This poem, “Procrastination,” deals with the mental battle of procrastination and the overwhelming frenzy of attempting to study with the race against time. The speaker struggles with the anger and exhaustion that they have encountered by the cram session.
“Procrastination” provides an awesome example of form and content working in a symbiotic relationship. The shape of the poem and the form-dictated pace worked together to show the frustration of the speaker. One specific example of this is the second stanza, which in content is describing the early stages of getting to work and introduces the subject of anger. The choppy lines force the reader to slow down and the rhythm is reminiscent of a drum beating.
I’ve already mentioned this abstractly, but Sarah does a great job pacing the read of the poem and offers many different speeds throughout. In my interpretation, the poem starts of slow, then starting with the line “My pen screeches” (where the speaker awakes from dozing off) it becomes clear that the speaker is forcing productivity, then in the second to last stanza is a racing, fast pace before it finally, slowly slows at the end. I was amazed at the different speeds of the poem and the way that content and form worked together to communicate pace to the reader.
In terms of poetic devices, this prompt asked the author to exemplify image and metaphor. Literally, this poem is describing the painful process of forcing yourself to work in the race against time. The imagery in “Procrastination” is teeming with phrases like; “Anger/wells,” “My mind drifts,” “numbers crawling,” “My pen screeches,” “My book/firing words,” “Notes bleed,” honestly—the list goes on! The poem made it impossible to not imagine the mental warzone of the speaker in graphic terms.
One really successful technique used was the dash at the tip of a stanza where the speaker is being dragged into a sleep. The stanza starts with the long word “dragging” and then immediately shrinks to two-letter words until “deep” and then the speaker fades to sleep. In terms of form, this was really well thought out and was immensely helpful in suggesting the content. Then of course, in the next stanza the speaker is rudely awakened and frenzied by work again.
I thought this poem was really successful and I loved reading it and I have two suggestions for the author. The first is that the dash at the end of the “Dragging” stanza (that I mentioned in the previous paragraph) could have been a double dash (ie. –). I found that the first time I was reading the poem aloud, I wasn’t clear what how to verbalize that dash. I think a long pause is sufficient in reading, but it may help to emphasize that a pause is necessary. Also, in the stanza beginning with the line “Last minute,” I was unclear about the content—I don’t know if I am reading it wrong, but if there is any way to be more clear about the message you are sending there, I think that would help with readability.
Jenny Coe
220:1
Here’s a substantial response!