Circular Saws Personal Response Essay

Personal Response

How an individual deals with uncertainties of the past.

Circular Saws

February 7, 2016

The poem “Circular Saws” by Fred Cogswell uses a literal item to describe an intangible and abstract concept. Which is the concept of emotional pain and how it is dealt with. The piece begins with an individual that has been injured by a circular saw. They go on to delineate the pain and scar inflicted. Also throughout the poem the individual is avoiding this uncertainty, but during this process they themselves become what they are avoiding.

The first and second stanzas are very literal as in they are about how a circular saw has chewed up this person's fingernail. At first they did not want to accept it thinking “This is a bad dream and I shall wake up.” This is common with most people including myself as we do not want to face past uncertainties and can be in denial as they may be too painful. Continuing in the poem, the person slowly starts to feel the pain and they were left with a scar to remind them to not go near circular saws. Here the circular saw takes a more figurative meaning, and could symbolize a past lover. Basically this is inferring to a relationship in which this person has been hurt and left with an emotional scar, reminding them to not get involved with someone and to not go near love.

To deal with this past relationship the writer puts up a wall against circular saws or all relationships. But they soon discovered avoiding these circular saws would not be so easy as they had ways of disguising