Of Your Line

[i] I'm not a poet so sorry if this is really quite bad. It's blank verse so has absolutely no structure what so ever. I decided to have a go at it for a school assignment so that's why it a bit long but I would really like some feed back on it. Please be gentle!! Oh, and because it isn't really clear (this I know) it's a what a son of a POW thought about his father after his father returned from the Thai - Burma railway after WWII. [\i]



His extended absence changed him.
My father, a once boisterous man
Now nothing.
Nothing but the shell of his former self, of a once loved man.
This man is not a father,
Nor a husband, nor a friend, nor a brother.
Too much have his eyes seen, too much has his body endured.
He cannot laugh, and he cannot play, he cannot rest.
He does not see me, the lonely boy made into a man before his time,
A younger, less weary version of himself.
Blinded by happiness but crushed by disapproval am I,
As he returns,
Different.

I am his son, his line, born to grow in a land of war.
He returns knowing little of me,
Three years with no word, yet here he stands,
A father by name only, I know him not.
I, a boy of only seven when he left,
A young man of twelve on his return,
How time passed.
Not a word after his capture,
Not a word after his return,
Nothing.
Why does he not tell me?
The small increments of tale I hear do little to suffice.
The horrors he hides, the treatment he received,
I am not aware of their grandeur, if grandeur it be.
He may think it but I am not oblivious to it,
The mistreatment, the reason for his now morose behaviour.
The work load, the railway, the disease, the beatings,
I will never know what it means.
To be threatened with a rifle butt by guards,
To smell the stench of a tropical ulcer,
To wake up next to a man who was alive a mere hour ago;
That I will never know.
I do not envy this shell of those memories.

Years have passed and I realise I am wrong.
Years it has taken
For me to know you, to discover you.
There will always be a part I will never know,
A dark part hidden away.
The part which tells of the bamboo slat beds,
The putrid rice that was to sustain you,
The logs you hurled to create ‘The Line’ you never talk about.
It is only now I have been awakened to your new ways,
Only now that I realise your disappointment was not that.
It was not me falling short of expectation.
To feel was too much.
To feel pride and joy was too much among the anger and sadness,
The feelings left behind from days of war.
You were a silent father
You were gentle.

You are not like other men; you were not like other men.
You are not like other fathers; you were not like other fathers.
‘You are constant but distant, like a line of mountains’
And I no longer expect from you what others expect.
You are hard to know, hard to understand
But you were a father who ‘had to make peace with himself’
For me.
In your story ‘lies my own’;
As you are a survivor of ‘The Line’, I am of your line,
Now as the railway remains,
Forever as The Line remains.

This was an amazingly strong and heartfelt poem. However, I feel that you could have made the haunted feel stronger by refining your words a bit more.

My father, a once boisterous man

Now nothing.

Nothing but the shell of his former self, of a once loved man.

This man is not a father,

Here, you repeat the word man quite a few times. It takes away from the overall effect, so I suggest you replace it with something else. Repeating something over and over is redundant.

Then, ythere's this section:

Three years with no word, yet here he stands,

I, a boy of only seven when he left,

A young man of twelve on his return,

That would be five years, wouldn't it?

Other than that, everything was great. The emotion was very strong, the words of the narrator haunting. The story told was a breathtaking one, and I commend you on this, especially if it's your first attempt at poetry.

For a first attempt at poetry, I expected worse. =)

I have to be honest when I say, however, that it was slightly... boring. One of the most important things about poetry is making it something your readers can relate to, to somehow centre it around a commonly shared experience. With the length and lack of emotion combined, I had to fight my way through this. I think your first line sums up a large part of the problem:
His extended absence changed him.
Statements like this have no purpose in a poem. You need to describe it to us, allow us to determine for ourselves that he was changed, through your showing us the details of the ways in which he changed. There's a lot of that, especially in the first stanza. Descrption is vital to poetry, and more than that, finding new ways of expressing yourself.
The horrors he hides, the treatment he received, "His guarded words, behind fences from which he shot his enemy; the scarred dreams and bloody nights." See how that says almost exactly the same thing, but not quite so blatantly? With more colour, and using words that go along with the message?

You are not like other men; you were not like other men.
You are not like other fathers; you were not like other fathers.

I don't like these lines; the repition is too much.
You have a lot of repitition that I think just fills up unnecessary space.
I am not aware of their grandeur, if grandeur it be. --> "if grandeur it be" too wordy. Your readers will understand that it's implied, if you take it out.

Not a word after his capture,
Not a word after his return,
Nothing.
Why does he not tell me? --> You just said the same thing four lines in a row.

I will never know what it means.
To be threatened with a rifle butt by guards,
To smell the stench of a tropical ulcer,
To wake up next to a man who was alive a mere hour ago;
That I will never know. --> The last line says the same as the first. I'd cut it. Also, lines two and four, you can make those pictures more vivid. Line two: lay out the scene. Line three: add a little description of the man dead.

Another thing you do is waver back and forth between "I don't know" and "I'm not oblivious." But with neither of those do you explain the significance. Why does it matter what he doesn't know? Because than he can't understand his father? You don't say.
In what way is he not oblivious?

And finally:
Years have passed and I realise I am wrong.
There's no transition from all the uncertainty and the "This man is not a father" to this. There's no explanation of how the change came about.

Like I say, it was better than what I expected for a first try, but as I'm sure you know, it can still use some work. If you want any extra help on this, send me a PM, and good luck.


_Nam