|
|
Post by gmspencer on Jun 25, 2009 18:04:09 GMT -5
My interiority is a cloth
Bag of newborn puppies and you are
The one single, whimper that gets all my
Attention. Who can say truthfully,
"This person silences all appetites
Clamoring inside me?" Who in your life
Will close those doors? You are the oil poured on
The troubled waters of my restless heart.
You create and you destroy at will.
With the back of your hand, you bless and curse.
You rainwater glazed Red Wheel Barrow!
I am your omnipresent White Chicken.
|
|
|
|
Post by job on Jun 26, 2009 11:34:59 GMT -5
Mr. Spencer,
A few thoughts (and then I will post a recent draft of my own to give you an equal opportunity to critique):
1) Perhaps the images ought to be more organically developed. In other words, is there a suggested connection between the figures you use.
2) The "you" is wonderfully ambiguous - and part of what makes the poem work. Can you add more to our sense, though, of the situation or context of the poem? Don't show us everything, but maybe a bra-strap or a bit of slip below the hemline will do the trick...
3) If you're going to access WC Williams, I wonder if tricking out the line lengths (which are vaguely iambic pentameter, yes?) and breaking them up into Williams-like stanzas - short and unenjambed - might bring the wonderul image at the end into better focus. I think that despite its limited value as an allusion (will it reach anyone not familiar with Williams' famous poem?) it works anyway just on the level of an image, so no matter.
4) Or you could go in a completely different direction by reworking the poem into a hyper-formal work - say a sonnet - "taming" as it were the verse libre of Williams. In which case, you might as well push yourself and develop a sonnet cycle, say three sonnets, each ending with an allusion to a Williams poem. To strike a theme, you could explore the relationship between liberty and law - as invoked by the capturing of verse libre in your sonnet.
Hope this helps!
JOB
|
|
