SUBJECT>Re: Writer's Block (Revision) POSTER>G.C. EMAIL>gconthebock@hotmail.com DATE>1111174000 EMAILNOTICES>no IP_ADDRESS>cache-rtc-ac03.proxy.aol.com PASSWORD>aaPR2fnrQvaw2 PREVIOUS>84945 NEXT> 84983 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

Hi Asher,

I largely like this, though I also agree with many of the comments that have already been made: CTG's remark that there are telly moments that sap the poem's energy; Amy's elaboration that the title really does the work of the second line in the earlier draft (so either cut that line, as you have done, or change the title, as Fletcher Lynd suggested and as you have also tried); and Sherry's desire that you follow up "explain" with something a little more vivid. I disagree with Laurel that the poem is composed of fragments, though it does move forward associatively, through narrative juxtaposition.

I don't like to disagree flat-out with others, but I don't care for this new title at all. I'm always wary of poems that are in the process of slipping away into abstraction, and this title, for me, pushes the poem in the direction of the Void.

A general thought: though this version is certainly tighter than its predecessor, part of the interest in reading a poem about writer's block is in watching how the writer in question works his way through the problem: i.e., process. The shorter this poem becomes--the more lyric concentration you endow it with--the less we see that process. I'm not saying I prefer the longer version (though I think it has its strengths). I am saying that perhaps you could actually run toward greater length with this poem--assuming you could do it vividly. I'm thinking, I suppose, of the way Albert Goldbarth or Dean Young take non-subjects and spin them into festive Day-of-the-Dead shrouds for meaning & being.

Back to the version at hand....

: Everything But

: All that’s missing is an empty bottle
: Or a dog barking at nothing. An explosion.
: A couple of houses going up in flames.
: Twelve firemen flame out
: from a high-rise freefall. Nothing
: stops them but dirt. There’s a hole
: so deep somebody’s got to measure it.

I think the opening lines here move quite well, so that just when the reader is certain of the image, the image shifts. "High-rise freefall" has a nice sound to it, and "twelve" lends these opening gesture a certain measure of specificity (which is otherwise lacking).

I can't help but wish we had a more vivid sensual cue, though. I think the success of a purposefully vague line like "There's a hole / so deep somebody's got to measure it" depends, in large part, on its proximity to more specific/vivid/sensual material.

: Across town people are moving
: out of each other’s lives, writing
: long letters that don’t explain.

I love the first two lines of this, but again, I think their success depends, ultimately, on there being something fairly specific & vivid to balance the abstraction. "Writing long letters that don't explain" is the first real null in the poem for me: the first moment in which the poet's desire to TELL rather than SHOW overbalances the poem's more subtle instincts. I really think you're either going to have to follow Sherry's advice, and come up with something vivid that the letters aren't explaining, or else think of some other, more vivid activity for these folks to engage in while moving in & out of each other's lives.

Brainstorm. "That don't explain / the tensile strength of barnyard twine." "That don't explain / the way my left pinky feeling curls around the china handle of a coffee mug." "That don't explain / the presence of a fifth seal in the solarium."

(Ach, those silly seals. I've lent all my seal-catching nets to D.M. Jones, so we'll just have to let them flop around for awhile.)

: In a home, a man is finally ready
: to put his finger into a rotary hole,
: call for help. He sees the fire, falling

I think your intuition is right on here, i.e., to return the reader to the burning building: and not only that, to supply that burning building with the first accretive strands of narrative: and not only that, but to assign that narrative an Other, an observer. "Rotary hole" is nice. "In a home" is not so nice. What's your reason for not vivifying this?

: firemen, pulls the O to the stop.
: The voice of his daughter crackles
: across the line. He tells her of the burning
: he has seen, bodies piling in the street,
: the deep hole no one can fill.

Hmmmm. I like, very much, the daughter's advent, via Ma Bell. I also like "pulls the O to [the] (a?) stop." But "the deep hole no one can fill"--isn't this a little too obvious? Not only in terms of 9/11, but also in terms of that deep, unfillable hole within us all? (Cue theme music.) ...Of course, our Man in Home would want to tell his daughter about the hole. But can you find a way to do this that doesn't seem quite so freighted with, you know, capital-M Meaning? And--to our Man in Home, isn't the interesting quality of the hole not that it can't be filled, rather that it must be measured? Shouldn't the problem of measurement be somehow the subject of what he's trying to tell his daughter, rather than its limitless capacity? (It's a depth vs. volume, imperative vs. negation problem.)

: His voice is awkward, without softness.

This line is the weakest in the current draft, committing the SHOW DON'T TELL heresy on two distinct & different levels. You must describe his voice more vividly, if you are going to describe it all. Would a simile or metaphor here be too much to ask? Or are you against them, on principal?

: The daughter disconnects. It’s routine.
: Firemen go up with the building,
: dogs bark at nothing, bottles roll
: around rooms, empty.

I would cut "It's routine," which seems to me a vestige of the earlier version, insofar as the earlier version included far too many rhetorical props to guide the reader through the poem.

I'm also not sure about "go up" as the principal verb here, when we're talking about the obliteration of firemen. Reconsider?

***

The poem, in the last lines, makes a convincing argument, I think, for archetypicality, which is another form of abstraction. I do think, however, that "dogs bark at nothing, bottles roll / around rooms, empty" would have a little more archetypal resonance if what came before had a little more vividness. I'm not asking for a biography of our Man in Home, mind you: this is a brief poem, and all it would take, I think, are one or two moments to focus the mind's eye, or some other sense or combination of the senses, in such a way that the poem feels anchored in a world of exigency, rather than seeming a simple mental construct. The fact of the poem belies the existence of writer's block: that's part of the point. I think a bit of more vivid description at one or two key moments would draw us further in, which would make the expulsion--the exile--represented in the final lines seem all the more wrenching.

My thoughts, for what they are worth. I hope they're helpful.

--GC