550: Comments on "On Goodbyes"

Valparaiso Review Poem:
“On Goodbyes” by Ned Balbo


I’m not sure what made me pick this poem. Maybe Collins put me in the mood for poetry about the seemingly mundane, which this poem is about. Or maybe it was about something I never really thought of in depth before. Either way, something struck me about it.

On second reading, I was pretty surprised that I picked this poem. It took me until the second read to realize that it rhymed in parts. Unfortunately, I had been brainwashed in my undergraduate creative writing course to avoid rhymes like the plague (which I am trying to break out of that habit now). But the rhyming in this poem was subtle. It didn’t seem as though the poet went out of his way to make sure his poem rhymed, but that the rhyming in the poem was a happy coincidence. If it had been more obvious rhyming, it may have felt to me that the poem was forced, that the author didn’t write from the heart but wrote to make it sound pretty (not that there is anything wrong with that, but I do think I fall into the category of a confessional poet).

Now, after analyzing the use of rhyme in the poem, I think I like this poem because it seems to fall somewhere between formalism and confessional. Although it seems to lean more toward the latter, there are traces of an underlying form. For one thing, the rhyming seems to be more old school, although it was done very tactfully. For another thing, there are three lines in ever stanza until the last one, which has four. Although I am more of a confessional poet, I do still have respect for formalism, being the overly-organized person that I am. Anyway, it was nice to see a poet not just doing what is the norm in society or doing what their English professor told them to do (as mine in undergrad told us to never rhyme).

On the other hand, I also like the confessional, free verse style of the poem. As I’ve already stated, this poem is about an everyday occurrence that anybody can relate to. Like Collins’s poems, this helps the reader relate to it. However, the author did write things in a way that made the reader think more than they would have with some of Collins’s poems in order to grasp what the author means.

One thing I did like from my previous creative writing class was playing with line and stanza breaks, and I like the way Ned Balbo did this. For example, the end of the first stanza says, “but those that take us by surprise, the dead” and ends there. The reader has to get to the next stanza to know that the author was not talking about dead people but about “air empty in their wake.” The anticipation of what comes next or where the author is going to go on the next line was well done. The author easily could have taken it in a different direction, and he started to lead the reader in that direction, but quickly brought it back into his intended direction. Then, at the very end of the poem, Balbo ends it with “I hate goodbyes: from those – to those – we dread and need, who take or leave us, like the dead.” So the author did actually end up taking us there afterall.

As I’ve already stated, I also like the subject matter. Although I did like Collins’s accessibility, I did like the fact that even after reading it several times, I don’t feel as though I grasped everything in the poem. Every time I’ve read it, I’ve walked away with a different or new interpretation and I’m sure I will every other time I read it. There is something to be said about a poem that requires more reading. I will keep going back to it until I think I’ve figured it all out.