A Salute to the Servicewomen. Hands down.
So, why do I choose this poem, you may ask. Well, simply put, I believe that it possesses a certain endearing quality to it – a bumbling, unintentional charm that makes it far more accessible in comparison to The Convergence of the Twain.
It may come across as a surprise to many that I would hail this piece to be the better of the two, especially when one considers the fact that The Convergence of the Twain is, at first glance, a lot more polished than the former.
Yet poetry is, to me, not about beauty in complexity but rather, beauty of the English language as a whole. Yes, The Convergence of Twain possesses some lovely imagery, but unfortunately, the poet has gone utterly overboard in his/her attempt to garnish the poem with an influx of seemingly lovely words; words one might associate with poetry, in all its flowery, and at times loquacious nature (and while we are on that topic, I would like to say once and for all that poetry is definitely not all about that). Yes, I can appreciate the usage of vocabulary such as “opulent”, “gilded”, “grotesque” and “sensuous” – just to name a few. However, I would appreciate the language a lot more so had the poet chosen to limit the extravagance in his/her writing to, perhaps, three different points in the poem, and kept it at that. The key to good poetry has never been to toss in a whole smorgasbord of fanciful words into what feels like every other verse. It makes the writing comes across as – dare I say it – a tad amateurish, as though the poet had merely been relying on these literary-sounding words to impress his readers – or, more specifically, the portion of his readers who do think of poetry to be flowery and loquacious and the like. Worse still – the overemphasis on the splendour of the wording makes the whole poem come across as being flat, and hopelessly lacking in any real emotions. It is such that the seventh and eighth stanzas – both detailing the imminent collision of the ship, and the untimely deaths of those aboard it – are utterly bereft of the horror one would expect the poet to feel when penning them down in a poem.
On the other hand, A Salute to the Servicewomen is, contrived as it may sound, something which I find strikes close to my heart. It is straightforward in execution, but painfully honest and poignant. The repetition of the word “sleep” – in “which made you sleep forever”, and later, “so that we could sleep soundly at night” – is a glaring flaw in the poem which contrasts wildly with the meticulously constructed verses of The Convergence of the Twain, and yet it fits in so well with the mood of the poem – that the persona is so overcome with passion for the brave young women who sacrificed themselves for their nation and its citizens – something which is described very aptly in the aforementioned verse, “so that we could sleep soundly at night” – all in the name of duty, that, for that very moment in time, perfection no longer matters. The significance lies in the tragedy of the event, and for a brief moment, we realise how impossible it is to try to maintain an air of faultlessness in the face of such disaster, when lives are being lost.
:D
- Cassandra
