Past Perfect (edit)

[hamartia]

First Edit:

After that, in love became had loved.
We passed perfect and became plural,
found safety in separate phone numbers
and the life sentence of the relative clause.
 
I'd like to attribute the errors to their authors,
but time and proximity have married our idioms -
you write like me and vice versa,
my turn of phrase tucked neatly into yours.
 
Would that we'd had an editor, we lamented,
as we dealt the crockery into two even boxes.
Someone to unsplit our infinitives,
to give the piece the body it lacked.


Original:
After that, in love became had loved.
We passed perfect and became plural,
found safety in separate phone numbers
and the way our keys no longer matched like teeth.
 
I'd like to attribute the errors to their authors,
but time and proximity have married our idioms -
you write like me and vice versa,
my turn of phrase tucked neatly into yours.
 
Would that we'd had an editor, we lamented,
as we dealt the crockery into two even boxes.
Someone to unsplit our infinitives,
to give the piece the body it lacked.

[Leanne]

The first line is excellent. It starts in the middle of something -- we're expected to fill in the back story for ourselves, because now we're at the really important part. Love "found safety in separate phone numbers", that's a great subversion of cliche. The writing conceit is well formed, although it's odd that it doesn't come into the first stanza at all. Just a hint would tie it in a little better.

Otherwise, there's little not to like for me -- it's gentle, regretful and terribly sad.

[hamartia]

Thank you for reading! I think I might fiddle with the bit about keys - I agree about the writing element being missing, and I think L4's most expendable. Off to text edit for me.

[hamartia]

Wow, thank you very much!

[billy]

almost excellent hamartia. you capture sad in an original way and that's very hard to do without cliche. i love how you use words to do with writing in order to express the break. i'm so glad i got to read the poem.
wish i had mor constructive feedback but apart for the one part i see nothing wrong with it.

thanks for the read.

After that, in love became had loved. what great opening line, it makes us use the title to get some reason for it.
We passed perfect and became plural,
found safety in separate phone numbers
and the way our keys no longer matched like teeth. i'm not sure teeth and keys work to well.
 
I'd like to attribute the errors to their authors,
but time and proximity have married our idioms -
you write like me and vice versa,
my turn of phrase tucked neatly into yours.
 
Would that we'd had an editor, we lamented,
as we dealt the crockery into two even boxes.
Someone to unsplit our infinitives,
to give the piece the body it lacked.

[hamartia]

Thank you, Billy! Yes, that line's really annoying me - I have a few half-formed alternatives in mind but I'm going to give it a bit of time before I try anything else with it, I think. Thanks for reading and the positivity!



eta: Right, fiddled with that line a bit. Thought about what Leanne said about the absence of the writing conceit in the first stanza and Billy confirming my annoyance with the teeth-keys analogy, and thought the idea of a 'life sentence' would fit nicely with the previous line's play on 'safety in numbers' whilst working with the literary idea. Hope it works for you!

[Leanne]

Oh yes, "life sentence" and "relative clause" both work very well without seeming too punny -- also "clause" picks up the sound of "yours" at the end of the next stanza, which is a nice touch. Well done!

[billy]

it's amazing how such a small edit can lift a poem and make it shine. excellent.

[Bizzy]

Lovely, lovely - editing has really sharpened it up. Loving it!