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Annotated by:
- Kohn, Martin
- Date of entry: Jul-26-2004
- Last revised: Jul-13-2007
Summary
The poet beautifully captures the connection between a successful neurosurgical operation that restores "the jitterbug of impulses" of the brain, with the neighbors' "word of the cure." He likens the neighbors' conversations to "the way, in Montana prairie country, / the first telephones let the local secrets / and sorrows pour through the survey-staked / barbed-wire fences now doubling / as makeshift transmission lines."
Primary Source
Mid-American Review
Publisher
Bowling Green State Univ.
Place Published
Bowling Green, Ohio
Edition
Vol. XXIV, No. 1, Fall, 2003
Commentary
In a world of increasing complexity, noise, information overload and isolation, it's reassuring to know that in some places there are neighbors who know, worry, and care about one another, even if "the cloudy static of the human voice [is] stretched over the misery of distance." I found this poem on Poetry Daily (www.poems.com), published by the Daily Poetry Association, a not-for-profit charitable corporation based in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is an excellent source for contemporary poetry.