It looks like a long poem but
something about the opening line
gets my attention.
I quite like how it cuts to the chase
with the metaphor of
adopting a dog versus an infant.
How it patiently elaborates
that neither aqueous nor watery
would have a life of its own without water,
but that only one of them
can be mistaken for a biological child
of the noun.
I don't know about you, but
I personally find that a nice explanation
of the titular subject.
Which is why I don't mind
when a couple more examples
are shoehorned in, like end vs terminal,
and moon vs lunar.
There is even a joke
about collateral and loan words
that I'm willing to give a polite chuckle.
At the same time I also begin to suspect here
that the poem is perhaps not really about collateral adjectives,
that maybe it wants to do something else altogether,
something that reminds me of adjective vs epithetic.
Out of nowhere then comes this river in South Bend, Indiana.
There is that phrase,
ribbon of sparkling silver,
which I love, but there are also those two names,
St Joseph and Sakiwasipi.
So presumably this is another metaphor.
That much is confirmed in the next line,
when we learn that St Joseph is the version
that freezes over, runs in
straight lines, or beneath
unsightly bridges, or by
the crowded pier at Lake Michigan
into which it merges and
disappears against the clouded sunset beyond,
whereas when called Sakiwasipi the river
ripples under cackling geese
and meanders
under luminous spring clouds,
once having overdone it and
leaving behind
a lake shaped like a horseshoe,
perfectly still,
a giant mirror
into which bright yellow trees
hang upside down, pointing
to the clear blue sky
at the bottom.
It's not obvious to me what I'm supposed to make
of that frenzy of imagery --
but I am left with no time
to turn it over the swivels of my brain,
because the poem now puts its arms together in front of it
and dives into a second big analogy.
This is when it gets tiresome, technical --
yes, I get that no single ancestor
gave bats and dolphins
their common blessing of echolocation,
but do I really care that nor did
one etymological great-grandmother
spawn east and oriental?
That word, convergent evolution,
makes me wince:
it should have no place in poetry.
I want to go to the next stanza already.
Only it turns out to be
a curiously defensive one, like
it is trying to prove a point.
Speaking for myself, though, I felt it had its moments,
like the spiel about how some collaterals
function as euphemism.
The one with cystic vs bladder,
the one about mortal remains for dead body,
and my favourite, gluteal vs buttock.
But hang on, hymeneal vs marriage
shouldn't belong here.
That sounds to me like
the opposite of euphemistic.
We then go off on
an unnecessary moralistic tangent on what it feels like to
savour stewed goose and smoked steak versus
bite into birds and bison.
I suppose that was for those s's and b's.
Next we are abruptly dropped into the periodic table
and asked to contemplate stannic acid
and ferrous oxide and Auric Goldfinger.
Then it gets awkward with
all those obscure collaterals for common nouns, though I dig the one on
hodiernal vs today. Yummm.
Also, estival vs summer.
Estival cracks me up.
The final bit here is for me the best,
the one with all the sneaky types,
you know, the ones we use all the time
but don't think of as collaterals.
Like I am startled that second and best
slipped under my radar just now.
To be honest, the next stanza loses me completely.
Do I really need to use digital exchange
in place of fingers crossed?
Sure, feline and canine precipitation
faintly tickles me,
but xeric uniformity? Colour me unimpressed.
That's not even what "just deserts" really means.
That also goes for the one on
carpal gyration vs wrist spin.
And maybe I'm just too cynical at this point,
but dextral absence for right away
strikes me as too clever by half.
I sense the poem is in panic mode now,
as if guilty of having
bullet lists masquerading as its stanzas.
Pitiful, really.
I am pretty inspired, though,
to see it recover to hit some high notes
in the final stanza.
Those nouns lacking collaterals
do make a good theme for wrapping things up.
Like when we are challenged
to produce one for sin or Portugal or TV,
I, for one, fail to.
And it is odd indeed that window has fenestral
and door has nothing.
Pet haters? Ha, that's a good name --
having me doubt if the original metaphor
was set up for this payoff.
(Then the volume of my mind
inexplicably turns down as I read
that side remark on how sooner or later
I'd be thinking of the collateral shelter
as one boasting no unclaimed animals.)
And I really like the way the examples
in this category are juxtaposed.
The cake, guillotine, democracy sequence
is a nice touch, for instance.
But also coffee, bean, cup.
It gets me when we then immediately go
from coffee to scatological.
Seeing how the clock on the poem
is running out, I become curious
about how it is going to end.
That is when I am a trifle jarred,
but mostly amused, to discover that,
in its own words,
"As a poem do I long to sound,
as thy eyeballs come southbound."
Fancy.
