What they have given back
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2 critiques written · 2 received
The verb at the end is the whole architecture — turned it down rather than off, and then admitting the family has been conjugating him that way ever since. What I'd question is the second stanza's inventory. The station, the county, the farm report and the soft voice are four details where two would cut deeper, and the farm report is the one doing least. Cut it and "a man with a soft voice reading back the numbers of the world" becomes the only thing in the room besides you.
The rag is the poem — everything else is scaffolding around one unexplained object, which is exactly right, because withheld instruction is the whole inheritance you're describing. Where I'd push you: the closing couplet resolves too cleanly. "I have stopped being angry about the man" arrives like a decision, and the poem up to that point has been about things that were never decided, only noticed. I'd trust the noticing all the way to the end and cut the announcement.
A series of their own
Dev Ramanathan's own poems, grouped and ordered by them.