SUBJECT>Re: This is Not Your Life POSTER>G.C. EMAIL>gcontheblock@hotmail.com DATE>1111553048 EMAILNOTICES>no IP_ADDRESS>cache-rtc-ac03.proxy.aol.com PASSWORD>aaPR2fnrQvaw2 PREVIOUS>85079 NEXT> 85277 85447 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

Hi Laurel,

In general I, too, prefer the present tense, so this is the version I'm going to critique. (For everyone: sorry, but life is short; if, by the time I get to your poem on this board, you've already posted a revision, I'm going to skip to the next thread. Please: give us all some time to digest the poem you've actually posted, before re- or un-writing it.)

: The air is always restless here.
: Blue glass clinks in the breeze
: as a woman pins sheets to summer.

Very nice, understated opening. I like.

: Your mother's shadow flaps and flaps
: like a wing. She curses the dust

Not flaps like a wing? Not flaps and flaps like a wing?? (Why not flaps & flaps & flaps like a wing?)

I don't want to reject the crows outright, but this is a predictable image. What else could the mother's shadow flap like? Brainstorm, Laurel. There's nothing wrong with your poems, except that you too often allow yourself to feel content with a less than sharp turn of phrase. ...This is a scene--mother, prairie, wind, rural disenchantment--we all think we know. You want to work within that scene. But you also want to freshen it. This would be an ideal place to insert a gem-like simile through which to re-view the entire scene with pathos & wonder.

: and wind, balances a basket on her hip
: and tells you it's time for dinner
: but you ignore her. In the distance,

Verisimitude issue: would your mother tell you this from the laundry line, or would she go back into the house and put the finishing touches on dinner before telling you that it's time?

: a crow caws in a tree; no one listens.

Incorrect. The poet, at least, listens, and this gives lie to the figure. Also--can't the crow do something les predictable than "caw"? "A crow coughs in a tree." And can't we have at least a few vivid nouns here? "A crow dilates in a hedge apple." "A crow Shakespeares in an elm." "A crow genuflects in its vial of stone." (I know, I know, I'm going for baroque, but I'm trying to work up the language, just a little bit. Yes, you do want a significant portion of the nouns in this poem to be generic, in order to emphasize the drabness of this landscape. But at least a few nouns or verbs must be vivid, in order to imbue the poem, if not the scene it describes, with something like life.)

: A child can drown in a puddle
: when no one's looking. She turns
: her head and says: Time to come in.

She's already said this. Also, the aphorism does indeed come off a little flat. Perhaps if some of the earlier language seemed sharper, the flatness of tone here would make the sentiment work....

: You can't remember your little brother's name
: but you still recall the silent kicking
: of legs even after the sharp edges of corn husks

Verisimilitude again. Is it possible, within any mythic, parabolic, or realistic construction of the events & landscape of the poem so far, that the "you" of the poem would forget his "little brother's name"?

Do we need to get a clearer idea of the brother's demise? I'm getting some sort of perverted Children of the Corn-Maximum Overdrive cross here, with a feral sentient combine. I really doubt this is what you intend....

: blur, blades of grass merge and the blue sky
: blackens. You forget the road out of here
: is orange. Every morning you're born
: into night. The house is a strange,
: new world, and you, a compass. East

So much to like here, as the poem picks up steam and heads toward its denouement. I like "You forget the road out of here is orange. Every morning you're born into night. The house is a strange, new world, and you"--well, since this poem is at least one level about seeking identity & direction in a harsh, seemingly arbitrary world, can't the you be something less obvious than "a compass"? A lightning rod? A chimney? An astrolabe? A pair of oven mits? ...And is it possible you could vivify adjectives & verbs like "blue" & "blackens"?

: is the tea pot's hiss. West is the clop
: and creak of horse and carriage. South
: is at your back, the threshold
: you just tripped over again. And north
: is the silence of woman contained within,
: breath held, watching her son cry out: Mama!
: Mama! You catch a grasshopper

I'm sorry, I am a troll, and "Mama! Mama!" just doesn't do it for me. (Agreed--she can't "watch her son cry out," or if she can, then she won't be able to hear the words.) I also do not, do not like "the silence of woman contained within, breath held." It's a standard trope of feminist encounter poetry, circa 1971. It seems less than fresh here, esp. since in context it's obviously a construct, meant to be read symbolically. If this image needs to be in the poem, then render it, dramatically & vividly, without the compass business. If you think completing the compass rose is more important, then offer us something else at the apex.

: hopping across the floor, drop it
: in her apron pocket and say: I can hear you
: too. We emerge as if from a dark womb

Sorry, Laurel. I know you said you have emerging from the theater/womb on the mind because of me, but by this point in the poem--with its themes of children born/unborn/lost and its particular (and not especially fresh) conception (no pun intended) of what womanhood could or should mean down on the farm, I'm primed for "womb," and in the worst way. Can we not emerge as if from a dark womb? Can we emerge from something else? The context--woman, womanhood, child--will endow any source of emergence with wombhood at this point in the hand, be it a roll of wilted newspaper, a macrame planter, or one of Andy Warhol's soup cans.

I think it's also worth noting that you do something risky here: you introduce the "I" into the poem, and thereby create the "we" that animates the action of the poem from here to the end. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It seems just a bit gimicky to me, in terms of solicting the reader's involvement & empathy. ...Did anyone else feel this way, or any way, about this key move? In the empathetic sense, it's the fulcrum of the poem, the movement from a displacing "you" to an embracing, invested "we." I'd love to hear others' thoughts....

: into a light so bright and sudden
: that we're temporarily blinded. We drive

Go to the light! Go to the light! --No, stay away from the light! Carol Ann? Can you hear me, Carol Ann???

(Oh Laurel, I'm sorry. But I really do expect such an enormously high quality of work from you, that when you throw in prefab images or language I get twitchy. I hope you can forgive me.)

: home in the stunned silence of survivors
: surprised we're still alive. Tomorrow

What have "we" "survived"? The banalities of rural life? Or the particular death that took little brother? I'm not sure, but it seems to me your deployment of this particular word ("survivors") implies a level of drama the poem hasn't really earned.

: morning, you'll hold my wrist like the neck
: of a wine bottle you're about to pour. Eyes
: squeezed shut, you'll tell me I'm beautiful.
: Then you'll insist we gather Coke bottles
: and hang them in the cherry tree right now.

Ending is fine, though for me there's a bit of cognitive/imagistic dissonance between the wine bottles and the Coke bottles.

So: Allowing for a few moments of autopilot, this poem's real problem, I think, has nothing to do with its gestures: rather, its language, which simply isn't vivid enough to invest the scene (to the extent that we, your readers, are brought into certain moments) with the power or resonance you want the situation to possess. It's a failure of language, not of vision per se. The poem attempts to stretch further than its language will allow.

I think it's a question of viewing this draft as a narrative scaffolding. The basic narrative is intact. If this were my poem, I would probably play the infamous n+7 Oulipo game, just to force my mind out of its well-worn channels and import some craziness into the language. Then move back & forth between random wordplay and the actual narrative, actual resonance you desire, until the two merge and offer you the stunning poem, the real poem, the essential poem.

--GC

P.S. I really like the way the title offsets the entire poem, in terms of throwing the whole narrative into doubt, or at least aporia. I read your explanation for the poem's origin, and I understand the title now in light of that, but even independent of circumstance the title works.