9/13/2019 2:14:20 PM
Jack Webster
Posts: 255
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Please allow me to put on my black galoshes, banana-yellow rain coat, hat, and open my clear vinyl umbrella, just in case I end up in the splash zone of this delicately-phrased stormy evening.
Lots of different suggestions; difficult to organize them, as some are made irrelevant by others.
Your use of sound seems very deliberate. You seem to either using syllabic verse, or iambic tetrameter with some acrobatic substitutions. There are a few lines that have 9 syllables rather than 8. Also, please note, lightning and lightening are not the same word; once you correct the spelling you will be a syllable short in that line.
You also seem to have an instinct for moraic meter, at least in terms of artistic timing in your phrasing. You might wish to study it deliberately, though it is not commonly adopted in English poetry; though a lovely tool to have at one’s disposal.
You also have an ear for quality of vowels and consonants. Much of your word choice in this work focus on tension, sometimes even at the expense of literal accuracy. For instance the first line:
My eyes touch your lips and whisper-
look
Now, literally, the eyes are not touching the lips, nor do they have the power to whisper. (Ignoring meter or syllable count) it might have been more accurate to say:
My gaze rests on your lips, and I whisper -
look...
But of course all the tension has gone out of the line. In this field of composition ‘eyes’ is a very tense word; there are no words around it to soften its intensity, other than the word ‘my’ (can you imagine the line: eyes touch your lips...? off the charts intense). the throat starts in an open position and gets tightened down like a screw as it glides through the diphthong all the way to the buzzing ‘z’, throat stretched, mouth closed. In fact you ramp up its intensity with the word ‘touch’.
We go from a very electric coiling up with the word ‘eyes’ to the (ex)plosive release with the ‘t’, and we end with the very intense ‘ch’ that mirrors the fricative quality of the ‘z’ in eyes.
There is a lot of hunger in the t, something bold, unapologetic, something compressed that can’t wait to be released in the word ‘touch’.
‘Your lips’ is the first softening of the line. The ‘i’ in lips is such a fragile sound compared the beginning of the line, it sounds almost trembling. A very short, precise sound. The word ‘mouth’ is a tote bag compared to the word lips, and doesn’t offer room for ambiguity. Lips of course is the better choice.
You repeat the ‘i’ with the word ‘whisper’ which heightens this vowel, this quality of trembling tension.
The ‘L’ in ‘look’ picks up the consonance with ‘lips’. There are no random ‘L’s in the line to water down the association between ‘look’ and ‘lips’. The vowel is deep in the throat, not a petty or casual vowel, and the ‘k’, like the ‘t’, releases the energy, though this time into the pregnant pause.
Sonically, it’s a very functional phrase that conveys the hunger and craving of the persona.
However, in terms of writing, it might be worth asking, is it saying something new, or retelling something in a fresh way, or are lines like this fundamental to hunger? Letting hunger write itself in the first draft is fine, but hunger tends to write itself in predictable ways, often one-dimensional. Hunger is a very familiar note. Is there a different way to approach it that gives the reader the sense the persona has had experience similar to their own but from an elevated perspective, one that also lifts the reader into a more meaningful awareness of their own experience: “oh, I never saw it this way before”?
So the author must decide whether to sacrifice literal accuracy for tension, or try to find a way to sacrifice neither.
The tension is fairly consistent throughout all four stanzas.
Very conflicted about stanza three. Rain and window panes just feels like a crutch, though it seems to be applied in an audaciously, and amusingly novel way. Line eleven’s lightning tickling to the core is good, and line twelve is good. I would brain storm other ways to phrase line ten.
Though, I will say ‘a sudden burst of rain hits the...’ is really well executed meter in terms of capturing the forcefulness of the release; the trochee is perfectly timed. the “chord progression” of vowels in ‘su..’ ‘bur...’ ‘rai...’ is especially excellent as the throat can physically feel the swelling and tightening before the rain hits.
But, perhaps there is something else they could hit? Some blushing lilies in the garden, dry wash (undergarments?) hanging outside, swollen apples in the trees beginning to lose their green, the roof of a car someone drove home from college, the vinyl top of a tent surrounded by miles of fir trees with as many secrets as needles, etc... really brainstorm. Don’t waste the opportunity to deepen the metaphor on window panes; you can say a lot by carefully choosing what the rain is hitting. The rain and window pane cliche is, of course, sadness, so unless you’re invoking the cliche but simply in a new mode, I would choose a different object.
The clock thud didn’t work for me. I wasn’t sure how to place the meaning or the sound into the meaning of the poem in a significant way.
The polaroid angle of the poem I liked because it was unexpected. Though the last line of the poem seems morally ambiguous - is it setting up blackmail, is it just to enjoy later? The polaroids add a really intriguing element of uncertainty, a lack of safety, the risk of being discovered, will trust be betrayed, etc... I have mixed feelings about it, because it makes it engaging to wonder, but the thought the polaroids might lead to some undesirable end or power play makes the persona suddenly unlikeable, or too human - though not necessarily in a way that’s bad writing, so not sure what to say here other than simply reflect back my impression.
There is a strong overtone of power in the persona’s desire throughout the poem. The persona is confident, very experienced in the waters that the partner is being lead into, waters that might cover his/her head. There is a quiet element of danger, unequal-ness. Which is perhaps why the Polaroid thing skews as a set up for a potential power play: you can’t deny it, I won’t let you, etc...
There is not much romance in the persona. At no point in the poem did I feel the partner was cherished or that love was involved. There was lots of passion, but it felt performed with a kind of smugness or braggadocio. Almost a “see, I was right” quality. The poem doesn’t feel it is about the partner or witnessing a sudden discovery of freedom; it is focused entirely on the persona’s ambitions for the partner.
The quality of the persona has entertainment value, and the honest humanness of the persona is much preferable to something sanitized and unreal. However the way the moment is expressed doesn’t allow me as the reader to share in the freedom or finding of self that the partner may be experiencing.
All we know of the partner is that it is reticent and needs polaroids as forceful/ undeniable reminders of who it is.
The poem doesn’t characterize the partner clearly. The participation seems willing but ambivalent.
The real poetry is entirely in the partner. Why it is hesitant, has mixed feelings, what it’s dealing with in its life that has obstructed its souls freedom, what is it inside that impels it to go out on a limb anyway, the all important potentially life-ruining trust the partner gifts the person they are letting in, the angst is confronting a mirror of oneself in the polaroids. All of these things are deeply human moments that reach far more deeply into poetry than whatever the rain is hitting. One is poetic craft, the other is Poetry.
The passion doesn’t lie in storm; the passion is the drought, and what has blossomed.
Good luck. Would be fun to see draft two.
edited by superlativedeleted on 9/13/2019
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