Tim Dale

The Beautiful Lungs Tim Dale

A breath. A new thought. A sigh. It seems to me that all of the deep matters of the heart are framed by the activity of the lungs. And we give the lungs a bit of a raw deal, because we hardly ever mention them in the emotional details of living. In 1863, the novelist and playwright Gustav Freytag published a book called Die Technik des Dramas in which he outlined a framework for dramatic structure. Now applied to most storylines, and not only to dramatic plays, his structure has five distinct areas: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. This new collection of poems adapts Freytag's structure slightly, imagining the middle three elements as deep breaths of fantasy, sentiment, conjecture, pipe dreams, optimism and reality.