What makes a poem memorable? When the parts of speech come alive …

By Suzanne Linder
English & social advocacy teacher
Posted Wednesday, April 5, 2006, The OG, features

[Note: In honor of National Poetry Month, The Online Gargoyle asked each of Uni's English teachers to pick a favorite poem. We asked: What does this poem mean to you? Why does it move you? How does it move you? What's the history of your relationship with the poem? But we don't want to limit this to teachers. Tell us about your own favorite poem. Contact us here or here. Suzanne Linder, who teaches senior English and social advocacy, starts us off with her selection.]

Choosing a favorite poem is a little like trying to choose a favorite movie, book, or song — I like too many, and what I listen to or read depends largely on my mood at any given moment.

Recently I have found myself thinking about the poem “Permanently,” by Kenneth Koch (1925-2002), a poem I first heard in the fall of 2004. Meredith Nelson read the poem aloud in class, and I immediately fell for the personification of the parts of speech. I'm delighted by the image of the verb driving by and completing the sentence: I imagine the verb to be driving a yellow Mustang. I am entertained by the languid parts of speech, lying in the grass in the spring, feebly attempting to call the adjective to life.

Aside from the nerdy English teacher appeal of parts of speech running amok in town, I find the turn at the end of the poem devastating in the same way that falling in love with a person can be devastating. When I first heard the poem, I had been dating the man who will soon be my husband for about four months, and I felt absolutely enchanted by him. Today when I read this poem, I find myself contemplating how a series of simple, prosaic sentences (“will you please close the window”) can lead to promises of permanence.

“Permanently”

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing — for example, “Although it was a dark
rainy day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green, effective earth.”
Or, “Will you please close the window, Andrew?”
Or, for example, “Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
sill has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the boiler factory
which exists nearby.”

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass. A lonely
Conjunction here and there would call, “And! But!”
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat —
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

Poem: “Permanently,” by Kenneth Koch, from “Selected Poems, 1950-1982” (Vintage)