:: Poetry ::

:: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 ::

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 [+] ::
...