The Riddle of the Shrink

I wondered about the use of couplets in Nuar Alsadir’s “The Riddle of the Shrink.” The couplets in this poem are open-ended, and the words in the lines continue into the next couplet, but the structure forces a pause between each one. The white space breaks up the reading of the poem and, as it creates a disjointedness between the lines, it also magnifies the tension described in the poem.

The language of the poem talks about “distress,” “disconnects,” “fear,” and “strain,” and the form of the poem parallels and reinforces the language. The overriding feeling I got from the poem, even trying to read it without the breaks between lines, was anxiety. It starts in the first line, “It is the distress of losing a ticket/or any other document granting passage.” What is “it” that’s causing the distress? We sense that we won’t get where we’re going. The unease builds when “the phone disconnects” and increases because we expect “to be let in” and gain access, but we miss “a secret.” By leaving us hanging, and then taking us someplace we didn’t expect to be, the split between couplets emphasizes the separation. The poem continues but without the continuity we were anticipating; this adds to the discomfort we are experiencing.

The form of the poem interrupts the flow of the reading, but there is flow in the language. If the poem were written in stanzas with complete thoughts grouped together, it would still create the unease, but perhaps without as much “strain.” Because most of the poem is written in the present tense, we feel like the action is either taking place right now or it happens on a regular basis. We go from one state of being to another; we "become the letter/that never receives a response;” we become “the ball/that rolls under the neighbor’s fence and stays.” The metaphors shift, but we are in the moment, and, at the same time, becoming something else. There’s a state of constant transition. It is the form of the poem that adds the hesitation and gives us pause.

Midway through the poem we are told, “The image of the future is the memory of the dream...” It’s a vivid image of living both in the future and in the memory of the past, but we’ve “forgotten [the] code,” so where do we go from here – forwards, backwards, or in-between? It feels like we ourselves are “suspended between this world/and the next.” This is consistent with being a letter that doesn’t receive a response – do we belong to the writer or the recipient? The ball stays in the neighbor’s yard, but it’s still our ball. Later, when we “strain/to hear another’s conversation while feigning/involvement in [our] own,” the conversations continue, but we belong to neither. The content of the poem is reinforced by its design. The words are arranged so that the language exists in more than one couplet.

The placement of the page break also felt like a significant transition. We start out on page 47 “rush[ing] to take a seat” on the subway, but continue on page 48 with changing lanes on the freeway. The division of these passages on two separate pages makes us feel like we’ve missed the train altogether (after all, we’ve lost our ticket), or that we’ve literally been “cut-off” in our lane, and life is moving too fast to ever be where we’re supposed to. The detail is “trying to get over to the right lane/in fast traffic” and the feeling is that our exit is coming up, but we might not make it in time. Again, we won’t get to where we are going.

The dream imagery works well when the last line mentions “dreaming that the alarm is about to go off.” The poem does feel like a dream where things happen but the transitions don’t always make sense. We feel like we are on the verge of something that is going to happen, but there are frustrations and white spaces that get in the way. The language expresses this tension, and the form of the poem in couplets heightens it.

Sheila Joseph