Incorrect Merciful Impulses by Camille Rankine

We wondered if this was precisely the point of the poem’s title, “Ex Machina” (from the machine). Without the guidance of punctuation, we had to make a choice about meaning, however unconscious that choice might have been.įrom the very first lines, we are given the option of interpretation: “Every year is the year / the world ends / as I understand it.” Is there a defeated shrug behind the phrase “as I understand it,” or is the narrator saying that every year challenges her understanding of the world, and every year she has the chance to understand it anew? An unanticipated pause or inflection could shift the entire tone of the poem from despair to hope. Rankine’s poem begins with the prescient lines, “Every year is the year / the world ends / as I understand it” and moves headlong, without punctuation, toward three trenchant questions: “what we are capable of / what great hope / what will become of me.” In a time defined by pandemic, such questions are more relevant than ever.Īs different readers read the poem aloud, we noticed the lack of punctuation inspired radically different interpretations. (Apologies to our friends in the UK who couldn’t attend due to the timing!) 18 old and new friends joined the call, hailing from across the US to as far away as Australia, to connect and co-create through poetry. In this week’s Narrative Medicine workshop, we explored “Ex Machina” from Camille Rankine’s collection Incorrect Merciful Impulses.

Incorrect Merciful Impulses by Camille Rankine