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Monday, September 4, 2023

On Unreliable Narrators in the Blogosphere

 


I have always been
desperately different;
this is not news. In my youth,
it caused me angst and consternation.
In old age,
it becomes a source of satisfaction:
I yam what I yam.

I once was home support
for a sweet little lady with dementia,
whose favourite phrase was
"Thank you, God, for giving me
a brain". She kept losing things,
like keys, and blaming other people,
like the much younger dog walker,
but with loving asides, like "the man
is in another world, the poor bugger,
I won't ask anything of him again,"
and "Do you think he's getting copies made?
Do you think he has designs on me?
Because I love the man for his kindness,
but I have no thought of anything with him,
his wife can rest easy."
Her life ended sadly,
in her cluttered little house,
her anxious great dane
by her side.

Maybe we are all, in the end,
unreliable narrators, with our shiny poems
presenting our most wishful selves,
thousands of poems we hope
will live on after we're gone,
that most likely will end up
in a landfill. Or, in my case,
washed out to sea in a tsunami.
(All that work! to produce so many books
that no one wants to keep.)

Maybe we are not as inadequate
as we secretly feel. Maybe we are not
as composed as the exteriors we present
to the world. Possibly we are all,
in the end, unreliable narrators,
just doing the best we can.


Well. I am not sure if this is what Shay is looking for at Desperate Poets' Desperately Different prompt. I tend to just start typing and see where it takes me. This is what happened. 


9 comments:

  1. Poetry keeps us around so we write it. It will haunt and daunt the next fool after we're gone. That's the only reliable narration for poets, no matter how we unreliably protest ...

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  2. Sherry! I always find your words so beautiful, it's so good to read you again! Your last two stanzas really moved me, especially these lines:

    "Maybe we are all, in the end,
    unreliable narrators, with our shiny poems
    presenting our most wishful selves,
    thousands of poems we hope
    will live on after we're gone"

    Isn't it interesting how you never really choose to become a poet, you just kind of realise one day you are one. I don't think anyone's words are really lost, are they, if they're shared? Even when they're not, sometimes someone stumbles across and they continue to impact.

    All this just to say, I love your poem!! :-) <3

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  3. I like the idea of being different. It is good to be unique, not cut out of the same old mold. And perhaps it is true that we are each unreliable narrators of our own lives. Others probably don't see us as we see ourselves. Is this for better or for worse? Who knows! And, so true, what will come of all our poems when we are gone!

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  4. Someone once said that each of us is really three people: the person others think we are, the person we think we are ourselves, and who we really are. Who's to say how reliable any of us are capable of being about ourselves?

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  5. Who is the narrator indeed who looks out from behind these eyes? A great write Sherry.

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  6. Maybe In the end we are all unreliable narrators! Right. I agree with Fireblossom, we are all three people, maybe four.

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  7. I know how surprised, and yes, slightly betrayed, I felt the first time I encountered an unreliable narrator, one whose words I had been following as sincere. You stand that on its head somewhat by pointing out here that we all are saying something which may or may not be real or true, because it comes though our own little occluded filters, and who are we to know? Love this adroit and penetrating poem, Sherry.

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  8. A keyboard and fingers combine in a world all their own! Often what hits the screen is not what our brains expected, but methinks imagination has a lot to answer for too. :-) ♥

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  9. An honest poem, Sherry, and a wise ending. I always think ...write poetry because you enjoy it and you can.

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