06-01-2014, 12:47 PM
I wonder a little bit about the form; it reminds me vaguely of a sonnet because of the rhyme scheme and the length, but its a little bit different from a sonnet in lots of ways. Most sonnets I'm familiar with don't have rhyming couplets throughout; usually there is some set line length or meter. Was there a particular form you were aiming for? Why the rhyming or half-rhyming couplets?
The first few lines made it a little difficult for me to enter the poem because they seemed so general to me: writing someone a poem to fill a hole could be taken any number of ways. Is it to rebuke someone for their crimes? To make them love the speaker? To give them something, some gem of knowledge or love that would help 'fix' their faults, their 'holes'? Is vague sexual innuendo? From the first two lines it's really hard to tell what the context of the poem is, literal or emotion, besides what the title is telling us. I wonder what would happen if you started with the third line of the poem - I wouldn't miss anything, but I imagine there's an idea you want to convey in the first two lines that I'm not getting. I think tectak and I basically agree about the beginning.
It seems to me like the rest of the poem is an address from a killer to the woman he has killed, but maybe this is a metaphor for something else. It took me a second read through the poem to get a handle on this situation/speaker. Mostly because the beginning of the poem could be referring to some generic love issue. Let's take a look at the first half, basically:
After reading the poem again, this section reads sort of like she's literally dead: her caress is cold, "slept" as a metaphor for death, "gravely" as another allusion to death. But this isn't something we can get on one read. And I worry that because it feels a little "general, standard relationship poem" on the first skim or read through that some readers won't want to revisit it and try to parse out what you mean.
I keep wondering: what drives the speaker to kill his lover? Is the ending supposed to be bleak, funny, or both? I feel like I can't get into this guy's mind.
The first few lines made it a little difficult for me to enter the poem because they seemed so general to me: writing someone a poem to fill a hole could be taken any number of ways. Is it to rebuke someone for their crimes? To make them love the speaker? To give them something, some gem of knowledge or love that would help 'fix' their faults, their 'holes'? Is vague sexual innuendo? From the first two lines it's really hard to tell what the context of the poem is, literal or emotion, besides what the title is telling us. I wonder what would happen if you started with the third line of the poem - I wouldn't miss anything, but I imagine there's an idea you want to convey in the first two lines that I'm not getting. I think tectak and I basically agree about the beginning.
It seems to me like the rest of the poem is an address from a killer to the woman he has killed, but maybe this is a metaphor for something else. It took me a second read through the poem to get a handle on this situation/speaker. Mostly because the beginning of the poem could be referring to some generic love issue. Let's take a look at the first half, basically:
(05-30-2014, 09:21 PM)Qdeathstar Wrote: Today it always seems your caress is so cold.Without knowing what's coming next, this seems like a pretty generic description of a breakup to me. Here's roughly how I read this section the first time I read the poem. She's emotionally cold; the speaker doesn't want to wake her, and feels strange that he hasn't wept, maybe because he is too numb to cry, or because he has cried as much as one can about this failed relationship. The two lovers' relationship was held up by cliches like saying it would last forever. The rest of this quoted section sounds like a meditation on how easy it is for people to drift apart, but how serious that can be (gravely).
Careful now you've just slept,
slightly scary now I haven't wept.
We always said it would last forever,
frightening how slightly things seem to sever.
See your eyes are pale and grey,
gravely it seems you've slipped away.
After reading the poem again, this section reads sort of like she's literally dead: her caress is cold, "slept" as a metaphor for death, "gravely" as another allusion to death. But this isn't something we can get on one read. And I worry that because it feels a little "general, standard relationship poem" on the first skim or read through that some readers won't want to revisit it and try to parse out what you mean.
I keep wondering: what drives the speaker to kill his lover? Is the ending supposed to be bleak, funny, or both? I feel like I can't get into this guy's mind.