05-24-2014, 01:22 PM
It looks like you've gotten some good comments already on this poem, but I'll try to be useful. I'm thinking mostly in terms of interpretation, since getting a reader's reaction often helps me hone a poem. I hope this is an appropriate level of critique for this forum - mods, if not, please message me and I'll edit the post to bring it up to snuff.
I think the prose-poem format goes along well with other aspects of the writing style. The dissociated narrative makes it seem at first like this is going to be a straightforward discussion of something, perhaps how signals make it from the brain to the hand, but then the poem defies expectation a little bit.
I'm interested in the little glimpses we get of the speaker/narrator, dissociated from their own body it seems. I wonder if that's tied to the way this poem is "told" to us. These glimpses appear in different parts of the poem and initially seem disparate, but after reading the poem I feel like they're actually connected. I'm talking about the parts quoted below:
The hand belongs to someone who has fallen, perhaps keeps falling - one kind of loss. I keep going back and forth between "burned with the leaves" as narrative or metaphor, and I think in this poem it can be read as both. This is actually the part of the poem that I keep coming back to the most. It hints at something outside of the poem: is it a knowledge we should have? Does this poem fit into some larger piece?
I think the main thread that I see weaving through these fragments is the hint of a world outside, odd in a poem that is so internal even though it is dissociated, about the body even though it is not told from within the body. I feel like the poem gives me just enough to crave more, to want to know more about the speaker/main figure in the poem.
I feel like one of the goals of the poem is to transcribe experience directly, thus the focus on the hand, the inconspicuous action, the feeling of the spoon. At least, that's the impression that I get from the first three paragraphs/segments of the poem. But like other commenters I find the bolded part of this sentence divorced from experience, a little bit "executive summary":
I think the last two lines/paragraphs of the poem really work: it feels like the poem comes to a clear ending and sums itself up with "the elucidation of meaning", but then the poem busts open with the phone lighting up and dancing off. Is that a metaphor for meaning: a sudden light, motion, something coming alive? The chance for connection? Is it a call that will bring the speaker out of himself? I think the questioning is good, in this case. I'm not asking these questions because the poem is vague at this point, but because I feel like it wants me to ask questions.
Anyway, I hope this helps with revisions - let me know if you have questions about my critique or want to discuss further.
I think the prose-poem format goes along well with other aspects of the writing style. The dissociated narrative makes it seem at first like this is going to be a straightforward discussion of something, perhaps how signals make it from the brain to the hand, but then the poem defies expectation a little bit.
I'm interested in the little glimpses we get of the speaker/narrator, dissociated from their own body it seems. I wonder if that's tied to the way this poem is "told" to us. These glimpses appear in different parts of the poem and initially seem disparate, but after reading the poem I feel like they're actually connected. I'm talking about the parts quoted below:
Quote:Two falls ago a map was committed to memory and burned with the leaves.The first two parts I've quoted speak to some kind of loss. The last, to possibility: who is calling? Is it E___? Or someone else?
E____, you left this spoon in the sink one night. You left it, forgetting it then and forgetting it ever since.
A phone lights up and dances ecstatic off the edge of the coffee table.
The hand belongs to someone who has fallen, perhaps keeps falling - one kind of loss. I keep going back and forth between "burned with the leaves" as narrative or metaphor, and I think in this poem it can be read as both. This is actually the part of the poem that I keep coming back to the most. It hints at something outside of the poem: is it a knowledge we should have? Does this poem fit into some larger piece?
I think the main thread that I see weaving through these fragments is the hint of a world outside, odd in a poem that is so internal even though it is dissociated, about the body even though it is not told from within the body. I feel like the poem gives me just enough to crave more, to want to know more about the speaker/main figure in the poem.
I feel like one of the goals of the poem is to transcribe experience directly, thus the focus on the hand, the inconspicuous action, the feeling of the spoon. At least, that's the impression that I get from the first three paragraphs/segments of the poem. But like other commenters I find the bolded part of this sentence divorced from experience, a little bit "executive summary":
Quote:The brain awakens to its experience, the fingers probe at lines engraved in the handle, the eyes come along to see what is in the hand.What if the order of the bold and non bold segments were reversed, so we feel the fingers probing, the eyes coming along to see what is in the hand, and only then the brain awakens? What physically does it feel like for the brain to awaken? Perhaps that is only accessible through metaphor, at least for me, but I wonder what would happen if the same level of detail were applied as to the fingers probing lines in the handle.
I think the last two lines/paragraphs of the poem really work: it feels like the poem comes to a clear ending and sums itself up with "the elucidation of meaning", but then the poem busts open with the phone lighting up and dancing off. Is that a metaphor for meaning: a sudden light, motion, something coming alive? The chance for connection? Is it a call that will bring the speaker out of himself? I think the questioning is good, in this case. I'm not asking these questions because the poem is vague at this point, but because I feel like it wants me to ask questions.
Anyway, I hope this helps with revisions - let me know if you have questions about my critique or want to discuss further.