Elements of Craft

Written in terza rima, Oliver bends the poem's metre to suit the o&-kilter appearance of the musician, and this is highlighted with the assonance of words like "reeked," "beaver," and "sweep." ,ematically, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway is chock full of domestic parables built on everyday events. Peter Norman begins Water Damage by travelling backwards, talking the reader out of the highway collision he describes in the +rst stanza of "Up Near Wawa." ,e poem is an allegory for memory-the way trauma can embed and confuse, imparting only "winking glimpses of the broken line" on the road.