Word of the Day: prosopopoeia / Random Acts of Poetry

prosopopoeia (n)

Personification; speaking in the voice of an absent or imaginary person, or an inanimate object.

"Prosopopoeia in film has several forms. There is the first person camera, which may be seen either as ethopoeia -- putting oneself in another's place -- or prosopooeia -- making the camera into a person, through whose eyes we see."
--N. Roy Clifton, The Figure in Film

Like this:

Camera

My cool eye never lies; it only leaves things out.
I will freeze and preserve whatever you show me,
untainted by brushstrokes or bias.

And my memory is infinite, though fixed in a square.

People must like me; they smile and smile,
though I sometimes record what they don't want to see:
wattles and wrinkles, wars and atrocities.

I can even retain the faces of the dead---
all glossy and flat and just out of reach.

The sad ones revere my rectangular moments.
They search the trapped shadows
for what really happened or what they want to believe.
But I only offer a world of dots,
suspect emotions caught in a flash,
and no amount of staring can bring back a day or a wife.

Still, everyone keeps me pointing and clicking,
trying to catch the Grand Canyon, perhaps,
or a baby's smile before it fades, birthday by birthday,
into an old man's grimace in a silver frame.