Lost in Translation (poem) the key clue here. The four lines come from that "lost" German translation by Rilke of Valéry's "Palme". (Merrill's own English translation of "Palme" is the source of the translated quatrain above. See Merrill's "Paul Valéry: "Palme"" in "Late Settings", 1985.) The original in French: from Paul Valéry, Charmes (1922) Palme classical dizain 7th Stanza The solution to the puzzle of the poem is hidden in plain sight all along. "Nothing's lost", Merrill suggests, when it comes to translating experience or memory, at least according to the way Merrill understands our human experience. The poem's coda salutes the power of
Burn Center (poem) those feelings to characterize a narrator or protagonist, not herself. She pushes those feelings onto other character. “Burn Center” is unconventional is the fact that it’s 29 lines of poetry. Olds lacks punctuation so the poem is made up of long sentences. The lines are also uneven and have various lengths. The poem is also just one midlength stanza. Olds also displays enjambment by cutting her lines off in the middle of the sentence, making the reader proceed to the next line to get the rest of the idea or the thought. Burn Center (poem) "Burn Center" is a poem