Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith

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Poem: "The Hero's Hidden Face"

The second freebie of the day is brought to you by new prompter fatfred, who also inspired this poem.  The dialog quotes come from Sherlock Holmes.  The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a key mythology text about archetypes.


The Hero's Hidden Face


These are things that Sherlock knows:

     What happens when one puts
     human eyeballs into a microwave.

     What happens when one's flatmate
     discovers the results of said experiment.

     How to catch murderers.

     How to get himself not-quite-killed
     while catching murderers.

     How to put John back together again.
     All the king's horses.  All the king's men.


These are things that Sherlock thinks  he knows:

     "I'm not a psychopath, Anderson,
      I'm a high-functioning sociopath."

    "Don't make people into heroes, John.
     Heroes don't exist,
     and if they did,
     I wouldn't be one of them. "

     “You want me to shake hands with you in hell, Moriarty --
     I shall not disappoint you.”


These are things that Sherlock does not know:

     That John loves him
     more than air or freedom.

     That people all over London pray for him,
     not by name, but for all those
     who rush into danger for the saving of the day.

     That mythology is as true as criminology,
     just in different ways.

     That the Hero has a thousand faces,
     and one of them is Trickster
     laughing behind a tragic mask.

Tags: cyberfunded creativity, fishbowl, poem, poetry, reading, writing
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  • 18 comments
I love this, and I love love love the last line.
Trickster is one of my favorite divine aspects. He's annoying, tramples over social norms, and is always underfoot when least wanted -- but not even the gods can help you if you piss him off.
Oh, absolutely... you do NOT want a Trickster annoyed with you. :)
Oh, my. I really, really like this one.

Beautiful!
Thank you!
*bow, flourish* Happy to be of service. I really enjoyed the prompt.
Oh, you KNOW I would have to love this one, especially with mention of Tricksters! Oddly, though, I had never really contemplated Sherlock Holmes in terms of mythological archetypes, so this is a refreshing take for me. :)
I've always used archetypes, especially the many aspects of Hero, to analyze different portrayals of Sherlock. He can be the Intellectual Hero, the Dysfunctional Hero, the Trickster Hero ... so many things. And good old Arthur loaded all of them into the original canon, so we can legitimately fire off whichever is our personal favorite.
For me, it's just a matter that I hadn't really looked at Sherlock with much of any analytical focus. It's odd, as I have actually examined contemporary fictional characters in this fashion, such as The Batman.

Re: Well...

ysabetwordsmith

9 years ago

Wait. Microwave?
Unless I'm sadly mistaken, she's riffing off of the most recent BBC adaptation of Sherlock with the "microwave" reference. I know that that series is the source of the "high-functioning sociopath" quote.
Ah, I'm not familiar with the current TV show. I'm still see Sherlock by gaslight.
As my_partner_doug pointed out, at least some of these come from BBC Sherlock. I'm not sure about the Moriarty quote, it was in the original prompt. I dug up the Anderson one from a quotes list here:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sherlock_(TV_series)

This show has my favorite version of batty Sherlock.

Re: Yes...

the_vulture

9 years ago

Re: Yes...

ysabetwordsmith

9 years ago

Brava! Love the structure of this, as well as the mythological interpretation.
I do enjoy parallel as a technique for lending structure to free verse. I've used variations on the known/unknown lists in other poems before.

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