A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
1st person plural
pronoun: persona
speaks on responder’s
behalf
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
Visual imagery suggests
personal experience
We may inhale Despair
At distances of Centuries
From the Malaria.
Low modality of ‘may’
and use of indefinite
article ‘a Word’ suggest
possibility of hypothetical
situation being used to
illustrate a point about
relationships or the
power of literature…
A word dropped careless on
a page
• Emily Dickinson quotes regarding language:
• “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no
fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel
physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know
that is poetry.”
• “A word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die…”
• Some ideas about words…
• startling vitality
• organic separate entities, with being, growth,
immortality of their own
• imperishable significance
• embody some terrifying, mysterious power
which approaches omnipotence
• Compared with malignant germs
Two even stanzas:
cause and effect
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
Syntax: use of adjective
instead of adverb
echoes a careless use
of language
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the Malaria.
Sparse punctuation:
poem divided by short
sentence where focus
turns from cause to
effect.
Enjambment: forces
reader to move on and
conflicts with traditional
rhythm and rhyme.
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
Prompt, trigger,
kindle, activate,
motivate
When folded in perpetual seam
Never-ending, permanent,
unchanging
The wrinkled maker lie.
contagion, corruption,
defilement, disease,
poison
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the Malaria.
absorb, devour, breathe,
smell
bring about, bring forth, cause, create,
deliver, engender, give rise to, hatch,
make, multiply, originate, produce
Use of adjective instead
of adverb echoes a
careless use of language
Indefinite article
shows that it
could be any
word not a
specific word
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
Prepositional phrase
‘on a page’: written
word can be reread
and kept
Ambiguity: ‘seam’ =
fold/layer of earth; ‘lie’ =
lie down, buried/tell a lie
At distances of centuries
From the Malaria.
Language has the ability to affect
(infect) an individual.
Dis-ease that can come from
confrontation
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Regular iambic
meter: heartbeat references to
breathing and
disease also link to
life and death
Abcb rhyme
establishes
conventions and
rules like those of
relationships and
communication
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the Malaria.
Abcb rhyme broken in final line of
poem: conventions of this relationship
also broken - uncomfortable finish;
line hangs on like the persona to the
grudge he/she holds against the
writer of the careless word
A word dropped careless on a page
May stimulate an eye
When folded in perpetual seam
The wrinkled maker lie.
Infection in the sentence breeds.
We may inhale despair
At distances of centuries
From the Malaria.
Reference to event in
the past written about
in the present tense:
even though the injury
is long ago the wound
does not heal emphasised by
hyperbole of
‘Centuries’