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The Deipnosophist

Where the science of investing becomes an art of living

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Location: Summerlin, Nevada, United States

A private investor for 20+ years, I manage private portfolios and write about investing. You can read my market musings on three different sites: 1) The Deipnosophist, dedicated to teaching the market's processes and mechanics; 2) Investment Poetry, a subscription site dedicated to real time investment recommendations; and 3) Seeking Alpha, a combination of the other two sites with a mix of reprints from this site and all-original content. See you here, there, or the other site!

21 October 2009

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation

The poem below is not only excellent, but clever as well. To conflate sentence diagramming to the poem's text, from its meta sub-text, delivers a whole new context and meaning. Of course, any poem that includes grammar and syntax (lessons) would hold extra appeal for me!

The author's meaning is direct, but read the poem again to get its subtle shadings. One clue: pay attention to verb tense. (Oh, and that sledgehammer clue in line 3!)

-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation
by Kevin Brown

Grammatical rules have always baffled
me, leaving me wondering whether my
life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the
subject or object of my life, and no one
has been able to provide words to describe
my actions, even if they do end in –
ly.

But now the problem seems to be with
pronouns: 
I am unwilling to be him
and 
you are unable to be her, so we
will never be 
them ~ the ones talking
about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for
dinner tonight; the couple saving for a
vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a
museum tour of Europe; the two who meet
with a financial advisor to plan their children's

college fund while still managing to set enough
aside for their retirement ~ and so we will
continue to be nothing more than sentence
fragments, perfectly fine for effect,
but forever looking for the missing
part of speech we can never seem to find.

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