A Word Dropped

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’