Some of both…

by Bisto

Posted to Poetry on 2002-07-16 09:41:00

Parent message is 234281
Mathias-

Some good moments, but also some real stumbling blocks with clarity, precision of language, realization of lines, etc. A little too much navel-gazing in that booze-drenched genre of pseudophilosophy.

See what judicious use of captalization and punctuation might do for this poem. You can always take it out in the final draft…but I really think it will help you determine where to reign a line in and where to let it loose.

Some thoughts:

i was a six year old in a bar
that expressionless stumber of my idols
was sentenceless but indicative
and i went to the bottle, rebelliously,
[i thought, and then] told my mother

What is “stumber?” Why is the stumber expressionless…why is it sentenceless? What is it indicative of?

This poem has an almost nonsensical quality in places–but it lacks real attention to space or sound (that I might see in experimental surrealist or language poetry). Therefore, I’m not really sure what you’re attempting.

Here’s one of the places where inconsistent puncutation hurts you. Do I read it as “I thought, and then told my mother. The jute box of sentimentality…” or as “I thought and then told my mother the jute box of sentimentality.”

the jute box of sentimentality stuck
to the walls with a youthful nostalgia
and i grasped it as much as you can
grasp A dimension

That would be a box of plant material used for making cloth?? Did you mean jukebox? Notice pile-up of abstractions…sentimentality, youthful nostalgia in addition to all those in the first strophe. Inexperienced readers may be drawn to a poem with a lot of loose ideas like “passionate love” or (in this case) “youthful nostalgia” because they recognize that the idea of an abstract concept like love or rebellion or sentiment…seems “poetic” in and of itself. A more experienced reader will probably not fall for the same bag of tricks–as they have a tendency to interact WITH the poem, to require something OF the poem…and there’s so little this poem can give, at this point, except for some vagueness.

and what do you do with a drunken sailor?
what do you do with a drunken sailor?
i analyzed the song as i swayed in unison
with these Irish buddies (i was a quarter irish)
laughed, sang, sipped but never swallowed

You swayed in unison with your Irish drinking buddies singing the drunken sailor song and sipping alcohol when you were six years old? Poet may have changed directions but the poem did not…thus so confusing. Sipped but never swallowed leaves something to be desired. Likewise the “analysis” of the song, because you don’t.

Be careful with the whole ethnicity card. It tends to be overplayed in that specifically American yearning to be “part” of a culture or diaspora. Whether you are 1/2 Irish or 3/16 Indonesian is not really important.

i was the sober navigator of our Titanic

You could start the poem here. Works for me. Interesting image, some good descriptions, etc.

and i watched the clock swinging around
like the doors brig(h)tly lit with exit
[my eyes moved to the flashing menu]
two dollars for a drink, was it worth it[.]
to be a martyr for the alcoholic watch?
[and] the clock disappeared with a tidal
wave of black[, black] coffee
and with it the cocoa beans [myth] of power
apparently i wasn(‘)t hung over, i could swim
[even in scolding hot addiction to tears.]

Stage settings like “I looked at the menu and noticed” are usually unnecessary in a poem. We already know it’s from the narrator’s perspective. Just tell us what you see. Last line of this section is so hyperdramatic…you might see if you can’t finesse something a little subtler. Did you mean “scalding?”

Another section where caps/punctuation would make this so much more pleasant to read. Otherwise, a fairly good section. Worth reading. Worth working. Wish the whole poem was like this.

[and] the crater of my hometown widened to a

Weak line break.

[place where expressionlessness was the molding]
sand on a liquored bottom, i saw Ireland
and trampled it with my freckled [feat and] feet
like an Italian grape(,) squashing ceremony
but without fermenting a celebration
it was a found beauty
in the keg and barrel of tradition.

Huzzah. More good writing, but so messy. Some interesting stuff in here. Like the melting pot-esque “I saw Ireland and trampled it with my freckled feet like an Italian grape, squashing ceremony but without fermenting a celebration. It was a found beauty in the keg and barrel of tradition.”

What’s the “it” in the second to last line? Watch your antecedents.

[hoping for a thirst nullifying smoothness
the six year old to imitate individuality]

Yuck. Don’t get the six/sixteen back and forth. More confusion than it’s worth.

i am sixteen at a lonely table
trying to get this [infantile] world
to eat the bitter, [untoxicating] pod
and seperate[d] from its unconscious stem
as it blindly sails through Atlantic space
turning even salt water to beer
and exploring only as far
as the brim of its raised glass.

This ending is interesting. You read much Surrealism? More confusion though…what is the ‘pod’ that the world should eat?

How does this interact with either the 6-year old narrator or the 16-year old narrator? The poem is busy–but seems to lack a center, a sense of what makes it an entity.

I propose you have a certain energy and scope in your writing that ought to be harnessed to YOUR goals. Few enough people have an inherent spark of purpose, of largeness in their writing…I think it’s something worth further investigation.

Was interested in the speed and language-play/sense of sound you began with. Reminded me a bit of the Gabriel Gudding poem I read this morning:

For the train-wrecked, the puck-struck,
the viciously punched,
the pole-vaulter whose pole
snapped in ascent.
For his asphalt-face,
his capped-off scream, God bless
his dad in the stands.
For the living dog in the median
car-struck and shuddering
on crumpled haunches, eyes
large as plates, seeing nothing, but looking,
looking. For the blessed pigeon
who threw himself from the cliff
after plucking out his feathers
just to taste a failing death. For
the poisoned, scalded, and gassed, the bayoneted,
the bit and blind-sided,
asthmatic veteran
who just before his first date in years and years
swallowed his own glass eye. For these and all
and all the drunk,

Imagine a handful of quarters chucked up at sunset,
lofted into the ginkgos–
and there, at apogee,
while the whole ringing wad
pauses, pink-lit,
about to seed the penny-colored earth
with an hour’s wages–
As shining, ringing, brief, and cheap
as a prayer should be–

Imagine it all falling

into some dark machine
brimming with nurses,
nutrices ex machina–

and they blustering out
with juices and gauze, peaches and brushes,
to patch such dents and wounds.