:: Poetry ::

:: Friday, August 06, 2004 ::

Alison, I like the rewrite / revision / whatever. It does somehow seem clearer, and I get more of a sense of Shaggy than I did the first time. The speaker's voice also seems to be more solid, and I like the almost weary tone that pervades the whole poem. I still love that final metaphor, too. Great.

I'm still working on something, but I got derailed this last week helping Tiffany get a couple of things together for our fall faculty conference. Fun.

Soon and soon and soon....

:: Rob 8/06/2004 11:33:00 AM [+] ::
...

OK. Here's one. more rewrite than revision. If I'm too far off this time, off to the burn pile we go.

Alison

Shaggy’s Soul Food Open Soon,
Said the Sign outside of Tallulah

I used to believe the message hand-lettered
on one side of a vacant building.
Now I put my money on the wrecking ball.
Since the four-lane opened a half mile
off the strip, only Bubba Suds Laundry
and Free Junque—an antique shop—remain.
No music but the blues for Shaggy.
With no prep work and no mouths to feed,
Shaggy could be anywhere. He could be
the reckless pilot of this duster that dives
with a roar before rising to shrink its shadow.
He could be cuffed to the chain gang
that picks the highway for its crop of trash,
or living at the motel between jobs.
You know the type. No money for food,
but able to scrounge change for a Lotto ticket,
figuring one day he’ll collect a windfall
of unlikely numbers. For now, it’s hard luck
in the land of the lone gas station
that sells shotgun shells and chicken wings.
Land of the blind man with a harmonica
for a mouth. He breathes the blues, I’m telling you.
Breathes the blues like he’s witness to what
pains us most. If he sent a postcard, the letters
would start out square and get smaller, a diagram
of trumpet sound, the volume down.
:: Alison Pelegrin 8/03/2004 12:26:00 PM [+] ::
...

Rob--

Uncross your fingers and write. I can't wait to read your new stuff.  I'll have one for this weekend, maybe two.  And I'm trying to finish of the definitive version of my chapbook soon. It's kind of an albatross.

A

:: Alison Pelegrin 7/28/2004 07:32:00 PM [+] ::
...

Alison,
I'm still here, just forgetful of looking at the Blog more often.  I like the revisions to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" poem.  I really love those second and third stanzas--just enough narrative to draw you along but with just the right amount of metaphorical heft.  Nice.

I'm working on a couple of new pieces I hope to get up here by the end of the week.  Fingers firmly crossed.

Later,
Rob

:: Rob 7/28/2004 02:00:00 PM [+] ::
...

Umm--Hello out there . . . Have I scared everyone off?  Please someone put up a poem. Otherwise, I just feel like I'm talking to myself.

Alison

:: Alison Pelegrin 7/27/2004 07:43:00 PM [+] ::
...

Hey Rob--

I revised this poem with your comments.

Alison

Choose Your Own Adventure

You know the book—the one you read in secret,
last on the rack at the paperback exchange.
The rattlesnake uncoiling as you thumb
the corner pages warns you’re down the wrong path—
you’ve misread the horoscope, commandeered
the wrong scenario— you thought the stars
were saying “teach,” but they meant “learn
to play the saxophone,” or “hunt for trash
with petty criminals.” Your choice now is to skip
ahead or dabble in the work of it, more and more
a god of thieves as the temperature rises.

Convict or not, come lunch you could snooze
in the shade, or break for the tree-line and the refuge
you know must be written somewhere behind it—
a woodcutter’s cottage where you read old papers
and drink milk still warm from the goat.
If the bloodhounds break your wretched sleep,
no matter—open the book to another page, to a day
in your life as a wife gone fat to pad herself
against the Mister’s steel-toe alligator boots,
or work as a miner and spend your last page
trapped, the water rising like a tide of ink.

Open the book again and you are here,
in the spot you started, a hunter unable
to recognize as his own the tracks he follows.
You stand there, the world’s best dilettante,
part journeyman and part Quixote, posed
safari-style on a wildebeest crumpled by a blind shot.
Or scratch that and begin once more, in medias res,
as a cowgirl more freckled than her appaloosa pony.
We’d skim the book in every combination
to find why she pauses here, at this desolate crossroads,
facing west to a barn full of shadows.

:: Alison Pelegrin 7/10/2004 10:28:00 AM [+] ::
...

Rob--Thanks for getting back to me. I have written and unwritten and rewritten that damn poem so many times--I'm almost ready to give up. Thanks for your as usual on mark comments. I'm so glad you mentioned he ending lines and the windfall line--those are two places in the poem I was ready to cut because I was unsure. Maybe this poem needs to rest a while.

A
:: Alison Pelegrin 7/10/2004 10:25:00 AM [+] ::
...

Alison,
Again, sorry about taking so long to get back to you on this one, but blah blah blah, the usual.

Anyway, there's a lot I like about this one, but my overall reaction is that something is missing. I'm not sure exactly what it is I feel the absence of, but I think it's probably one of two things: on the one hand, it could be that I'm just not getting enough background on Shaggy himself. He's an interesting character, and while I realize that part of the point of the poem is that he's elsewhere, elusive, we also want to know something about him. On the other hand, it may be that we know too little about the speaker in the poem. Why, for instance, is he/she pinning so much significance to the opening of the cafe? I get the heavier symbolism in this failure, but I'm not quite getting the speaker's underpinning psychological need. What is it, in other words, that this sign has come to epitomize for him or her? I think that knowing this would also help the final simile have much more resonance--don't get me wrong; I love that final line, but it might have even more impact if I could more clearly link it to the heart of the poem.

As for small stuff: "Sign" for "Sigh" in the title; in line 2, I'd get rid of "one of the ones" and bring up "living at the motel between jobs" since the line "you know the type" carries the connotation of typology; I'd also bring up "painted" to go with "hand"--the break is a little too jarring.

Otherwise, there's cool things here. The final stanza is great, especially the "I have lost all faith" and everything that follows. I also love "a windfall of unlikely numbers." That line alone is worth writing a poem to go around it.

I hope this ranbling helps!
Rob
:: Rob 7/09/2004 01:44:00 PM [+] ::
...

Hey Sean--

Congrats on the job. I'd love to see you, in Hot Springs or elsewhere. Aren't you in Governor's school right now? I've had a busy summer with the kids as I'm sure you can imagine. Ben is in to building things; Sam eats dirt. They both go to Montessori in the mornings from 8-11 which gives me time to write. I finished a chapbook. (I Think)

Alison
:: Alison Pelegrin 7/02/2004 02:10:00 PM [+] ::
...

Hey, I'll try to pitch in soon. I'm really happy you all are doing this. I got a job. That's the exciting stuff right now. I'll be working in Hot Springs at a gifted high school there. Come visit. More about the poems soon. Thanks for keeping it up.
:: Sean 7/01/2004 09:54:00 PM [+] ::
...

Hey guys--I could use some help if any of you have time to look at this.
Alison

Shaggy's Soul Food Open Soon,
Said the Sigh outside of Tallulah

Shaggy could be anywhere--
maybe one of the ones
living at the motel between jobs.
You know the type--no money
for food, but able to scrounge
change for a lotto ticket,
figuring one day he'll collect
a windfall of unlikely numbers.

As for his message hand-
painted on one side of a vacant
building, I have lost all faith.
The letters start out square
and get smaller--a diagram
of trumpet sound, the volume down.
:: Alison Pelegrin 6/28/2004 10:43:00 AM [+] ::
...

Rob--

It's so nice to be talking poetry again.

Now, on to some of your questions. I did think Bland Strawberries was the name of the town, but I also thought I was wrong to do so. So, I don't know if I would change the name of the town--I know I've sent mail to someplace called State University. One thing that popped into my head as a possible solution--Bland Strawberries, Indiana, Population 363. Or something like that. But you may not want to go there. My suggestion for the chronological is a thematic one, although now that you point it out to me I see why you did it the way you did. I just have this urge for tweaking things like that, so that could just be my neurosis creeping over into your poem.

I'm glad you recognize what Choose Your own adventure is--I was afraid nobody would. I'll try on the stanza breaks for a few days and see how I feel about them. I've been reading Fairchild lately. and I think I have slipped into his long stanza poem thing that he does. I'm glad you think the close works--it's not the original and I felt like I was reaching too far when I wrote it. I think the bigger problem is with the trope you point out--about making choices--I talk about choices in the poem, but really there is only one considered at length. I'll have to work on it. You're right about tube socks and roustabout ways and the circular forest. I was stretching.

As for metalworkers--I'll look at the places you said. All of these are good suggestion. The few lines about the circle house I was going to cut. I did intend Mr. Berretta to be engraved on the gun, not the manufacturer's stamp. Perhaps I should get a look at one of those things close up. Damn bout the serpent pipes. I rearranged like a third of the poem to get that in.

Ah well. Thanks so much for your feedback on these poems. I work all the time but never know if I am getting anywhere. I have the whole dining room table covered with drafts of a few different things, and then there's the chapbook fiasco, although I'm letting the book rest for a few weeks. By the way--you were asking about the title, weren't you? "Squeezers" is the name for playing cars with the little numbers in the corners--when cards started being made this way it allowed players to squeeze their hands together. The specific image I am referring to is the picture on the back of Bulldog Squeezers. It's these two dogs chained to their homes lunging at eachother, beneath a wicked looking moon. It's a woodcut image, and at the bottom of the card is the phrase "There is a Tie that Binds us to our homes" which is where the first poem/ sort of the title poem gets its title. I didn;t want to put all of that in a note at the beginning, and also, in the chapbook I am not talking only about card players, but also people who are sort of on the last dollar, hanging on, etc. Does any if this make sense?

A
:: Alison Pelegrin 6/23/2004 07:43:00 PM [+] ::
...

Thanks, Alison, for the feedback. You touched on some good points, and I think I'll need to go back and re-think some of the poem. Some questions, though: first, I did intend "Bland Strawberries" to be the town's name, but is that clear enough? If not, should I change it to something more clearly a town name? Supposedly, that's the real name of the place, and I really liked it; but if it's not working, it's not working. Second, when you suggest that I change the chronology so that we see the woman first, is this a suggestion for better clarity, or is it something you feel would work better thematically? I completely see what you mean about how the poem is really centered on her rather than the pilot (which is what I was going for), but I was also trying to make some sort of scenic movement from (1) pilot, to (2) woman, to (3) nature and the resolution. Again, however, if it ain't working, it ain't working.

OK, onward. "Choose Your Own Adventure"--I remember loving these crappy books when I was a kid, and I even got to the point that I would cheat. I would make a choice, turn to the page indicated, but only tip up the corner of the paper to see if there was a "The End" printed at the bottom of the page. Anyway, I think it's a pretty cool idea for a poem, and I really like how you almost immediately make something more out of it than a solipsistic reminiscence. The overall movement and rhetoric of the poem seem right, and that resolution is fantastic (everything from "You'' be the world's best dilettante" onward)--I love the "en media res" part, and the final image is beautiful and haunting too.

As for criticisms, they're few and mainly nit-picky stuff. First off, I'd break this poem into stanzas in order to better emphasize the rhetorical and scenic shifts. For instance, I'd insert breaks after "convicts on the highway, "straight into your mouth," and "circular forest." The main reason I say this is the momentary confusion I get after the first 8 lines. In those lines, you set up the controlling trope, and you give us a few potential "choices": teach, bagpipes, and convict on highway. However, I'm not fully prepared for the shift where we stay in the convict's perspective for the next 10 lines or so. A stanza break there would help me as a reader understand that there's a fairly cohesive chunk of narrative coming up, and I don't think I'd be as unprepared for staying with the convict. Does that make sense?

Next, some small stuff: the line break after "wet your jumpsuit" may have some unintended scatalogical humor. I imagine you meant wet with perspiration, but there's that momentary hangup where I think he's pissing himself. Also, I'm not sure I understand the lines "in the tubesocks .../ ...roustabout ways." There's something I'm missing here, but it could just be me being stupid. Finally, I like the line about the hunter uable to recognize his own footprints, but it may be pushing too far to include the "circular forest bit." Somehow the image seems stronger without that tacked on. And the conclusion, as I said before, is lovely and resonant.

Onward: "The Metalworker's Epitaph"--this will be brief because this doesn't need much tinkering. I love the three stories, and I love the fact that they're welded together through Gaynel's memory the way the steel is welded together in the final few lines of the poem--really nice. Again, like the previous one, I think the poem might work better in stanzas, broken at the junctures of the narratives. I know that sounds like it works against what I just said above, but I think that in this case it's okay to sacrifice some structural symbolism for clarity. Otherwise, it's all small potatoes--
--is there a name for that particular MS River bridge? For instance, there's one in Memphis called the Hernando Desoto Bridge. It might localize it a little.
--the electrical shock; was he working on power lines, get shocked, and then fall? It seems that's the case, but it might be clearer.
--I'm not sure what a "circle" house is
--I'm also not sure what you mean when you say "author of the meanest gates"
--is the pistol really engraved with "Mr. Berretta"? or is it a kind of joke meaning just the manufacturer's imprint?
--not sure if "serpent pipes" is fully working

But there are great lines all through this, really beautiful and visceral descriptions. I love it.


:: Rob 6/23/2004 12:27:00 PM [+] ::
...

The Metalworkers’ Epitaph

This is for Gaynel Jackal’s first husband,
the one she loved, who dropped like an anchor
from a peak of the Mississippi River Bridge,
electrical shock’s marionette jangling
the long way down until he hit the water,
the commerce below him never pausing, not
the dredger spewing a fan of silt,
or the tugboats, or the patchwork of barges.
And for Mr. Jackson, very black black
man with a fluid, pink, post-explosion face.
Once he drove a Cadillac with spoke wheels
to the snowball stand and offered to pay
for everybody in line. From behind
he was a black man in a baseball cap,
but if he moved—his hands or his face—all
was pink, pink as a newborn mouse, except
his absent eyelids, and his lips—remade—
forced open in a constant, gold-tooth snarl.
Mr. Jackson built a red brick circle house
on a double lot in Timberlane Estates,
the sole black man allowed behind
those gates, iron wrought with curlicues
and fleur-de-lis. And most of all Chester,
author of the meanest gates, blasphemer
of the nuns behind their convent fences
until he busted both knees in a crash. Forget
the convent and the crippled legs. The picture
to keep is the one of Chester kneeling
in a rain of sparks before his father’s safe,
the man dead a week before anyone noticed.
No key, no combination, no other way
to get at the stash of worthless things inside,
like that pistol engraved Mr. Berretta.
Now Chester sleeps in a chair with that gun,
a bulge beneath the quilt warming his legs
that twist like serpent pipes, comprehending
the figure—friend or foe—at his front door.
Chester, commando of the switchblade,
who fastened bridges with the suicide kings
and shipped offshore from Avondale to lower
himself into holes as tight as overcoats.
The novices handed him tools. They learned
by mimicry—the focused burn, the blue
heart of fire, the mirage within it
cascading, more water than the steel it marries.



:: Alison Pelegrin 6/22/2004 10:01:00 AM [+] ::
...

F-16 CRASHES OUTSIDE BLAND
STRAWBERRIES, INDIANA

-- May 17, 2004

His chute still furled but trailing as he drops,
He is an exclamation point plunging
Down the sky’s blue page, his smoke-wreathed jet
A pencil smudge arcing off the margin
To crash across the Wabash. Letters unsent,
A woman leans against her mailbox, numb
With disbelief, and watches his silhouette
Be swallowed up by fields of early corn.

And even though he falls no further off
Than fifty yards or so, she hears no sounds
Except her own hot pulse within her ears
And the ceaseless wash of summer breeze—
That machinery of May that breathes and hums
As if to say that nothing new could happen.


Rob--

This is a great idea for a poem. As usual, I am jealous. I only have a few nits and questions, so 'll start with those. Here's a dumb one, but I have to ask--is "Bland Strawberries" the name of a town? In the title it seems like it is. If not, I would but the name of the town in the title of the poem, because I think it has something to do with the emotion the poem conveys, esp. in sestet. Even thouh I know you have it there for metrics, I'd cut the "and" in line nine. Ditto for "own" in line eleven. It feels like padding to me. I ove the close--how the poem becomes more about the woman than the man falling out of the sky. (Landscape with Fall of Icarus?!)

In the first two lines, the image speaks to me perfectly, but the grammar of the lines has me wanting to misread them, or at least makes it difficult. I don't know how to tell you to fix it, but do you see what I mean? And you will hate me for this too, but I feel like the woman should be first in the poem, not the man, although I know this rearranges everyting in a bad way. But do you see why I am saying that? "Be" in line eight doesn't belong.

"The Machinery of May" is one of the best lines I've seen ever. I just love it, and as for metaphor, it fits the poem perfectly. I also love the understatment of the last line. "The sky's blue page" is also amazing.

This is such a good poem--you handle it perfectly--I would have been tempted to go overboard with the crash and the fall and everything else. I never would have thought to make this a sonnet.

Alison
:: Alison Pelegrin 6/22/2004 09:48:00 AM [+] ::
...

Choose Your Own Adventure

You know the book—the one you read in secret,
last on the rack at the paperback exchange.
The rattlesnake uncoiling as you thumb
the sour pages insists you’ve taken the wrong path,
misread the horoscope, hijacked the wrong scenario—
all this time you thought the stars were saying “teach”
what they really meant was “learn the bagpipe”
or “stab trash with fellow convicts on the highway.”
Would you skip ahead or wet your jumpsuit
with the work of it, becoming more and more
a god of thieves as the temperature rises?
Come lunch, you could snooze in the shade
or break for the treeline and the refuge
you know must be written somewhere behind it—
a woodcutter’s cottage where you read old newspapers
and pump goat milk straight into your mouth.
If the bloodhounds break your wretched sleep,
no matter—open the book to another page, to a place
in the tube socks of the one you “let get by,”
his wife gone old with the gripes of the twins
mirroring their father’s roustabout ways,
or be a coal miner and spend a few seconds trapped
underground, the water rising like a tide of ink.
Read the book enough and you’re right back here,
in the very spot you started, like a hunter unable
to recognize as his own the footprints he tracks
through the confusion of a circular forest.
Keep up with these one night stands of life
and you’ll have a birthday for every creature
of the zodiac. You’ll be the world’s best dilettante—
part journeyman, and part Quixote. What if
your life began again today, in medias res,
and we, your audience, must read the full book
to find why you pause here, at this desolate crossroads,
facing west to a barn full of shadows.

:: Alison Pelegrin 6/22/2004 09:45:00 AM [+] ::
...

F-16 CRASHES OUTSIDE BLAND
STRAWBERRIES, INDIANA

-- May 17, 2004

His chute still furled but trailing as he drops,
He is an exclamation point plunging
Down the sky’s blue page, his smoke-wreathed jet
A pencil smudge arcing off the margin
To crash across the Wabash. Letters unsent,
A woman leans against her mailbox, numb
With disbelief, and watches his silhouette
Be swallowed up by fields of early corn.

And even though he falls no further off
Than fifty yards or so, she hears no sounds
Except her own hot pulse within her ears
And the ceaseless wash of summer breeze—
That machinery of May that breathes and hums
As if to say that nothing new could happen.

:: Rob 6/21/2004 04:15:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Alison Pelegrin 4/20/2004 12:37:00 PM [+] ::
...

Paul--

As per your instructions . . .

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Jackalope

1
At a tag sale, rising from a hammock sea
with a dartboard star behind it,
the jackalope sticks its arms out: Mama.

2
Jackalopes in the wild, you never spot them.
They’re still, like anthills,
and move only when the tumbleweed shivers.

3
This one’s taller than all my books,
so I stand it on the curio shelf
next to the Blue Bird of Happiness.
Almost. It almost looks right.

4
Any taxidermist can tell you
how to make a dead thing
look alive. It’s all about
choosing the right horns for the job.

5
The strangest thing.—
Rather than lucky sevens at the slot machine
I see jackalope, jackalope, jackalope.

6
Windchimes bellow in the side yard.
The motion lights click on, but spot nothing.

7
There’s the tale of the wolverine’s disguise—
antlers fashioned from branches.
It crept to the watering hole
without spooking a single antelope.

8
In another story, the carnivore’s horns
are made of wax, and they melt
when it huddles too close to the fire.

9
Jackalope is hungry.
My sons offer it grilled cheese and cat food.

10
The startled-looking shoulder mount,
the coonskin cap and tail-feather jewelry . . . .
Something in the hardware store
reminds me of home.

11
Postcard from Wyoming:
St. Francis of Assisi bushwhacking through the forest
on the back of a godzilla jackalope.

12
Jackalope wears dust like an outlaw’s vest.
Spiders frame bizarre webs on his antlers.
Still, he needs something—
either fangs or a boutonniere.

13
Those pine trees you see
buffing the moon with paintbrush shadows—
look again.



:: Alison Pelegrin 4/20/2004 12:32:00 PM [+] ::
...

Paul--

The poem is great--I've been carrying around a folded up copy of it in my purse for weeks now. And, as per your instructions, I've started on the Jackalope poem. Are you going to Fayetteville this weekend?

Alison
:: Alison Pelegrin 3/10/2004 07:57:00 AM [+] ::
...

Paul--

You are the best--your comments are a big help. But more than that I'm excited that you like the idea of thirteen ways of looking at a jackalope. The idea seemed so dumb in my head that I was embarassed to spend time working on it--this was in November or so. But now the thread is renewed and I'm hot on the topic. I looked up the Maddox poem and found it online--it is very very fine. Before you mentioned it I had no idea that anyone wrote a poem like that before. You know, on the Everette Maddox website there is a long essay by your teacher Rodney Jones. You should read it. I can't remember the name of the site, but if you type in Thirteen ways a Possum looks at me it should come up. Apparently, Maddox kep Possum in his house.

Alison
:: Alison Pelegrin 3/01/2004 08:52:00 AM [+] ::
...

Rob--

Thanks for helping me with the poem. After your comments on it the first time, it was so easy for me to see that I needed to cut it in a major way--I don't know why I can never figure that out on my own. Once it hit me I was able to revise a full draft of the poem in a day--for me that's really fast. I'm not quite satisfied, but I feel like I'm almost there. In a way, I don't want to finish this poem, because I've made all these notes on a new poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Jackalope," which I know is stupid, but I just can't resist.

Alison
:: Alison Pelegrin 2/10/2004 09:31:00 AM [+] ::
...

Hey Alison,
Sorry I couldn't get to the poem this weekend--the usual. Anyway, I like the new version of this poem. It seems tighter and stronger than the version I saw last time. I especially like "fevers on my soul," "six-in-the-morning-voice," and "tracks blurring." Really good lines, and they sound exactly like I would imagine this guy talks--lyrical but realistic. My only problems come in the first few lines. It's good, but the part between "itch" and "music she makes" throws me off somehow. Maybe it's the "and muzzle" when I keep wanting to read it as "to muzzle." Not sure. Nitpicky, I know, but a comma after "she makes" might also clear things up a bit for me. Otherwise, I like it a lot.

Rob

:: Rob 2/09/2004 01:58:00 PM [+] ::
...

Sean--

Thanks for the welcome. Things here are great--Mardi Gras starts next week, and that's always fun. You don't have to air out the room or hide the mags just because I'm here.

So here's a poem. Alison


Jackalope, Farewell

When Jess dresses skimpy for bed,
I hear wolves calling. They make me itch
and muzzle the music she makes
begging me to sell the glitter boat
and put the money on a minivan.
By the time she starts dropping hints
about her mama’s health gone bad,
I’m sniffing for blood on the air
and ready to chew off a foot.
I’m supposed to say it’s fine,
But instead it fevers on my soul—
the thought of her mother
stirring the pot with salt cooking
and her six-in-the-morning voice. No doubt
I ought to volunteer my den
as an extra room for an infant
or an invalid. I should tear the antlers down
and dump the trophy fish at sea.
As for the jackalope, I don’t know how
to make him disappear. Stuffed in a killer pose,
horns branched wide as a wishbone,
he reigns from the cedar mantle.
Snowshoes pace behind him
waiting for ice. I dream of following,
of my tracks blurring as they fill with snow
that when you breathe it tastes like fire.
But if my beer can were a crystal ball
I’d only see myself in it, going nowhere,
a mad dog chained just tight enough
to keep the mailman safe

:: Alison Pelegrin 2/06/2004 10:02:00 AM [+] ::
...

Dang, now we have to pick up all the Bud cans and open a window. And put away those magazines. And yes, did Rob tell you? You have to post all the poems. We just talk about them. Looking forward to it. --Really excited to have you here. Hope all are well?
:: Sean 2/06/2004 04:56:00 AM [+] ::
...

Hey guys--

Rob just sent me an invitation to this spot. I'm happy to blog with you guys as long as you don't mind someone who is new at this. Rob said I have to post a poem?

Alison
:: Alison Pelegrin 2/05/2004 12:22:00 PM [+] ::
...

Josh is such a dick. I'm sorry I ever invited him. Ass. Anyway, hell yes, bring that southern cracker on in here. I think it's a great idea. Have you talked to her about it? Make her put a poem up. She's so cool. You all are. Hell, I am. We're so cool. But sometimes we're jerks. I know I am. I know you two are, but I'm not sure about Alison. We'll soon find out. Signed, Jerk.
:: Sean 2/05/2004 05:14:00 AM [+] ::
...

I doubt it although Alison is the delicate-natured type, easily offended and all.
:: Rob 2/04/2004 09:17:00 AM [+] ::
...

Boys,
I've got a proposition for you. Since we've lost our Josh, at least for the time being, how would you feel about asking Alison to join our little group?

Rob
:: Rob 2/02/2004 03:13:00 PM [+] ::
...

Oh, yeah. Paul, how would you feel about cutting "then" off of line whatsis the line about "the minor key / then bumped" or something. Just a thought for this day.
:: Sean 1/20/2004 04:02:00 AM [+] ::
...

Rob, I like this poem as well. Is it based on real life? I think so. You could get away with an anapestic substitution with the line: "Rock bottom. Today, he hung himself in shade". Lovely ending and lovely start, but I can't be sure about all the time movement. It's sept and he's been betting since June and it's now October or so. I don't know if there's an elegant way to show this more clearly, or if it's just me who's confused. Let's listen for Paul's comments, shall we? Sometimes I'd fuck with the rhythm a bit to break out of the iambic shuffle. Let me know what you think.
:: Sean 1/19/2004 05:11:00 AM [+] ::
...

Paul, I too like this poem. I didn't have the reaction my crazy friend Rob had, but I wanted to suggest, and this is weird, but what about "What Light May Have"? I think that I don't see a line broken line used much, but I think it could be cool, and that line stayed with me all through the weekend, through cabs and bars. "What Light May Have" ahh, it's interesting, no? Let's see, I can't get comfortable with "fit to be tied" but I'm such a conservative when it comes down to it. I'll play dumb guy here. She's watching the organ, right, and there's a stove in there, now she pauses it for a rest, right, so is she watching the organ on TV in her house; does she have it on video? And that's why the room goes dark? No, I think it's in a church, so Rob is confusing me. I don't know. I love the language, and I love the sparseness, so don't add much--again, the title could add more if you don't use my idea. My very good idea. If a church, I don't see a stove, if at home, I don't see long-angled sunlight (I see cathedral windows for that). God, booming dome is great. I think the tone is too grand for "fit to be tied" but maybe that's just me. Anyway, I don't know how off I am with all this, so dispose at will.
:: Sean 1/19/2004 05:00:00 AM [+] ::
...

OK, here's a new one. I don't think, at least, that you guys have seen it.

BROKEN

Before September burned away and nights
Grew long and cool as tombstones, the pastor lit
The chapel’s boiler, a gut of iron and fire
So choked with soot from harder years it coughed

Black smoke all through the church. The pastor, lost
Within this false night, staggered to open
High windows, let out the dark. He paid
To have the boiler fixed and cleaned, but soon

The rumor ran around the women’s choir
That Pastor’s check had bounced. Since June,
He’d played the church’s cash on dogs and hit
Rock bottom. He hung himself in shade
Beside his house, the fields so full of light
He half-believed there was no such thing as sin.

:: Rob 1/18/2004 06:51:00 PM [+] ::
...

Paul,
You're a diamond geezer from bandit country, and God love you for it. Like my comments for Sean's poem, I have little in the way of criticism. This is one of the best poems I've seen in a while, and there's little I can think of in the way of improvement. But here goes some nitpicky stuff:

--The title has to go, I think. Compared to the poem, it's flat and very dead. Even worse, it reminds me way too much of the kind of angst-y shit I'm getting from my freshmen right now.

--The organ. Where is it? Church? If so, I'm going to go ahead and make an ass of myself with a really pedantic question and comment. Specifically, how old is she supposed to be here? If she's young, I have no problem. But, if she's supposed to be older there's the problem that she didn't go to church--she gave it up about the time she went to school. I know, pedantic and anal. Maybe the title could give some indication of age; age, too, might help make the final line of the poem more resonant.

Otherwise, there are some fantastic lines here, and I love the resolution--it's very Dickens-ian, but you've made it all your own.
:: Rob 1/18/2004 06:48:00 PM [+] ::
...

Sean,
Sorry I've been remiss in commenting on your "Train" poem, but I've spent the last 4 weeks convincing myself that I really am back in the States and that I actually have to do some work this semester. Yargh!

Anyway, I don't really know if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with what Paul had to say about this poem, but I like it a lot. In fact, I think you pull something off that I see mangled all the time--the postmodern self-referential poem. Usually, the tone of such a poem is all self-important and pretentious, but you've struck what I think is just the right balance between seriousness and lightness. In fact, it really reminds me of Italo Calvino and his kind of tongue-in-cheek self-referential stories.

The only criticism I really have is that I would love to see you go further with this one. Give us more of the story of the chacaters in the book, and make us care about them in the same way we might care about the girl on the train. I don't mean a whole lot more, but maybe one more bite, a medium sized one.

Cool poem.
:: Rob 1/18/2004 06:33:00 PM [+] ::
...

Thanks, Paul. I cut one line and made your changes. I hope you're happy now. I am. I'm waiting for your poems. Thanks again, very much. Ignore blank line if you see it. I can't get rid of it. Write soon.

This Poem is a Passing Train

This is the poem about the boy on the passing train.
This is the poem about the girl in the pretty dress.
Here's the part where she looks up from her book
to see the most lovely boy on the opposite train--
his eyes blinking past like coins falling through air.
In the book in her lap, the characters stop
and watch the boy on the train--they fix a pot of tea
and smile to each other, remembering how they first met
on page 24, the Countess with a knife to the young man's
throat. A shiver playing through the tendons of his neck
told her he was not the intruder she thought him to be
but the man she would one day marry in a field
by the River Seine. And you've read this poem before, right?
The boy on the train doesn't see her, the train keeps moving,
the boy is lost to the young girl in the pretty dress,
but just as the boy's face blurs into a bright ribbon
the couple in the book kiss not knowing, either of them,
that the intruder has a heart of darkness and evil
and that, try though she might to avoid it, she will be destroyed
with unbearable pain over the next 249 pages which flutter
in the tunnel light in the lap of the pretty girl.

:: Sean 1/13/2004 05:04:00 AM [+] ::
...