza construction, to mimic a dance. In fact, the poem is a metaphor that
compares a dance to love.


The poem's first line indicates
that "love's dances" are a central theme to the poem, in that the author repeats these
lines—essentially telling us that this idea is very
important.


The rest of the first stanza (eleven lines
remaining—longer than a poem's traditional four-line stanzas) lists opposites, that
mimic not only movement, but a foward-and-back motion such as
dancers follow. Reading the poem aloud, we can imagine the one dancer pushing or pulling
the other dancer, as they essentially move in together—one forward, the other back…like
people in a relationship trying to find the right moves, tempo,
etc.:



One
retreats and one advances.


One grows warmer and one
colder,


One more hesitant, one
bolder.



These "motions" start
with physical movement, but then change to emotional "states of
mind:"



One is
smiling and concealing [physical actions]


While the other's
asking, kneeling. [an emotional
state]



The second line may
seem like a physical movement, but in that this is a metaphorical
dance, the second person is struggling to keep in step in the "dance of love," (trying
not to lose the other's love), while the other is "keeping secrets" or hiding his/her
true thoughts "concealing," thereby making the dance more difficult to
"follow."


The next "stanza" of six lines is written in such
a way that the momentum of the poem increases; the repeated use of "And" gives the
listener the sense of not only hurried "motion," but also of frantic, twirling chaos.
The dancers are in serious trouble as they spin around, almost out of control—simply by
using "And" repeatedly, and the author gives us negative images in the short phrases;
the brevity of the phrases adds to the sense of
speed:



And the
tune misleads the dancer


And the lost look finds no
other


And the lost hand finds no
brother



The last actual
four-line stanza is structured in such a way that the relationship between the lovers,
both their loss of physically smooth movements and proximity, and their emotional
connection, is broken. Perhaps we can imagine the two coming apart on the dance floor,
no longer in step with each other. This is obvious with the author's use of the word
"falter," which could indicate tripping, a terrible mistake on the dance
floor.


The href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis">ellipses (dots) between the
choppy phrases in the last two lines give the listener the sense that the two dancers
(lovers) separate, stumbling in opposite directions, each looking for their "perfect
dance partner"  somewhere else:


readability="5">

Next time…one day…one day…next
time!


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