Nick Finken

Scratch and Dent Dreams by Eric Darby

SLAM Poetry Analysis

The poem really focuses on visual, tactile, and kinesic sensory images.

Visual: “Scratch and dent dreams”, “glossy colored packaging”, “purple awning

flappin’”, “crew cut and pigtails”. Give a sense of imperfection to the dreams, they used to be

shiny and new but now are battered and beaten (but not beyond hope). The kids' haircuts show

their youth and innocence.

Tactile: “Dig down through those alabaster stoplights and old 45’s” gives the feeling of

rummaging through relics of the past to find a treasure. “Saws that put back together, drills that

make whole” beyond being clever word-play, it creates an image of physically putting something

ethereal back together.

Kinesic: “Dig down through those alabaster stoplights and old 45’s”, “go across the

street to Momma Genuine’s”, “you take a look around”, “go back to the center of that freeway”.

The kinesic language present has the audience (or the poem’s subject) moving around in the

space of the poem. Crossing the street, rummaging, going back to the ice cream stand; it all gives

a sense of reality and groundedness to the setting of the poem.

Eric Darby doesn’t utilize oxymoron, synecdoche, understatement, or allusion in the

poem as far as I could tell. He does heavily utilize metaphor and personification and, I believe,

metonymy.

Personification: “Momma Genuine”. I think this character refers to a personified aspect

of the hard work and self-care required to make a seemingly broken dream fulfilled.
 Metaphor: “Scratch and dent dreams”, “whole cases of imperfect ambitions”, “glossy

colored packaging” “sprouting extra thumbs”. The dreams aren’t literally packaged like vinyl,

but presenting them as such helps give the audience an idea of the “one person’s trash is another

person’s treasure” idea omnipresent throughout the poem.

Metonymy: “only handing out glory to newspaper headlines and story book endings” the

headlines and endings aren’t literally receiving glory, rather the people who the headlines are

about and achieved that “story book” ending seem to get all the glory, but life is about more than

that; it is about more than seeming successful to others.

Darby uses very little rhyme and no onomatopoeia in Scratch and Dent Dreams, however

he heavily employs alliteration, with assonance scattered throughout as well.

Alliteration: “Scratch and Dent Dreams”, “stationary stars still flying at the speed of

light”, “second hand hope”

Assonance: “Scratch and Dent Dreams”, “none of its got glossy colored packaging”

I can use these sound values and rhythmic patterns to vary my speech during my presentation in

order to keep it interesting. Using alliterative moments to dig into each word a little bit harder,

and assonant moments to allow the poem to flow smoothly, word to word.