Poem #5 Perspective on Might - John Poch: The Enigma of Modern Poetry

Superior to the philosopher of God's absence,
the avalanche is patient above those pines
it might sublimely clean its teeth with.
At the lip of the highest peak snow accumulates
on a dead man's moustache like a dead man's moustache.
Repetition isn't funny to the dead man who never
made it to that bar in Champagne for champagne
or to the avalanche whose time has almost come.
We might consider how scale means to climb
or to remove the scales from a dead creature
with this precious, precise violence we call a knife.
A philosopher needs a sharp knife to cut the cord
of pride hanging her like a Christmas ornament
from her parachute caught in the trees of the supernatural.
After all, God is present as that last snowflake settling
on the lip, the tickle which has come a long way
to now. From afar it looks so soft. Even the knife.

          Being someone who prefers traditional formal poetry, I have often asked myself how anyone can appreciate modern poems written in ‘free verse.’ Perhaps the biggest struggle I have with appreciating these kinds of poems is that I don’t know where to start in my analysis of it. I am beginning to suspect that I need another way of understanding free verse. Someone noted that lesser examples of free verse reads like chopped-up prose, and I guess that my apprehension towards this genre is partly due to the (apparent?) lack of structure and form in the poetry.

          But I am hoping to start learning how to read and enjoy free verse, otherwise I will only be outdated, so I thought that this poem would be a nice one to share. I cannot say I fully understand what the persona is saying. It does however suggest that ‘the philosopher of God’s absence’ should be a little more humble, because she is hung ‘like a Christmas ornament’ by her pride. The image of being ‘her parachute caught in the trees of the supernatural’ evokes a kind of helplessness and weakness. It is after all trees of the supernatural, and I am assuming that philosophers generally do not believe in the supernatural. 

          If I read the first 3 lines and the final 3 lines as frames or the bookends of the poem, then structurally the poem has a progression from God’s absence (marked by the philosopher’s presence) to God’s presence. Furthermore, the choice of adjectives in the final 3 lines bring to mind smallness, for example ‘snowflake,’ ‘tickle’ and ‘soft’. I think these words are used so that the irony of circumstances becomes all the more striking. ‘The avalanche whose time has almost come’ is described meekly to show how one should adopt a proper perspective on might. This is because, ‘from afar it looks so soft. Even the knife,’ but both in reality are much more superior than the ‘philosopher of God’s absence.’