The Madness to the Method

+JMJ

Pardon my pause in posting!  Life has been on triple speed and as of late I've not had much time to pursue the art of blogging.  Nevertheless, here is a poem I wrote for my English professor last semester when she required me to use a particular analytical method on a paper.  While the Method was misery, the poem it produced - in the style of T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - was, I think, well worth it.  

The Madness to the Method: A Highly Imperfect Poem for a Highly Infuriating Tool

By Caitlin Clancy

Let us go then, you and I,

Our good senses to defy,

And use methodic madness

For the English teacher’s gladness.

With its tedium

Of broken argument,

The Method wanders with insidious intent,

Into the minds of unsuspecting youth

And rubs its claws

Upon the light of truth.

But do not ask what

More cannot be done –

For, quicker than words run,

There will be time

To murder, uncreate,

That awful thing,

Which, dropped onto your plate,

Has, questioning,

Beat you much

But seldom given aid –

And drowned the voice

Of muse-like fair mermaid

It seems to me that Method

Is a pin

That sticks the panicked poet

To a wall –

In jest, perhaps,

Or some half-cruel sport,

Where aching writer cannot make retort

And I’ll confess me very unsurprised

To find Method on a table, etherized,

And hear its dying voice recall,

Yes, drowning with a dying fall –

But I shall not much miss it,

No, not at all.