Poetry Telephone Complete!

[Gwyneth]

Hi Gwyneth Box, and welcome to the site, big thanks for taking part in milo's thread. I chose your poem to give feedback to because it was the one i followed. sorry for the lateness (getting ready for a trip to the uk)

first the title, it works pretty well, it has some ambiguity in that i wondered was salome the collector of men with brocken hearts or was john a collector of women who broke hearts (women being a loosley related word to penis and big hands)
the setting reminds of the bar in the song coco cabana. (it also has a Tony in it)
i like how you open the bar up to us some of the enjambment works for me a small amount doesn't work as well as it should. i think the way you utilise repetition adds to the poem in reinforcing the characters you produce.
all in all, an enjoyable read.

El coleccionista

My friend John says he wants me i liked the enjambment, (so musch so i kept it in mine)
to be his wingwoman; he says he's lost and the reality of not being loved
his head to Sálome and needs my help; didn't think the en-jamb worked as well here
John's lost his head to Sálome, whose voice normally repetition like this doesn't work well enough to use, here it does succeed, it shows us that apart from being an idiot in love, he's an idiot who knows he's screwed before he starts
is cinnamon rich and warm; he's lost his heart
to Sálome, the Amazon who serves the drinks this is my favourite line though i'm not sure why? juxtaposing a name like salome with amazon i guess
at Tony's bar, the Hélicon, where grey-draped this line made me work a bit harder than the others. it may have been [helicon] or the enjambment, or both, i'm not sure.
caryatids raise potted palms aloft while
dapper little Tony dips and flits between
lace-covered darkwood tables. Tony flicks flicks and flits is almost perfect
a practised chamois cloth at dust, pausing again, the en-jamb that leads to this line is excellent
to converse with regulars or recommend
his favourite from a fragrant range of teas
and gins. Along the bar, on gleaming trays,
a thousand almond leaves are honey glazed;
they cloy with stickiness. John wants me
to talk to Tony, to distract and keep him
sweet, to muse on silverware and curiosities,
admire the bric-a-brac, the tumbling monkey
in the china cabinet and the desiccated
Persian cat with blue stone eyes. John's
lost his head to Sálome, he thinks my chattering
can deflect Tony's proprietorial look that gathers
Salomé with oddities, dead pets and flightless
concrete angels. John's lost his head to Sálome
who pours the drinks at Tony's bar. Her voice
is warm as cinnamon, her eyes dark as molasses.
We order G&Ts. I talk to Tony, but I watch
as Sálome lifts the gin bottle. Her hands
are square and competent, just like a man's.
from my last comment to here there is some fine narrative that wraps the reader in the actual bar. the twist wasn't expected and does finish the poem off with a bang
Gwyneth Box

Hi Billy,

Not quite sure how quoting within quotes works here, so will stick all my reply here at the end.

*thanks* for your welcome and your comments. Hope your UK trip went well.

The coleccionista is really Tony, who collects all kinds of oddities. (Including odd barstaff.) But I'm not bothered if it is ambiguous.

Interesting that you particularly liked the Amazon line - it's been criticised elsewhere as it's the wrong mythology, but there's enough of a mix of styles of bric-a-brac in the bar that I thought a mix of styles in mythologies might work, too. I hoped the term Amazon might also hint at a slightly oversized female. (Also one who'd undergone breast surgery, perhaps, though Salomé presumably had hormone treatment and silicon implants rather than a mastectomy.)

I may have to find an alternative to Hélicon as it's not been popular.

I'm going to go back and look again at the piece in the light of all the comments, so will re-jig some of the enjambments.

Your re-write was really useful, too: it showed me what had been understood or inferred, which was tremendously helpful.

*Thanks*

g.

(edited to remove what should never have been posted in this reply.)