Red Pencil
I can still feel your slashing notations that nearly
murdered my love affair with words, knifing
run-on sentences, strangling dangling modifiers,
eviscerating verbs not in agreement with their subjects.
Lost are the faces but not the traces
of your willing accomplices,
the semantic and pedantic
wielding weapons of academic authority.
They graded and raided, scraped and raped
virgin paper with a cruelly sharpened point, leaving
behind a blood-stained hexagonal wooden barrel grip
at the scene of the crime.
Go now, go away and board the No. 2 train back
to Ticonderoga, or wherever you are made today,
for now I have poetic license and the freedom to drive
the ungrammatical roads of play.
About this poem
An autobiographical memory of the authoritarian rules of grammar and those who taught them.
Font size:
Written on June 01, 2022
Modified on April 12, 2023
- 39 sec read
- 379 Views
Quick analysis:
| Scheme | ABCC CCXA XBXX XDXD |
|---|---|
| Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
| Characters | 712 |
| Words | 130 |
| Stanzas | 4 |
| Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
1 fan
Translation
Find a translation for this poem in other languages:
Select another language:
- - Select -
- 简体中文 (Chinese - Simplified)
- 繁體中文 (Chinese - Traditional)
- Español (Spanish)
- Esperanto (Esperanto)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- Português (Portuguese)
- Deutsch (German)
- العربية (Arabic)
- Français (French)
- Русский (Russian)
- ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- עברית (Hebrew)
- Gaeilge (Irish)
- Українська (Ukrainian)
- اردو (Urdu)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- मानक हिन्दी (Hindi)
- Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Italiano (Italian)
- தமிழ் (Tamil)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- తెలుగు (Telugu)
- ภาษาไทย (Thai)
- Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Polski (Polish)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
- Românește (Romanian)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Latinum (Latin)
- Svenska (Swedish)
- Dansk (Danish)
- Suomi (Finnish)
- فارسی (Persian)
- ייִדיש (Yiddish)
- հայերեն (Armenian)
- Norsk (Norwegian)
- English (English)
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Red Pencil" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/133734/red-pencil>.
Powered by CITE.ME
Discuss the poem Red Pencil with the community...
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In