Poetry Talk

I really don't know who Alison Prine is and gravitated to this poem of hers titled Yellow shortly after I wrote my poem with the same title. I have now idea where this poem has come from, only that I had found it on the internet and filed a screen shot of it.

It's a concise prose poem, not too unlike the one I wrote and at the same time much different and shorter. I love its brevity and how much it squeezes out of ten lines. I could taste the butter on a salted cracker in the first line and immediately wanted to indulge again in something I haven't done for a very long time. It takes us not just to the past but also to the age of 16 and perhaps knowing childhood is a thing of the past that will happen soon. The future is daunting perhaps, the awkward space of being on the cusp of change and not knowing what that change will be. Tethering on childhood and adulthood. Almost a feeling of not fitting into any boxes, limbo or loss—a small pleasure to push against the bright hard grief that shone in each window.

The poem really takes a turn in the next three lines—the black seed of the sunflower falls from its bloom and pedals litter my memory of a woman kneeling in the dirt who taught me young how to speak of death with the dying. Wow! What is that and what does it all mean? It takes my imagination into all directions. Feeling the power in those lines hurls me into all directions of war, genocide, and perhaps how woman have been treated over the centuries—but we just don't know, or it's possibly the hard life her mother endured and has passed away and is now struggling to remember her mother. It's kind of how a young mind works trying to put life together, its complexities, but a simple cracker smeared in butter alleviates some of that feeling of anguish or brings back shared memories. Just enough information, just enough questions to keep you reading this poem over and over.

The last three lines are the icing on the cake and they say poems and poets are brief in their language but here she brilliantly crafts long stunning ways of saying, that's life. A kind of a shoulder shrug—not to worry as most 16 year-olds do and just do your best and enjoy life, and all things yellow fix everything.

Share your thoughts in the comments—I'd love to hear them!!