»
Archives
»
Dark Poetry #4
»
99
| Dark Poetry #4 |
|
99 |
|
JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
spending christmas with your drama - watching your drama unfold over a forgotten egg roll or the high wire act you stumble through carrying on without a balance pole maybe we caught what we lived with her blue light special at christmas anger depression and rage it struck me too at sundown the hour i fear the most when the call of the tracks or the window is almost impossible to resist but i did. i shook my fists at the fear, and spat at the raging depression. i’m back and i have the strength now to offer my hand and help lead you out of the darkness there you go, Bob, the exploding transformers and downed power lines. see, i may be a dumb blonde, but eventually i do catch on - well, sometimes. |
||
| © Copyright 2008 JenniferMaxwell - All Rights Reserved | |||
|
Bob K Member Elite
since 2007-11-03
Posts 4208 |
Well, JM, better than before. Let's look — Your tendency to use verbals, the "ing" form of verbs distances you in the first line. WHO is watching your drama unfold here, you see? Throughout that first stanza/sentence, there is no observer present to take the weight for you. You've dissolved yourself so JM [in the poem] is unaffected by the events going on around her in the poem. Dick Hugo : "All a poet's problems are psychological. The poet solves them [in the poem] with technique." The section within brackets is my addition. It's what Hugo meant. He was in analysis for years. The way you structure it grammatically, the subject of the sentence is "you." The problem here is that "you" is utterly unreflective. The "you" here doesn't see herself or the wreckage around her, hence the forgotten egg roll. So, there needs to be some sort of a self in the poem to play off against the you. You need to experiment, I think, with putting one in there. This would be potentially threatening and scary, to get back to our previous exchange. If you try it, simply notice what happens in the poem and to the way the poem changes when you do it. You needn't retain it through later versions, simply try it and see what the effect it on the way the poem works. There is an actual scene potential in the first stanza. Somebody is sitting with somebody someplace over an egg roll. The business of the high wire act and the balance pole is you telling us about your impressions about what happened in that scene. Instead, why not show us the scene or a scene in such a way as to leave us with the impression you want us to have. This time, make us draw that impression as our own conclusion. Mom tosses her cigarette in her own cup of coffee, half full, and goes on to drink half of it before noticing, a two hour old half-eaten egg roll congealing in peanut oil in front of her as she rants about the latest guy in her life or the misbehavior of one of the kids, you being stapled to the seat, not daring to move. For example. Finishing the coffee anyway, because the last of the gin is in there and she's too disoriented to go out and get more. What the heck, it's only ashes. From the present indicative (I'm out of practice, I think it's present indicative), however, you shifted to the past tense. The subliminal message you give with this is that of wanting to put this scene behind you. You begin the stanza with a qualification: Maybe. Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe I mean what I say here, maybe I don't. There are many uses for qualification in poems, but this is probably not a good place to bring one in. You want to say something that will surprise yourself and your reader. "we caught what we lived with" is emphatically such a line. It's a reward for coming back for another shot at this difficult poem, and I for one thank the Good Lord that you did so. That single line alone is worth it, very fine indeed. You have it in your head that the poem has to be about Christmas, and you keep tossing that back in. You're telling the poem what to do. How do you react when other people tell you what to do? If the poem's going to be about Christmas, the poem's not going to help you if you force it; it needs to be a celebration and a negotiation between the two of you, and you have all the time in the world to do it in. There are other Christmases coming. I'd be willing to bet you've heard other people say "Hurry up, Hurry up!" to you a fair amount. What's the result of that? If the poem wants to be about Christmas, it will let you know. Let the poem lead you. What do you think of this possibility? we caught what we lived with her blue light special anger depression and rage it struck me too at sundown the hour i fear the most Of course, there you are, talking about your fear, depression and rage. While of course the tracks or the window may be personal faves — notice, by the way, that here, where you have some sense of personal power and can imagine a way to assert it, "me" and "I" make an entrance because they feel protected. The poem ends with a wish, that of the wounded child to save the wounded mother. What would happen if that child could do that? What would be different for the child? What would she do or be that she's not doing or being now? Can you allow yourself to imagine yourself into that poem? I hate it when you call yourself a dumb blond. Everybody has massive areas of idiocy, so I can't argue with the dumb part, and blond is an accident of birth; but surely there are things your are in addition, such as talented, compassionate, occasionally foolish, committed to political change, that are at least as important as the color of your hair and the occasional mistakes you make. I hate "dumb Blond" because it's so repetitive and because it doesn't give any of the other qualities any air time. Talented writer is one of them. It's the Republicans who have trouble with equal time for unpopular truths. You have a political responsibility to yourself as well as the world, you dumb blond you. Affectionately yours, Bob Kaven |
||
|
JenniferMaxwell
since 2006-09-14
Posts 2423 |
The poem might not have worked for those out of the family loop who don't know the coded language, role playing stance and the references, but sharing a bit of it with my brother brought us closer together. The only family we really have left is each other, so, even if it wasn't much of a poem, it still was a good thing. Thanks for the pointers on how to set it up a little better, Bob, and I just might write the egg roll story. It's a winner in the annals of dysfunctional family history, better even than your momma's ashes in the gin laced coffee story. Have a good one! |
||
|
Bob K Member Elite
since 2007-11-03
Posts 4208 |
Dear J.M., No draft is ever wasted. If you don't get the poem you want from what you are working on, you're working on polishing your skills and your technique, and peeling back the mask of unknowing. As long as you keep working and trust in the process itself, the poems come. In this poem, you're burdened too much by the truth, and it becomes difficult to reach for the details the poem wants. It's easy to get stuck in the details you want, that make the poem more biography than poetry. To call yourself "a dumb blond" is a great lie for a poem, for example. You can embroider that lie with even bigger lies and let them play together sonically and linguistically, paying attention more to the sound and the wild exagerations you can come up with than the truth of carefully worked out introspection. There's a poem for you. You could go back over the poem 99 with the notion that your lies are too small and exagerate everything you've said in every line in as many different directioins as you can, paying attention to the lies that sound wildest and have the most linguistic and sonic impact. When you revise, go over your lies and shuffle them up, reorder them, and see if a different story emerges, and then try revising to complete that story. These are ways of getting outside the framework you've written yourself into and seeing the thing with new eyes. You can always go back with what you've learned from your experiments. Just some thoughts. Happy holiday, JM, all my best. I'll be out of town until next wednesday, but hope you keep going on this recent run of poems. You're just clearing your throat with these. Sincerely, Bob Kaven |
||
|
|
⇧ top of page ⇧ |
|
| All times are ET (US). All dates are in Year-Month-Day format. | ||
