The title made it seem so innocent.
Then I read it. This poem had an eerie atmosphere and yet something utterly
beautiful about it. Immediately I am struck by the line break in the first
stanza leaving the reader with the word “loss”; one becomes lost in the white
of the page until he or she can find the next line in the concrete of “bauxite”.
And while making the poem feel
uneven and uncomfortable, the stanza breaks between the first and second
stanzas and between the third and fourth stanzas provide interest for me. Maybe
because the first stanza ends with the idea of “mountains” I think of the
uneven, rocky, rough surface of the peak of a mountain, and this is a contrast
to the eerie, hanging feeling I get from the rest of the piece. The other
aforesaid stanza break is a prime example of this contrast because it
emphasizes the word “calm”. These two competing ideas definitely make the
reader feel uneasy. There is something intriguing about this.
Of course, I love the ending. It’s
so tragic. To run out of air while writing a warning of safety, to be left
hanging. What is so tragic, though, is the idea of the canary. I wanted to know
the significance of that particular bird, so I did some research. As it turns
out, canaries were used by miners to be a signal for dangerous gas; the gas
would kill the canary before the miners, therefore, warning them to evacuate
the mine. This makes me even more enamored of the title. The hope that I held
with the image of a canary is transformed into something bleak and
heartbreaking. A very literal still life.
I loved your point about the placement of the word "loss" and how it abruptly shifts into empty space. It's like the word is searching for something to latch unto. There's a similar effect with the word "oxygen" in line 11. It's opened into empty space, looking for a word to cling onto. In some respect, it's much like the miners who are looking for oxygen to breathe, to cling onto life.
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