Dear List,
While I was trying to locate PF's verses "man's
life as commentary," I realized that, once in a while, the poem admits an
"omniscient narrator" perspective, or an external intrusion.
Kinbote
acknowledges his "hearsay" evidence (when he relies on Jane Dean's notes,
for example). In Shade's poem they are marked by "italics." (when he can know
what Hazel said to the busdriver, or how the watchman came from his shack to
rescue her, side by side with what describes dialogues heard on the TV or read
the inscription on a bark).
I don't know if there are other instances,
similar to these. Nor if the use of "italics" is indicative of
various other types of warning signals. Any ideas?
1. Life is a message
scribbled in the dark.
2. He took one look at her, / And
shot a death ray at well-meaning Jane.
3. "Sure you don’t mind?/ I’ll
catch the Exton plane, because you know / If I don’t come by midnight with
the dough —"
4. More headlights in the fog. There
was no sense/ In window-rubbing: only some white fence / And the
reflector poles passed by
unmasked.
5. "I think," she said,/ "I’ll get off
here." "It’s only Lochanhead." / "Yes, that’s okay." Gripping the stang,
she peered/ 460 At ghostly trees. Bus stopped. Bus
disappeared.
6. Out of his lakeside shack/ A
watchman, Father Time, all gray and bent, / Emerged with his uneasy dog and
went / Along the reedy bank. He came too late.
7. Man’s
life as commentary to abstruse / Unfinished
poem