Response, Week 10

I’m interested in Fagan’s indenting form for the untitled “No cakes for us…” piece. The form follows sets of unrhymed tercets, where every other line is heavily indented. Due to the tercet format, this creates a structure where the middle lines of odd stanzas are indented, and the first and third lines of even stanzas are indented, presenting an alternating or continually inversing form. This structure of the poem forces readers to physically mimic the movement described on stage (passing the “lampblack,” filing “the claws down,” “les rats” dancing and “huddl[ing]). The falls to indented lines (with capital letters) offer a harder impact, like the thudding of steps on the stage floor, whereas the following backtrack to a longer line emphasizes the violent move of the history or the forced reflection on the historical art. The slamming is also emphasized with short lines and heavy punctuation (“Still. / I prayed only / Once.”). The motion of the form also aids in juggling the material of the opera house—rats, performance, luck, Hades, science—and also mimics the indecisiveness of the speaker as she contemplates the peridition of her fellow performers (“Doll. Whore. Clown. Corpse.”). Finally, the alternating forms as the indentions move from 121 to 212 forms demonstrate the alternating persona held by the forms of the poems, and by the characters within.