Marionettes and Mariners

Okay this outlandish contrast between puppets and fishing has really caught my eye, like wow, that is really creative, I'm impressed. Such unusualness has inspired me to write something pretty wacky too, so thank you so much for that. I love the rhetorical questions at the end of this poem; who doesn't enjoy questioning truth from unreliable memories? One of my favourite lines would be the "perversions of memory", since it's just a neat way of expressing the absurd nature of memories as a whole, and implying that none of them are safe, as they can all be twisted in unprecedented ways to deceive the persona's mind.

Overall this is perhaps one of my favourite poems about memory, and i do hope you continue to explore this theme, and others, in similar unique manners.

Keep writing!
Emilia

Hi there! Lim here with a review.

General Impressions

This turned out to be a unique poem with some surprises. Fishing and puppetry make quite an unusual combination, so it caught my eye that you tied both together to express ideas about memory.

The speaker/narrator of the poem seems to hold a negative attitude towards the Marionettists as the poem goes on. What interested me was that they also began to doubt their own ability to get ‘truth’ out of memory. I kind of suspected that the speaker’s own memory would be called into question somewhere in the poem, but the poem surprised me by having that realisation be at the end rather than be the start of the poem, which is how other poems about memory that I have read have gone.

Additionally, I also noticed the ‘M’ in Marionettists was capitalised, but not the ‘m’ in mariners. I wonder if there’s a specific reason for that?

Interpretation and Themes

The poem’s subject seems to be false memories or the instability of memory. I interpreted it as also conveying truth vs falsehood as a kind of opposition or dichotomy, since the poem describes memories as being either “fish” or “puppets”. I thought it was surprising that memories were portrayed as either being true or false without shades of grey in between, since from my experience I tend to have ‘shades of grey’ memories that neither seem true or false. In the poem, do the “puppets” resemble “fish”? Are they somehow based on the original fish? Can anyone tell?

Imagery

Something I liked was how the imagery developed from line to line. For instance, “telling me stories around a fire” is a nice way to evoke images of light, shadow and the possibility of deception, thus developing the ideas in the Marionettists line and letting us absorb what is being said a little more.

But these mariners on the ocean of memories cast out their nets,
Catching nothing, making puppets instead, calling them fish.

I like how “calling them fish” relates back to the thought that the false memories are made through story-telling, since giving the puppets the title of ‘fish’ is also a deceptive use of language.

Am I able to tell truth from falsehood,
Puppets from fish?

I think it’s also a strength of the poem that the last two images relate back to the fishing/puppets analogy that was drawn in the middle. It helps make the piece more cohesive.

If the intent was to portray a negative view of the fake memories, the word choices throughout the poem work well to convey that. Using words like “perversions”, “poisoned waters” and “falsehood” all convey a negative tone towards the topic.

Structure

The overall ‘story’ in the poem seemed clear to me. The poem quickly introduces its subject, memory, and then narrows it down to the topic of false memories. The difficulty in sorting the ‘accuracy’ of memories is discussed through the ocean/fishing imagery and then emphasised with rhetorical questions to end the poem, making the structure of the poem clear.

In terms of line and stanza structure, I noticed that the line length in the poem is very variable. For instance, the first two lines are 12 and 6 syllables long respectively. Then there are lines like:

I seek help, my fellow crewmates, who sometimes know this place better than I
and what I find is that they are Marionettists, making the old memories dance,

These are each 18 and 20 syllables. I found these a bit of a mouthful to read while pausing at line breaks specifically, though it works better if I focus on pausing at commas. I guess the effect of the lines depends on whether you’d rather have this poem be read aloud (only) or be more of a visual experience, since I remember the longer lines kind of stuck out to me when I first glanced over the poem.

Something that was interesting to me were the double ‘of’ constructions, like “the recesses of the ocean of my mind”. Those were also a mouthful, but potentially meaningful in some parts. For instance, I wondered if they could emphasise how hard it is to grasp a memory that is ‘certain’ e.g. “of shards of experience”.

Overall

This poem was an interesting blend of images, and I like that the alliterative title highlights that. As a whole, it gives a perspective on the nature of memory using imagery that makes abstract ideas like ‘true vs false’ memories more concrete. My main suggestion for revision would be to look at the structural and rhythmic aspects of the poem, such as stanza or line length and think about what effects you’d like to convey there.

Let me know if you’d like more feedback on something specific, and keep writing!
-Lim

Young Writers Society

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