After several read-throughs of G.C. Waldrep's "Battery Alexander," the clearest thing to me was that George Calvin Waldrep's first two initials are identical to those of Goshen College. Then I wondered if the poem would make more sense written backward -- though I did not know it at the time, this reformatting technique is similar to one used by my classmate John Miller. In a fit of 1:30 a.m. rage, I made the rather strange decision that this would be a good idea to test and see what happened.
I decided to simply invert the order of the stanzas rather than the words within them to avoid creating a hodgepodge of random sentences in out-of-order groupings. The result is linked here, as Blogger cannot properly handle the spacing required.
I feel like the reversed version tells more of a story than the original does! True, this may be a placebo effect induced by the fact that I had actual influence in the revised production, but the flow feels greatly improved when the stanzas (stanzae?) are reversed. The spacing is unorthodox and really rather annoying, but I do appreciate the stairs-landing-stairs effect of the descending lines directly above the final dividing symbol.
Waldrep used a different symbol there -- I replaced it with the radioactive sign because it was the closest thing I had.
For some reason I feel when we alter poetry that it become almost as much our own as the poets. The placebo affect is very real in this sense. However I also think that the revised version is better. IT makes the poem seem more solid somehow. I appreciate the work you put into this Waldrep poem.
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