11-10-2013, 02:02 AM
Emily,
The vision itself has the potential to be very poignant. The short lines seem to me well-crafted, and the conciseness lends itself to a engaging, quick little glimpse into the speaker's heart.
I will second the objections mentioned by Billy and Brendan. The poem doesn't seem to make a study of erotic transference, as much as instantiate it, which can be either troubling or fascinating, depending on how you look at it. Still, that it fails to make a study suggests a lack of control, as the narrator gives a insufficiently detached peek into the life of someone who can't see to the root of her tragedy: confusing her lover with her father. You could potentially "make this work" by making some distance between the events the poem describes, and how they are narrated.
The other objection I have is to the italicized lines. I don't think their italicization gives me reason for pause, so much as the content. Let's look at it:
"I’m not going with you;
I don’t love you enough for that."
Even if there are asshole boyfriends out there who would say such a thing -- and there perhaps are -- it lends a certain air of incredulity to the poem. It makes me question if the beloved's reasons aren't perhaps much more complex and defensible than all that.
My cliched suggestion, for whatever it's worth: don't tell it, show it. I want to see the boyfriend as an agent in this piece; to see him make some subtle gesture that shows that he doesn't love her enough. Or at least some back story to tell me more about why she's leaving, and why he won't go, beyond "I don't love you enough for that."
The vision itself has the potential to be very poignant. The short lines seem to me well-crafted, and the conciseness lends itself to a engaging, quick little glimpse into the speaker's heart.
I will second the objections mentioned by Billy and Brendan. The poem doesn't seem to make a study of erotic transference, as much as instantiate it, which can be either troubling or fascinating, depending on how you look at it. Still, that it fails to make a study suggests a lack of control, as the narrator gives a insufficiently detached peek into the life of someone who can't see to the root of her tragedy: confusing her lover with her father. You could potentially "make this work" by making some distance between the events the poem describes, and how they are narrated.
The other objection I have is to the italicized lines. I don't think their italicization gives me reason for pause, so much as the content. Let's look at it:
"I’m not going with you;
I don’t love you enough for that."
Even if there are asshole boyfriends out there who would say such a thing -- and there perhaps are -- it lends a certain air of incredulity to the poem. It makes me question if the beloved's reasons aren't perhaps much more complex and defensible than all that.
My cliched suggestion, for whatever it's worth: don't tell it, show it. I want to see the boyfriend as an agent in this piece; to see him make some subtle gesture that shows that he doesn't love her enough. Or at least some back story to tell me more about why she's leaving, and why he won't go, beyond "I don't love you enough for that."
“Poetry is mother-tongue of the human race; as gardening is older than agriculture; painting than writing; song than declamation; parables,—than deductions; barter,—than trade”
― Johann Hamann
― Johann Hamann