A Poem: "Nine Kinds of Blindness"

On the various ways we do not see; a poem from Bower Lodge.

Dear friends,

For today’s poem we are pulling an old favorite from my 2021 collection, Bower Lodge. If you don’t have the book, you might enjoy reading it. (Reviews from Fare Forward and The Englewood Review are here for some context on the collection, as well as this interview with Fathom’s Aarik Danielson.)

A recording of the poem is above. An explication of the poem follows below, for my very kind paid subscribers.

Paul

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Nine Kinds of Blindness
Paul J. Pastor

1. The one where your eyes do not work to see anything.

2. The one where your eyes do not work to see everything.

3. The one where your eyes work, but you cannot see what you have never seen before.

4. The one where your eyes work but you cannot see what is inconvenient.

5. The one where your eyes work but someone is keeping you from using them.

6. The one where your eyes work but you are angry.

7. The one where your eyes work but you are afraid.

8. The one where your eyes work but there is no light.

9. The one where your eyes work but there is nothing but light.

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I am not a writer who gravitates toward the “list poem.” In general, it is a form that relies too much on the spaces between lines. List poems are easy to give an appearance of profundity. In my personal opinion, it can encourage laziness in a writer to depend too much upon the reader to bring the connective tissue to the work.