i sent this to another list but i thought it might be of some interest
here as well :-)
gary
shank@duq.edu
Lately I have been thinking about riddles. Riddles are one of those
things that we used for millennia to build inquiry around and then
conveniently mislaid or trivialized. Riddles were once powerful and heady
things -- check out the recent translation and retelling of the Medieval
English riddle "Storm." Now we have riddles that are nothing but child's
word play. Word play was certainly important in riddles, but they were
anything but simply child's fare.
We have discarded the riddle in favor of the puzzle. Scientists and
other empirical inquirers 'puzzle' over the meaning of their data and seek
to solve the 'puzzles' of life and creation. This is all well and good,
but why can't we reclaim the riddle as well?
In honor of the riddle, I have decided to try my hand at creating a
few for our enjoyment. The following four riddles each seek to highlight
and illuminate some overlooked or covert or murky aspect of a qualitative
research skill. Since most riddles were in verse, I decided to preserve
the form -- for these riddles I used Petrarchian sonnet structure. Please
forgive the amateurish quality of the poems. The question is -- Can you
solve the riddles?
gary shank
shank@duq.edu
Riddle Number One
When I have fears that I have found a place
Where I have never chanced to be before
And where the odds are great, that nevermore
Will I again be out there, face to face;
How then should I begin to set the chase?
When wonder's great and familiarity poor
How then should my tired eyes keep up the score
When all things strange are ordinary grace?
Where is my ear, when eyes run fast ahead?
What do my fingertips alone reveal?
What is the pulse and pace of this strange land?
And by whose claim are things mundane instead,
Like some dried tangerine stripped of its peel,
An hourglass sucked dry of all its sand?
Who am I?
Riddle Number Two
Your hands rest lightly on your chin, because
You cannot always find the words you need.
Life races past our thoughts, both trapped and freed
Of solid form, like sheets of film and gauze
Whose shifting shapes cause us to halt and pause.
We find ourselves belonging to a breed
Of ordinary folk, like some strange creed
Who seek out yet another staged applause.
What do you say, that I have never said?
What brave new world can you make me believe?
Are you this calm, or are you filled with spite?
These ragged thoughts take roost, and then my head
Seeks any path of rest. You may relieve
My fright, or plunge me deeper in the night.
Who am I?
Riddle Number Three
Suppose your home looks like a subway station
Where geeks and pimps roll out their tattered wares
And teenage mothers linger on the stairs,
Framed once more in hollow consternation.
Refugees who know both love and Haitian
Size up easy marks, doled out in pairs
You feel like turning circles into squares --
Two moves away from last year's conflagration.
How could there be no peace in Paradise?
Where children and their parents all excel?
With levees standing high above the flood.
How can you rage, if everything is nice?
Down here inside the Nineteenth hole of Hell
Where school kids lie in puddles of their blood?
Who am I?
Riddle Number Four
I see the rats somewhere inside the cheese.
Cheddar, or Brie, or Swiss with all its holes?
Rats burrowing inside, like long-tailed moles
Or ghostly galleons tossed on stormy seas?
How do these metaphors lock up and seize
My brain, like glaciers marching from the Poles
Or fiery furnaces with red-hot coals
That simultaneously burn and freeze?
Things are themselves, as much as they are not
I want to put my hand upon their flank
And with a mighty yank to reel them in.
But they seek me as much as they are sought,
They bind my hands and make me walk the plank
And night is broken down without a shot.
Who am I?
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