Channels, Fall 2017

Channels • 2017 • Volume 2 • Number 1 Page 21 or “How like an arrow the good intent Has fallen short or been turned aside.” In both cases, Longfellow uses inverted syntax to accommodate the rhyme scheme, which requires the reader to read the piece differently than something with standard syntax. Compare the structure of the above to: “I find little room for pride,” or “The good intent has fallen short or Been turned aside like an arrow.” The inversion of the syntax grants the work a “poetic” feel, at least in the eyes of amateur readers. With each of the aforementioned factors in mind, one might expect the lowest- ranked poem to lack semantic variability, phonemic play, and irregular syntax, and this prediction was indeed the case. Kimiko Hahn’s poem, “The Dream of a Lacquer Box,” was the lowest-ranked poem of the ten. Participants frequently described it as “fragmented” or said they needed more context to understand it. This is noteworthy because it contained the most semantically limited language. For example, there are explicit references to “Hello Kitty” and a “black lacquer box.” Readers described themselves as feeling like the poem was part of a larger work. Similarly, the poem featured no explicit rhyme scheme or meter. In other words, it featured neither of the key features that were determinative in preference. Consider the following sample lines: “wish I knew the contents and I wish the contents Japanese — like hairpins made of tortoiseshell or bone though my braid was lopped off long ago, like an overpowering pine incense or a talisman from a Kyoto shrine, like a Hello Kitty diary-lock-and-key, Hello Kitty stickers or candies, . . .” Aside from the repetition of /o/ in lines 3 and 4, no other surface-level linguistic pattern appears. There is a limited use of alliteration and assonance, such as the /k/ in “like” and