walk but not quickly thru the crooked town
& look at this universal splendor:
there are tilted alleys with houses of trash,
lodging magpies & hollow bags of brass
belongings worth less than fury & sound.
this: a town dually in black & in white.
kings of unclaimed crowns crow at the ravens
that rapaciously pace on broken walks
while in the tall towers peddle the hawks,
preying devoutly & clearing their throats,
swallowing themselves from cups & glasses.
& on corners the loons & the cuckoos
parrot phrases they have heard on the street:
my family tree is losing its leaves.
you’re just an albatross, we tell the loons,
who grouse at pigeons for sake of sparrow:
two for a farthing & now five for two.
the pigeons say no & they fly away
to roost in identical parts of town,
to line & comfort the nests of others
with shreds of greenest leaves, pounds of heavy flesh.
how cardinal it is to keep cuckoos
behind cold meshwire fencing & gates,
without a nightingale: to nurse the wounds,
the lesions, the injuries they each take
with neither grain of salt nor flower seed.
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Comments
Secondly: RHYME! And good rhyme, at that! That means you're a double star.
I'm trying to get it together to critique properly and say useful things, but I'm not so clear-cut at that sort of thing when I'm half-asleep. Would you mind if I waited until the morning?
--
"The universe, she is a bitch." Norman Maclean.
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[link] difference between a pc and a mac
but thanks for the comment, nonetheless. i'm glad you enjoyed it.
--
"The universe, she is a bitch." Norman Maclean.
How specific were you wanting the metre here? I mean, the first line is perfect iambic pentameter, and the others are all pretty good but I wasn't sure if you wanted the whole thing in strict iambs or not. I do that, but I know not many other people do. (And by other people, I mean poets who are much better at it than me, like Byron.) So I won't comment on anything like that, since it's your creative call there. If you want me to, I will! And I'll try be faster about it.
That whole first stanza is pretty much perfect, I love it. I love the sly Shakespeare reference, and the hollow bags of brass. And I especially love that 'universal splendour' as a juxtaposition doesn't feel like sarcasm; it feels like you really do feel the alleys of trash are beautiful, and I love that. So much LOVE!
I liked 'kings of unclaimed crowns crow at the ravens' on one hand but on the other felt like 'crowns crow' so close
together was very dodgy sonics; it had the potential to trip someone up. Not sure about that one.
while in the tall towers peddle the hawks,
This is very odd grammar, that feels like it got shoved in to achieve you a rhyme. I don't buy it.
prepared to swallow more self-importance.
And this felt rather too telly - too much WOW LOOK I DON'T LIKE THESE GUYS. It doesn't match the beautiful subtlety of the other lines.
(-that we do not see, for they are hidden
in the color of mirrors in dark rooms-)
I really love the feel of this - actually reminds me of a phrase from Good Omens which I'm rereading right now, runs 'a voice like the color of an old raincoat' and it always makes me think ooh phlegm. Here, though, I think you have to be very careful of those two 'in's. Too many joining words in a short aside can make it feel a lot more overburdened than it actually is.
GOD I love the family tree moment. That is SO good!
because we will not branch out to help them.
Again, a little too unsubtle.
you're just an albatross, we tell the loons,
who grouse at pigeons for sake of sparrow:
two for a farthing and now five for two.
I didn't quite get the sparrow bit - probably my bad entirely, which is why I'll ask you to explain it to me!
the pigeons say no and they fly away
to roost in identical parts of town,
where they will be gulled of their allowance
by pseudo-charities to stage a coup.
Since this is the first mention of pigeons and there wasn't a direct question before, this is a bit confusing. I do love the identical parts of town though, not to mention the bad gull pun. Hee-hee! The final line, again, I thought was a little telly.
LOVE the next three lines. The Nightingale moment is very clever, but also very poignant.
I know you've got the 'all' in 'they all take' to keep the metre, but it's actually sort of mucking up the flow - makes it sound a little infantile.
And the final three lines are lovely.
I did notice though, that you lost the rhyme throughout - sometimes you'd have it quite obvious, and other times it wasn't there at all. That isn't necessarily a problem, but I'm just curious as to whether it was a conscious decision or not.
This, again, turned into not so much of a critique as a blow-by-blow thoughts. Feel free to ignore some or all of them! But I do hope it was worth the wait, because I know getting to critique this lovely poem was. That final line will be ringing in my head for ages!
so let's start answering:
about the meter . . . it was never my intention of having a concrete meter, per se, but i did want to maintain ten syllables per line. i think i managed to pull that off -- i think. i'd have to go back and check even more thoroughly than before. but yeah.
gasp! you caught the shakespearean allusion! bless you! and i also noticed that the "universal splendor" bit could be taken as sarcasm during my revisions, liked that it could be taken either way, and made sure it stayed. feels good making the right decision.
okay. i agree with you about the "dodgy sonics" and the forced rhyme, but i felt as though i needed to do it. i wanted the rhythm and beat of the work to be sort of varying, high and low, fast and slow. i tried putting it normally, but when i read over it like that, something about it didn't ring well in my head. it seemed too . . . blah, you know? it was a conscious decision to keep the flow and the ebb of it.
however, your next comment is spot-on. i hadn't noticed the "telling" until you pointed it out. it's the plight of revising one's own works. i already have ideas on how to improve them and will do so quite soon. thanks for calling me on that.
liked the "color of mirrors in dark rooms," huh? i did, too, but felt as though some may think it superfluous. strictly a sink-or-swim sort of thing. glad you're feeling buoyant today. i don't know what i can do to remedy the in bit, though, if i can at all.
also fixing the blunt tree bit.
the sparrow thing: when i was looking up alternate definitions for birds, i found sparrow. sparrow is, in this sense, offerings made by the very poor. two sparrows were sold for a farthing, and five for two farthings. i suppose it's rather archaic, but i congratulated myself on being a genius.
let me try to illuminate this bit. (i hate "defending" my work, you know? it seems as though i'm either condemning you or refusing feedback. well, that's how it feels to me, anyway.)
you're just an albatross, we tell the loons,
who grouse at pigeons for sake of sparrow:
two for a farthing and now five for two.
the pigeons say no and they fly away
to roost in identical parts of town,
where they will be gulled of their allowance
by pseudo-charities to stage a coup.
what i meant to convey here is that we (the "normal" people) are calling the loons (pick your poison here: homeless, insane, et cetera) a burden, and the burdens bug others (the pigeons, the poor) for their money. they, of course, deny, and because they did so, they now feel superior to those loons. so they go to the other side, where everything's essentially the same, and they will lose their money there to the other superior people.
at this point, we, the normal people, are sort of out of the picture now -- just watching.
well . . . that's how i meant to convey it, anyway.
on we go.
thanks again for catching the nightingale bit.
about the rhyme: again, like the meter, i never intended to have a concrete rhyming scheme. if i thought of one while writing that didn't seem too horrible, i put it in. if i couldn't, i didn't.
and thank you very, very, very, very much for your feedback, sarah. this is how i learn.
for you:
--
"The universe, she is a bitch." Norman Maclean.
It's possible to miss that allusion?
I understand what you mean about wanting it to vary, but I think you have to be very careful when you want to put in things that could easily be taken as mistakes or oversights on your part. I mean, just be aware when you look at something and think 'oh, I like that even though I recognise its flaws' that it could be a problem later on. Usually the trick is to make it very clear that it's deliberate, but I'm not sure how you could do that here.
Do let me know when you revise, ok? I'd be interested to see what you do with those telly lines.
Mm, I'm all for superfluity in poetry, if it's the right sort. This felt like the right sort to me! As for the ins - yeah, it's a tricky one. You could do something like 'they are hidden, the color of mirrors in dark rooms' but then that changes the meaning slightly and it's up to you whether you want it changed.
(Don't worry, I do it all the time. I figure if you've got actual reasons you can explain there and then, then you have every right to defend them! As long as you can defend them. If your arguments fall down, there's a problem.)
It is very archaic, so I'd just suggest to again be aware of the fact that 99% of your readers aren't going to get anything out of it. If you know that and don't give a toss, of course, it's all good.
I understood the metaphors mostly with the next part, it was just the sheer action. There's these pigeons we didn't know about, they say no to something, and then these other guys - I can pick up what the actual analogy is getting at, but the actual mechanisms of the analogy seemed a little rough to me.
Yup - as long as I know you were working in that way, then I know what to address and what not to. So you're very welcome, and thankyou not only for the poem but for answering in such a wonderful way - I utterly love having dialogues like this about poems, because it sure beats flat critique. This way, we BOTH get to learn!
Congrats on the DD!!
--
"When I became convinced that the universe is natural, that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom."
Robert G. Ingersoll
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If you spell Chuck Norris in Scrabble, you win. Forever.
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