Rhys

[hopeelizabeth]

Rhys
 
Smile please- the familiar entreaty of old men on the street,
Much to our rage, eroding our carefully painted faces, that endless devotion, interrupted with regular creases buried in and in by reluctant concessions of basic human need for, a currency of, reciprocation. I thought it was so clever of Jean Rhys- I pictured her furs dulled by the same condescension, dolling out builder’s tea with feigned, knees, to get passed the traffic lights without one’s confidence being further divided- ‘There’s a hole in your tights.’ Damn, a desire so strong as just one of the dithering dears, to smash their faces in- just once, with a bottle. But smoke curled around his features and dabbed at reality so pleasingly, lamp-light incisions pronounced my bone structure, stroked my self-image, so generous- yet subtly, I didn’t even shudder
 
 ; So profanely flattered that here I am in my own flat alone, stupid and hammered. 

[UselessBlueprint]

Rhys
 
Smile please- the familiar entreaty of old men on the street,
Much to our rage, eroding our carefully painted faces, that endless devotion, interrupted with regular creases buried in and in by reluctant concessions of basic human need for, a currency of, reciprocation. I thought it was so clever of Jean Rhys- I pictured her furs dulled by the same condescension, dolling out builder’s tea with feigned, knees, to get passed the traffic lights without one’s confidence being further divided- ‘There’s a hole in your tights.’ Damn, a desire so strong as just one of the dithering dears, to smash their faces in- just once, with a bottle. But smoke curled around his features and dabbed at reality so pleasingly, lamp-light incisions pronounced my bone structure, stroked my self-image, so generous- yet subtly, I didn’t even shudder
 
 ; So profanely flattered that here I am in my own flat alone, stupid and hammered. 

All right, I'll give this one a go, since it has largely been passed over for now. I'll admit, it was close to being a difficult read, and was definitely not a pleasant one. I find I say this pretty often here, but I must spare the line-by-line critique due to a noticeable lack of lines (consider this a Con).

That said, you have some arrangements and images here that work incredibly well, and would be appreciated in the right style of poem. I think particularly of "lamp-light incisions", "eroding our carefully painted faces", and to a lesser degree, "smoke curled around his features" -- which at least provides a fair visual description of the scene, even if not adding much poetic layer.

Beyond these, I mostly see another drunken rant, stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.

[busker]

I was unsure of how to comment on this and the other one in Intensive.
There’s a poem buried somewhere under this incoherent mass of nonsense. Perhaps the author might take the trouble of resurrecting it.
“I thought it was so clever of Jean Rhys” has promise, as does the bit about pronounced features.

[Quixilated]

Hello, to begin, there are parts of this that spoke to me and parts I couldn’t quite understand. But I think it’s got some decent bones.  I think a little clarity could be added for the reader if you were to separate the piece out of block form and into three stanzas.  The reflection in the middle about Jean Rhys is bookended by the narrator’s real time experience, so for the reader, one stanza for each bookend and Jean gets her own stanza.  There were also a few punctuation choices that made it difficult for me to understand the sentence, I will point those out in the poem itself.  

Rhys
 
Smile please- the familiar entreaty of old men on the street,  and here I already sympathize with the N, because what is that about anyway? Why do they do that? 
Much to our rage, eroding our carefully painted faces, that endless devotion, interrupted with regular creases buried in and in by reluctant concessions of basic human need for, a currency of, reciprocation. Ok, so I get what you’re saying here but the sentence is long and twisty and full of commas, and it took way too many reads to understand which was doing what, and which phrases are modifying which words etc. and in the end I am left with just a vague notion that a mask is cracking because the face underneath can no longer bear the pressures of the situation.  But it’s not as clear as it could be. Perhaps if it were separated into two or three separate sentences, the reader would be able to follow. And here is where I would end stanza one.  I thought it was so clever of Jean Rhys- I pictured her furs dulled by the same condescension, dolling out builder’s tea with feigned, knees, (I cannot for the life of me understand why “knees” is separated out by commas or what feigned knees are?  But I don’t actually know much about Jean Rhys so I am assuming it might just be something going over my head about her life) to get passed the traffic lights without one’s confidence being further divided- ‘There’s a hole in your tights.’ Damn, a desire so strong as just one of the dithering dears, to smash their faces in- just once, with a bottle. And here is where I would end stanza two. But smoke curled around his features and dabbed at reality so pleasingly, lamp-light incisions pronounced my bone structure, stroked my self-image, so generous- yet subtly, I didn’t even shudder I do not quite understand the end here.  My guess is that the N wants to be repulsed by the attention but also feels flattered and then feels even more repulsed by having felt flattered?  Or did something happen between the N and the man that is only alluded to? 
 
 ; So profanely flattered that here I am in my own flat alone, stupid and hammered. 

Anyway, i hope that something in there helped.  I know I didn’t exactly offer a lot of suggestions of what specifically to change, but hopefully seeing it a bit from one reader’s perspective will help you see which of your intentions landed, and which might need adjustments to be clearer.  I look forward to seeing where you take this.  

-Quix

[hopeelizabeth]

[quote="hopeelizabeth" pid='246990' dateline='1566938484']
Rhys
 
Smile please- the familiar entreaty of old men on the street,
Much to our rage, eroding our carefully painted faces, that endless devotion, interrupted with regular creases buried in and in by reluctant concessions of basic human need for, a currency of, reciprocation. I thought it was so clever of Jean Rhys- I pictured her furs dulled by the same condescension, dolling out builder’s tea with feigned, knees, to get passed the traffic lights without one’s confidence being further divided- ‘There’s a hole in your tights.’ Damn, a desire so strong as just one of the dithering dears, to smash their faces in- just once, with a bottle. But smoke curled around his features and dabbed at reality so pleasingly, lamp-light incisions pronounced my bone structure, stroked my self-image, so generous- yet subtly, I didn’t even shudder
 
 ; So profanely flattered that here I am in my own flat alone, stupid and hammered. 

All right, I'll give this one a go, since it has largely been passed over for now. I'll admit, it was close to being a difficult read, and was definitely not a pleasant one. I find I say this pretty often here, but I must spare the line-by-line critique due to a noticeable lack of lines (consider this a Con).

That said, you have some arrangements and images here that work incredibly well, and would be appreciated in the right style of poem. I think particularly of "lamp-light incisions", "eroding our carefully painted faces", and to a lesser degree, "smoke curled around his features" -- which at least provides a fair visual description of the scene, even if not adding much poetic layer.

Beyond these, I mostly see another drunken rant, stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.
[/


I understand there are feature of this that might make it difficult- thanks for pointing this out. However, at the same time calling it ‘another drunken rant’ is hardly constructive and I suggest you actually look up the writer it’s based on and it is also ignorant of women’s issues to imply this. Additionally, it is more of a prose poem so to suggest the form in itself is an issue seems to lack education.

[billy]

Please don,t critique the critique, if you don,t agree with feedback just accept it gracefully and move on.

[Seraphim]

I see two problems here, for me. The first is parts seem incomprehensible. These have been pointed out by others. The second problem is I don’t see what makes this poetry, as opposed to prose. The old saw that poetry must be at least as well written as prose. This does not, to me, appear to be even good prose, much less possess anything poetic.

My only suggestion is to cut out a lot of unnecessary, confusing images, form an outline which says what you want to say, then work from there.

[Knot]

.
Hi hopeelizabeth,
I rather like this, but I find the form and erratic punctuation really off-putting. I don't think it either helps the piece.
I'm with Quix in advocating for stanzas over block. Two things do have me absolutely baffled though: "with feigned,
knees" (a semantic issue) and "as just one of their dithering dears" (possibly a syntactical issue).
Purely out of curiosity, has 'smile please' overtaken 'cheer up (love) it'll never happen'?

If you'll forgive the presumption …


Rhys (not sure that this really does enough)



Smile please - the familiar entreaty
of old men on the street.
Rage erodes our carefully painted faces,
that endless devotion, interrupted
with regular creases buried
in and in by reluctant concessions
of basic human need (should 'of' be 'to' ?)
for, a currency of, reciprocation.

I thought it was so clever of Jean Rhys-
I pictured her: furs dulled
by the same condescension,
dolling out builder’s tea
with feigned, knees,
to pass the traffic lights
without one’s confidence
being frayed further -
‘There’s a hole in your tights.’
Damn! A desire so strong
as just one of the dithering dears,
to smash their faces in - just once,
with a bottle.

But smoke curled around his features (just curious, where does the smoke come from?)
and dabbed at reality so pleasingly,
lamp-light incisions pronounced
my bone structure, stroked my self
-image, so generous - yet subtly,
I didn’t even shudder;

so profanely flattered
that here I am in my own flat,
alone, stupid and hammered.


Best, Knot.




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