05-31-2014, 11:57 AM
Hey, what good would poetry be if it didn't let us explore the melancholy with the joyful?
Before I get into it too deep here, I have a few questions.
First, why center the poem? I think I might be missing the intent here - I usually find that centering a poem actually makes it a lot harder to read, and ends up losing the emphasis that a left-aligned poem usually has at the beginning and ends of lines.
Another thing I noticed about this poem that I'm curious about is the loose connection between the lines. Some parts of the poem seem clearly like part of one sentence, like the first four lines. You could turn those first four lines into prose and they would make sense, no problem. But other lines seem to be tangentially related -- they would be part of different sentences, or even different paragraphs. It took me a second read through the poem to get a handle on the transitions between lines, on the rhythm of it. I wonder why we're left to our own devices with this, to figure out how the lines connect, or don't, for ourselves.
the main feeling that I get in the poem is definitely drifting, but not because of the repetition of the word necessarily … mostly in this poem I'm looking for some anchor, some concrete description or idea or glimmer of narrative, and having a hard time finding it. What memories of a past that seems cruelly happy? Can we see them, experience some sliver of them? What are the objects in mirror that are far away? What has happened to the speaker's family? What is the speaker trying to push towards, trying to escape from? The poem mostly fills me with questions. It was hard for me to connect with this speaker and feel the emotions described in the poem because I felt like I didn't get enough to imagine, to engage with on a more specific level. I wonder if other readers would feel the same way.
That brings me to my last question: what do you want other people to get out of the poem? Is this for you to understand, or is this for us to understand?
Before I get into it too deep here, I have a few questions.
First, why center the poem? I think I might be missing the intent here - I usually find that centering a poem actually makes it a lot harder to read, and ends up losing the emphasis that a left-aligned poem usually has at the beginning and ends of lines.
Another thing I noticed about this poem that I'm curious about is the loose connection between the lines. Some parts of the poem seem clearly like part of one sentence, like the first four lines. You could turn those first four lines into prose and they would make sense, no problem. But other lines seem to be tangentially related -- they would be part of different sentences, or even different paragraphs. It took me a second read through the poem to get a handle on the transitions between lines, on the rhythm of it. I wonder why we're left to our own devices with this, to figure out how the lines connect, or don't, for ourselves.
the main feeling that I get in the poem is definitely drifting, but not because of the repetition of the word necessarily … mostly in this poem I'm looking for some anchor, some concrete description or idea or glimmer of narrative, and having a hard time finding it. What memories of a past that seems cruelly happy? Can we see them, experience some sliver of them? What are the objects in mirror that are far away? What has happened to the speaker's family? What is the speaker trying to push towards, trying to escape from? The poem mostly fills me with questions. It was hard for me to connect with this speaker and feel the emotions described in the poem because I felt like I didn't get enough to imagine, to engage with on a more specific level. I wonder if other readers would feel the same way.
That brings me to my last question: what do you want other people to get out of the poem? Is this for you to understand, or is this for us to understand?