SUBJECT>Re: After Infidelity POSTER>G.C. EMAIL>gcontheblock@hotmail.com DATE>1112902260 EMAILNOTICES>no IP_ADDRESS>cache-dtc-ac08.proxy.aol.com PASSWORD>aaPR2fnrQvaw2 PREVIOUS>85887 NEXT> 85951 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

Hi Ash,

This poem is orchestrated, considered, accomplished. (Myself, I might have gone for something wilder, but that's taste.) Most of my criticisms will, I think, echo mrslovett's.

But first, the title. Sorry, Michael, but I disagree with you on this one. The title is simple, elegant--and it also performs an impressive amount of heavy lifting in terms of the work it does in the poem. As with so many good titles, the real work of the poem--the emotional work--is accomplished, I think, in the space (the blank space) between the provocative title and the quotidian facts & moments related in/by/through the poem itself. The reader is left to inhabit that space, or parse it, or flee it.

: After Infidelity

: Summer again and the field is stacked
: with good intentions. In the kitchen,
: we’ve thrown the last of our allegations
: out open windows.

Well, I'm so glad you didn't throw them through closed windows. Always so messy....

I'm not quite as enthused about this opening, elegant as it is, as Michael or mrslovett. "Summer again" is a fine opening move, emphasizing the cyclical nature of the seasons and suggesting (in context) the cyclical nature of relationships. I like the field being the site of "good intentions," but why "stacked"? Like lumber? Is this really the verb you want? I think I want something stronger, more indelibly apropos.

I react against having both "good intentions" and "allegations"--both abstract--so quickly, and in such close proximity within the same stanza. But others may find this works well.

: In the bedroom, our daughter is reading
: a story of how beans become magic.

Lovely, in terms of the modulation (4-line stanza to 2-, and the switch of focus to the daughter in her bedroom, reading a story--a story other than the one this poem's title and first stanza promise). I do share mrslovett's concern that the story the reader knows, or thinks s/he knows, doesn't at all involve "how beans become magic," but rather is predicated on magic as their inherent quality. I think you need to clarify this--or, if you want to hold to the surprising language you've used here, then you need a longer poem, a different poem, that plumbs, a bit, this sudden recasting of a familiar tale.

: At the table he’s studying his palms
: under the yellow light of the room;
: the blisters he sees are other wounds
: he’s made without a single touch

Uh, forgive me, but who is this "he"? Not the daughter, not the speaker (unless s/he's suddenly moved to third person), also not the Beloved (because of "we" in the first stanza). The third party? Is it Jack? I'm completely lost by this move.

Agreed, it would be nice of you could find a more vivid paraphrase for "the yellow light of the room." It's the ideal moment in this stanza to insert some painterly intensity into the description.

: to my skin. When I wash
: the supper dishes of their uneaten dinners,
: I imagine a car parked at the end
: of the road. Its lights flash twice an offer

This, to my thinking, doesn't need any tweaking. It's fine.

: of escape. But I turn
: my eyes back to the thin dishwater.
: Beans float on the greasy film and I scoop,
: cup them like miracles waiting to happen.

What, really, is this "offer / of escape"? Who is at the wheel (the third party?). Do we need to know what sort of escape this promises, threatens to enact? ...I tend to think that when cars flash their headlights twice, that means DANGER AHEAD, but that may be my own cultural programming....

I like the move from Jack's magic beans to the uneaten beans floating in the greasy dishwater. But I wonder whether there couldn't be a way to get this resonance across--Jack's magic isn't enough to save this domestic disaster; perhaps it never was; perhaps no magic is enough, or there is no magic--than "cup them like miracles waiting to happen." This is a climactic statement, and it does provide the poem with closure--an audible "click" as the lid of the poem pops shut. However, I think it is also an overreaching, an attempt to force the reader to acknowledge the transcendence of the gesture. Always better to let the poem earn that acknowledgement: to let the reader make that connection, rather than have you, the poet, make that connection for him (or her). I really wish you would back up, a bit, and explore other ways of portraying the speaker's final action here at the sink, so that we get the connection--& the pathos--but do not feel strongarmed by it.

I'm brainstorming here--or rather Vicodin is--but something like "cup them like the tight cords they'll become." "Cup them until I feel the threads of their roots dig into my hands." "Cup them as if your real home was the sky." ...You get the idea. Use figurative language appropriate to either the physical fact of their bean-ness, or the Jack tale, or both, so that the final figure is both devastating and specifically appropriate to this particular poem (as "waiting for miracles" is not).

Hope this is helpful,
GC