at yard's edge
orange flowers - perfect
voicing of light and breeze

at arm's length
garish splay of living ash
mouthing defects at the eye

.

If you smoke and want to stop

please use the patch

unless you love pain.

(that's not a poem...lol)

Hi Bratsche,

I've always loved the word "parallax," even though I don't always remember what it means. So I went to an online dictionary for anyone else whose memory is as bad as mine -- "the apparent displacement or the difference in apparent direction of an object as seen from two different points not on a straight line with the object"

Am not totally convinced your poem illustrates "parallax" but I love the way the second stanza describing the ugly scene of smoking parallels? mirrors? ??? the first stanza describing the beautiful scene of a flower.

One question -- am I right in assuming that in the 1st stanza the smoker is looking at the flower, and in the 2nd stanza the flower is looking at the smoker? Or is it just a matter of similar wordings?

.

1. The apparent displacement, or difference of position, of an object, as seen from two different stations, or points of view.

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Speaking from my own history of addictions,

(which is not to say that that’s what this poem is about, because I'm not clear)

There is in fact a parallax in the mind of all addicts. Truly.

It's the reality that the world can be beautiful, or is beautiful

And the reality of our addictions ,which are so much more; the opposite.

These 2 warring realities within the brains of all addicts has been by bratsche

described as a parallax, correctly. Imho.

I’ve never run into this idea before, in a poem ( using parallax this way)

but it’s absolutely correct and fascinating even and

dead on( so to speak)

It’s an incredibly insightful way of understanding human nature and reality.

And if this is not what bratsche really meant, then of course I take it all back…………..lol

.

And if this is not what bratsche really meant, then of course I take it all back

No, no, BBBs, don't take it back. What's important is not what Bratsche meant, but how it affects you.

I found this poem thought provoking, Bratsche. Parallax is an interesting phenomenon in that it can improve or hinder our view of things. If you are in the passenger seat of a car, parallax will distort the interpretation of the speedometer reading. On the other hand it's the basis for our ability to interpret depth through binocular vision.

But what I read here suggests that a close, in-depth view, of a scene at arms length looks much less pleasant than the view of the same scene from a distance. Have to admit, I found myself preferentially reading the two stanzas in the opposite order from which you presented them. Not too sure whether that's good or bad. It may imply I'm willing to back off and ignore reality or it may be that I'm just willing to give the world a bit more slack and not demand more than it seems ready to give.

Thanks for posting this.
Best wishes, V.

Hey, Verg -

Thanks for the read/response. Glad the poem was not a waste of your time. Please see my 'Note to MA/BBB' posted on the regular PFray - didn't include you because I felt that your take one the poem was more seismic to what I attempted with the poem.

As to reading order, no matter. Ever hear of a piano composition (can't remember the composer) which begins by having the pages of music tossed-up, picked-up off the floor at random, in full view-awareness of the audience, then performed? Novel idea. Only read about it. It would be interesting to hear the coughed-up results of such chaotic deportment in recital/concert venue.

Take care.

Carpe Verve

Doug

Love Is A Parallax
by Sylvia Plath


Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.'

'Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
implacably from twelve to one.

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
who insists his playmates run.

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
should inflame the sleeping town.

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
playing his prodigal charades.

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
graves all carol in reply.

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
while footlights flare and houselights dim.

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
joins his enemies' recruits.

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
an insight like the flight of birds:

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
cycling phoenix never stops.

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
away our rationed days and weeks.

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart.

denny -

What an apt follow-on poem! In fact, the first time I remember knowing about the word 'paralax' was from reading this very poem. I think that one could well argue poetry in terms of paralax - how th' hell else explain the psychology behind the metaphorical? Love the entire Plath cannon. Rue how things went for her on this earth. Am also a huge fan of Ted Hughes, especially "Crow"

Carpe Verve

I have tried on occasion to argue the absurdity of "reality" and how, in fact, it is but one view, a fleeting distorted glimse oif things we can never fully understand. Plath does a masterful job of showing that to us here.

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

d;-)