Legacy

Another prompt writing for a peotry group on LindkIn.... enjoy!

Now that you've passed
your lifeforce is gone
have you made your mark
that shows you were here?

What kind of memories
have you left behind
sharing with the world
' look how I lived,
and left my life!'

Are there signs
that you brought
something to the table?
To show how proud
of your existence
people will be?

Ask yourself,
"What kind of Legacy,
have I left for thee?"

Author's Note

We all should examine how we leave our life. Google image for website for Leave a Legacy charity foundation!

Reviews

[James Hanna-Magill]

Dear Ice QueenJen

Thank you for your review of 'Acute'

I thought I would start my day with a review of this poem, the one you suggested I might like to look at.

If you not have witnessed my style of reviewing, it is often lengthy. It is just that I feel if someone has put their heart and soul into writing a piece, then it deserves the same measured response.

What you will always get from my reviews is a personal visceral reaction reader to writer based on my own personal experience of life. If you like every piece is an intimate conversation between the writer and one reader at a time.

But I also do nuts and bolts, so let's start there:

Structure: Four stanzas, the first, four lines; second, five; third, six; and last, three. You seek no deliberate form. There is nothing wrong with that. It has its own unique eloquence.

Rhymes: There are virtually none internal or external, except in the last four lines with -'be' Legacy' 'thee'. As with structure, I perceive no need to follow any precise rhyming pattern. That is the beauty of poetry. It need not be shoehorned into fixed form. Of course it is nice when people pull it off using our forbears forms such as the definable 'Sonnet' or 'Ode' But it isn't essential.

Rhythm and length of lines: Your shortest line is two words and your longest five. As for syllables, your shortest per line is three and longest six. Again no definable structure. but on reading it out loud as I have done a few times before starting this review (I often talk to myself, don't worry, cough!) it has an easy beat, partially because the lines and syllables are within a very narrow range. So it works well.

Punctuation and grammar: Unlike many other types of free verse, you do go to the trouble of punctuating and using capital letters rather than lower case. If otherwise unstructured, this attribute of your poem gives it greater poise and weight. As you are punctuating, just one tiny thing in passing, you are missing a question mark at the end of your second stanza after life.

And now to my favourite part.

Meaning, mode of expression and impact on me as one reader: Well the meaning is clear. How you express it and what it makes me think about intellectually and emotionally are the key to this for me.

Each stanza asks the same questions but expressing it in different ways.

1st stanza: the mark on death you have left on the world to prove you ever existed.
2nd stanza: memories others may retain of how you lived your life.
3rd stanza: what you added to life that others can be proud of.
4th stanza and in a way its most elegant as it is the shortest the generic question which goes right back to the title 'Legacy':

'Ask yourself,
"What kind of Legacy,
have I left for thee?"'

Personal reflections:

Those dead way out number those still alive. The majority are long forgotten. For must of us, give it a few generations, no-one will ever know we existed unless someone chooses to follow their family tree, as people will these days and even then they will only be able to go back as far as records exist.

If we do leave a long term legacy, it can be in the simple of ways - having a child, who may have another child and they have another. That is an impact even if after several generations you are a forgotten piece of family history. For example, my knowledge of my own family goes back only as far as my great grandparents.

There rare more complex ways (more weighty) in which we can leave a legacy, be it money, famous acts, a book we have written, a bridge or building we have built or some other tangible product. However these too are merely temporary - the cash will run out in the end, the history of our act may be forgotten, the book may go out of publication and any edifice we construct will eventually fall into ruin and disappear.

Perhaps out of those the only one, which may endure, is a book published by Penguin Classics. Once published by them your books are guaranteed to never go out of print.

There are only two legacies I see that do endure forever:

1) Belief. The religious or other beliefs, such as those of the Old and New Testaments and therein by the impact of how Jesus lived his life, cannot I imagine ever disappear. The same may be said of Mohammad the prophet of Islam. These are notions that are handed down from generation to generation and are never likely to evaporate, all the more so because there is a notion of evangelism in them, to add more to the believers.

2) But above all there is one legacy we all leave after we are gone and that is simply by having existed at all and how we have behaved during our short lifespans, confined between birth and death.

One of the simplest but most meaningful ways in which that has been expressed is in the film 'It's a Wonderful Life' the Frank Capra film starring James Stewart.

There we pick up a man, played by James Stewart, who in depression, looks back at his life and is considering suicide. He believes he has never achieved any of his dreams or made of his life what he would have wished. He was always stuck in the confines of the town he was born and brought up in whereas he had always wishes to travel.

An angel is appointed to stop his suicide.

The angel shows him what things would have been like if he had never been born. In a nightmarish vision the angel shows him how awful and miserable his home town would have been and how empty the lives of his family and others would have been. He realizes that he has touched many people in a positive way and that his life has truly been a wonderful one.

That is the answer to your question. Even if we do not know it, our pure existence never mind how we behave in it will always be like a stone thrown in a pond, which creates ripples albeit in the case of the human, eternal.

The obverse of 'It's a Wonderful life ' is of course Charles Dickens 'Christmas Carol' There ghosts show Scrooge how awful the world would have been if he continued behaving in the crude, dismissive and unloving way he had done so to date after bitter experience.

So in summary even a smile one day to one person in much the same way as a misdeed can have an eternal impact or in your own words Legacy.

It was a joy reading this poem.

It is the stuff of philosophy and a constant notion in everyone's life.

At its simplest, what is the point of living? And if there is one will it ever have a meaning now or after we are dead?

In its succinctness (less is more) and repeated questions, I find this an attractive, alluring and well executed piece which should make every reader pause for thought.

And even if this poem disappears, the impact on anyone's life of this poem WILL always have consequences you can never foresee.

It is simply a world of cause and effect.

Well you have just had my gut reaction to your poem.

Accomplished writing.

I hope this helps.

Your friend


James

[Ice QueenJen]

James,

Thank you for your wonderful assessment on my poem. And when you mentioned the movie, it made me want to watch it again. He was one of my favorite actors, and movies like that aren't made anymore either. Or at least ones with a lesson on being human and like my poem makes you stop and think. Also I am happy that you enjoyed my writing, feel free to read anything you want too.