07-23-2015, 04:19 PM
Conclusion: To fix this poem, just add the scene where the daughter empties the jars of bugs, cleans them, and puts candles in their place. The rest of this response is me figuring out that solution and the problem that necessitates it.
Initial thought:
I'm giving this crit mostly because I don't understand this poem, and want to dredge the meaning out of it. I like the light–dark imagery, as well as the biographic element, but I must note that the figures of the narrative work also as symbols. I'm saying that only because, taken as symbols, the entities implicate their opposites. I don't know if that will turn out to be an important factor, but I suspect that it will.
The note about if this is poetry or prose is particularly sharp, here. If it's prose, many of my copyedit notes will feel excessive to you. If you intend it as a poem, then they won't. But if this is a poem, the asked-for poetic device (line breaks, of course, aren't enough) must be that each individual word is specifically chosen. Otw, yes, it's outside of poetic jurisdiction.
Final thought:
Beyond this final thought is a couple line-by-line analyses. Those analyses got me to where I know what was bugging me here. The rest of this macro comment spells that out, and you can skip the line-by-lines.
This poem has a "big problem." It's that the narrative doesn't end in anything emotionally satisfying. So, if a person were afraid of the dark, that person would, for instance, light tea candles. You wouldn't keep burnt-out fireflies. The mother's answer is therefore a wry response to the daughter's [I'm assuming it's a daughter . . .] question. The daughter's response to her mother's death, however, is literal. So, to be plain, the plot is this: a mother jokingly attributes her firefly collection to a fear of the dark. After the mother dies, her daughter moves into the mother's house and develops a bonafide fear of the dark. She alleviates that fear by lighting candles in jars on the windowsill. That narrative frustrates its emotional resonance because the plot events don't follow naturally from one to the next.
To explain the problem by analogy, compare: "I asked why the Mayans built pyramids. Our teacher said, 'Because they loved shapes.' Recently, I discovered I'm a Mayan, and so I started reading about geometry every day."
But there's another "less big problem": the daughter tosses out the bugs and cleans the jars. This is what someone does to forget the past, not to honor it. So, using the same analogy, it's this: "Our teacher said Mayans built pyramids because they loved shapes. After learning of my Mayan heritage, I blew up one of their pyramids and drew a triangle on the site."
So, again, you can probably skip the rest of this, but here it is for reference.
Proofread:
[T]he night lanterns
--Consider "Her night lanterns," "My night lanterns," and "Our night lanterns"
--"night" is largely redundant with "lanterns," so that "night" becomes a focus of inquiry. See the copyedit below.
She’d started collecting fireflies,
their dried, lightless husks
filling [out: up, as understood] old mason jars;
--I'm confused why you've opted against two independent clauses. So, the natural rendering of the thought would be this: "She'd started collecting fireflies. Their dried, lightless husks filled old mason jars."
she refused to throw them out[,]
even after they’d lost their glow.
I never knew Mama to be afraid of the dark[,]
but she said so one day when I asked
why she kept them.
--Start breakout--
I'm gonna dig in some, in this stanza. Not sure why . . . But here's the original:
The jars still sit on her windowsill,
clean and empty of husks,
a vanilla tea light candle inside each one now.
From a proofers perspective, the problems are redundancy and incoherence. For the purposes of this piece, here are definitions of those terms: "Redundancy" is saying a thing you said already, and "Incoherence" is saying a thing as if it had been said already. Redundancy is confusing because the reader asks, "Wait . . . Hasn't this been said already?" Incoherence is confusing because the reader asks, "Wait . . . *Has* this been said already?"
Here's a redraft with neither. Note that most of the stanza is gone:
The jars house vanilla tea candles now.
The most important incoherence word in the original is "windowsill," because it hadn't been said earlier. My imagination placed the jars in the basement. That they were on a windowsill changes that image entirely. For a note on meaning, see below, at the copyedit. The word "clean" is a minor incoherence, as the jars weren't dirty earlier; to the extent it isn't incoherent, it's redundant; "her" is a minor incoherence bc we didn't know she owned a window. No biggie on either count, but consider changes for the sake of discipline.
The most important redundancies are:
Still: redundant with the fact that the jars' contents have changed.
Sit: redundant with "jars" bc jars don't do something besides sitting.
Empty of husks: redundant with the fact that candles are in them now.
Inside: redundant with the idea of jars. We don't typically describe things as outside of jars. This isn't a true redundancy, but it's worth a thought.
One: inexcusably redundant with "each."
Now: potentially redundant with the shifted verb tense, but probably justified as good hygiene.
--this is a proofread that doesn't consider redundancies or incoherence:
The jars still sit on her windowsill,
[but(?)] clean[ed(?)] and empt[ied(?)] of husks,
a vanilla tea [out: light] candle inside each one [out: now, as redundant with "still"].
--the phrasing, here, is fine, but consider cleaning it up some. Compare "The jars still sit on her windowsill, but instead of husks, they house candles."
----The rewrite is to suggest
clean and empty of husks,
a vanilla tea light candle inside each one now.
--End breakout--
I’ve lit them [out: every, but see note just below] night[ly{ since she passed;
people ask [out: me, as largely understood] why, but I don’t answer.
They don’t need to know that I’m afraid of the dark.
--note that if "every" is meant to be emphatic, don't change to "nightly".
Copyedit:
This is a poem about a daughter who replaces her mother's inoperative lanterns with ones that work after she inherits them from her mother. It is unclear whether it's theme is death or inheritance. As written, the two possible themes are inharmonious, and the poem should be rewritten to contain only one of the two or to house both harmoniously.
the night lanterns
--start breakout--
This is either an excellent title or a horrible one, depending. It immediately raises the question, "What are the words 'the night' doing here???"
If, thinking about it, you decide that there's no difference in meaning between "lanterns" and "the night lanterns" then go with "lanterns" as the title.
This title is a big problem, here, because it's our first intro to a thematic misfire. Is "night" a literal reference to darkness (in which case, the poem is about an inherited fear of the dark) or is "night" a symbol for death (in which case the poem is about death)? On a macro level, it's the latter, but on a micro level, the poem seems to *insists* that it is, in fact, about literal darkness.
Here's my complaint. If the poem is about death, the images and symbols are distracting and underpowered. If it's about darkness, the narrative doesn't make sense.
Yeah . . . I think that's the crux . . . I'll know better after the copyedit . . .
To the end of figuring it out, I'll be setting "death" and "darkness" interpretations against one another.
--end breakout--
She’d started collecting fireflies,
--on the word "started": if Death, she started bc her own mother died; if "darkness," she started because something bad happened to her in the dark
--fireflies. If Death, they represent vitality; if darkness, they're just things that glow
their dried, lightless husks
--if Death, the husks reference some familial entity's corpse; if darkness, they are a confusing narrative event, causing the reader to ask why lightless things would be kept by a person afraid of the dark
filling up old mason jars;
--Death: "old" references dying; darkness: old is irrelevant
she refused to throw them out?
--start breakout--
"throw them out" is the weakest phrase in the poem. The reason why is that the attempt to construe the phrase triggers a cascade of convoluted analysis, as discussed herein.
First, as discussed, the asking party must be either (1) Mama, herself or (2) a cruel person. Imagine you saw jars on a windowsill filled with dead beetles. You wouldn't say, "Please, throw those out" unless the owner's preference was unimportant to you. Rather, you'd ask, "Why do you have jars of beetles? The only person likely to ask Mama to get rid of them would be Mama herself. In that case, an internal conflict between keeping an eyesore and throwing it away makes sense, as would a determined refusal. But if it's Mama asking and refusing, we're suddenly given a narrator with omniscience unsupported elsewhere in the poem.
Further, the daughter's getting rid of the beetles after her mother's passing becomes an act at odds with a natural reading of the poem. Let me explain.
What I "want" the poem to be about is this: A daughter responds to her mother's death by adopting one of her mother's traits, a fear of the dark. To that end, she lights candles nightly. But it could also be about this: a mother's death triggers the development of a phobia in her daughter. That phobia of darkness parallels her mother's wry explanation for a compulsive collection of fireflies. That is, her mother, questioned about her dead firefly collection, says it's because she fears the dark, even though burnt-out fireflies would do nothing to alleviate such a fear.
Do you see the confusion I'm confused my trying to piece out? I hope so, bc I'm getting lost in that effort to do the apart piecing. So . . . Moving on.
--end breakout--
even after they’d lost their glow.
I never knew Mama to be afraid of the dark
but she said so one day when I asked
why she kept them.
--as with the analysis in the breakout just above, keeping fireflies that don't glow has no literal relation to a bonafide fear of the dark, and trying to figure out the real reason she's keeping the jars quickly becomes a unpleasantly convoluted activity.
The jars still sit on her windowsill,
clean and empty of husks,
a vanilla tea light candle inside each one now.
--just figured out what I think the issue is w this poem. See above, at the beginning of this crit
--The poetry-vs-prose issue could take the word "vanilla" here as its genesis. It is very difficult to see how that word interfaces with the rest of the poem. If this note, that "vanilla" seems more a reporters detail than a poets elaboration, needs clarification, just ask and I'll air it out.
I’ve lit them every night since she passed;
—again, the major issue here is discussed up top, but it's worth noting that the euphemism "she passed" contains several layers of meaning. First, it references the full saying, "she passed on," a saying that assumes an afterlife. This argues against the fear of darkness being in actuality a fear of death, bc why fear death if there's a Heaven? Second, using the euphemism feels insincere. It's a poem about a death, being euphemistic about the actual passing feels aloof. And third, the euphemism here promotes the idea that the last line's "they don't need to know" might likewise be euphemistic
people ask me why, but I don’t answer.
--note the contrast between "don't" and "refuse"
They don’t need to know that I’m afraid of the dark.
--"They don't need to know," is the second-weakest phrase in the poem. First, it reads as a euphemism. As such, it could be standing in for either "I don't want to tell them" or "They wouldn't understand." As stated above, ending a poem with an ambiguous euphemism isn't ending it strong. But, second, perhaps more importantly, I get the sense that you want to be cheeky, here; compare "They don't need to know. Maybe I'm just scared of the dark . . ." If that's so, it means your mother was likewise hiding her real reason for keeping the dead bugs.
OH!!! Now I see what was bothering me. I'll put it in a short note at the very beginning of this response. I'm guessing I've made more than a few typos, and with apologies, I'm likely going to leave them instead of editing them out, since what I really want to say will be just a couple of short sentences at the beginning, above.
Initial thought:
I'm giving this crit mostly because I don't understand this poem, and want to dredge the meaning out of it. I like the light–dark imagery, as well as the biographic element, but I must note that the figures of the narrative work also as symbols. I'm saying that only because, taken as symbols, the entities implicate their opposites. I don't know if that will turn out to be an important factor, but I suspect that it will.
The note about if this is poetry or prose is particularly sharp, here. If it's prose, many of my copyedit notes will feel excessive to you. If you intend it as a poem, then they won't. But if this is a poem, the asked-for poetic device (line breaks, of course, aren't enough) must be that each individual word is specifically chosen. Otw, yes, it's outside of poetic jurisdiction.
Final thought:
Beyond this final thought is a couple line-by-line analyses. Those analyses got me to where I know what was bugging me here. The rest of this macro comment spells that out, and you can skip the line-by-lines.
This poem has a "big problem." It's that the narrative doesn't end in anything emotionally satisfying. So, if a person were afraid of the dark, that person would, for instance, light tea candles. You wouldn't keep burnt-out fireflies. The mother's answer is therefore a wry response to the daughter's [I'm assuming it's a daughter . . .] question. The daughter's response to her mother's death, however, is literal. So, to be plain, the plot is this: a mother jokingly attributes her firefly collection to a fear of the dark. After the mother dies, her daughter moves into the mother's house and develops a bonafide fear of the dark. She alleviates that fear by lighting candles in jars on the windowsill. That narrative frustrates its emotional resonance because the plot events don't follow naturally from one to the next.
To explain the problem by analogy, compare: "I asked why the Mayans built pyramids. Our teacher said, 'Because they loved shapes.' Recently, I discovered I'm a Mayan, and so I started reading about geometry every day."
But there's another "less big problem": the daughter tosses out the bugs and cleans the jars. This is what someone does to forget the past, not to honor it. So, using the same analogy, it's this: "Our teacher said Mayans built pyramids because they loved shapes. After learning of my Mayan heritage, I blew up one of their pyramids and drew a triangle on the site."
So, again, you can probably skip the rest of this, but here it is for reference.
Proofread:
[T]he night lanterns
--Consider "Her night lanterns," "My night lanterns," and "Our night lanterns"
--"night" is largely redundant with "lanterns," so that "night" becomes a focus of inquiry. See the copyedit below.
She’d started collecting fireflies,
their dried, lightless husks
filling [out: up, as understood] old mason jars;
--I'm confused why you've opted against two independent clauses. So, the natural rendering of the thought would be this: "She'd started collecting fireflies. Their dried, lightless husks filled old mason jars."
she refused to throw them out[,]
even after they’d lost their glow.
I never knew Mama to be afraid of the dark[,]
but she said so one day when I asked
why she kept them.
--Start breakout--
I'm gonna dig in some, in this stanza. Not sure why . . . But here's the original:
The jars still sit on her windowsill,
clean and empty of husks,
a vanilla tea light candle inside each one now.
From a proofers perspective, the problems are redundancy and incoherence. For the purposes of this piece, here are definitions of those terms: "Redundancy" is saying a thing you said already, and "Incoherence" is saying a thing as if it had been said already. Redundancy is confusing because the reader asks, "Wait . . . Hasn't this been said already?" Incoherence is confusing because the reader asks, "Wait . . . *Has* this been said already?"
Here's a redraft with neither. Note that most of the stanza is gone:
The jars house vanilla tea candles now.
The most important incoherence word in the original is "windowsill," because it hadn't been said earlier. My imagination placed the jars in the basement. That they were on a windowsill changes that image entirely. For a note on meaning, see below, at the copyedit. The word "clean" is a minor incoherence, as the jars weren't dirty earlier; to the extent it isn't incoherent, it's redundant; "her" is a minor incoherence bc we didn't know she owned a window. No biggie on either count, but consider changes for the sake of discipline.
The most important redundancies are:
Still: redundant with the fact that the jars' contents have changed.
Sit: redundant with "jars" bc jars don't do something besides sitting.
Empty of husks: redundant with the fact that candles are in them now.
Inside: redundant with the idea of jars. We don't typically describe things as outside of jars. This isn't a true redundancy, but it's worth a thought.
One: inexcusably redundant with "each."
Now: potentially redundant with the shifted verb tense, but probably justified as good hygiene.
--this is a proofread that doesn't consider redundancies or incoherence:
The jars still sit on her windowsill,
[but(?)] clean[ed(?)] and empt[ied(?)] of husks,
a vanilla tea [out: light] candle inside each one [out: now, as redundant with "still"].
--the phrasing, here, is fine, but consider cleaning it up some. Compare "The jars still sit on her windowsill, but instead of husks, they house candles."
----The rewrite is to suggest
clean and empty of husks,
a vanilla tea light candle inside each one now.
--End breakout--
I’ve lit them [out: every, but see note just below] night[ly{ since she passed;
people ask [out: me, as largely understood] why, but I don’t answer.
They don’t need to know that I’m afraid of the dark.
--note that if "every" is meant to be emphatic, don't change to "nightly".
Copyedit:
This is a poem about a daughter who replaces her mother's inoperative lanterns with ones that work after she inherits them from her mother. It is unclear whether it's theme is death or inheritance. As written, the two possible themes are inharmonious, and the poem should be rewritten to contain only one of the two or to house both harmoniously.
the night lanterns
--start breakout--
This is either an excellent title or a horrible one, depending. It immediately raises the question, "What are the words 'the night' doing here???"
If, thinking about it, you decide that there's no difference in meaning between "lanterns" and "the night lanterns" then go with "lanterns" as the title.
This title is a big problem, here, because it's our first intro to a thematic misfire. Is "night" a literal reference to darkness (in which case, the poem is about an inherited fear of the dark) or is "night" a symbol for death (in which case the poem is about death)? On a macro level, it's the latter, but on a micro level, the poem seems to *insists* that it is, in fact, about literal darkness.
Here's my complaint. If the poem is about death, the images and symbols are distracting and underpowered. If it's about darkness, the narrative doesn't make sense.
Yeah . . . I think that's the crux . . . I'll know better after the copyedit . . .
To the end of figuring it out, I'll be setting "death" and "darkness" interpretations against one another.
--end breakout--
She’d started collecting fireflies,
--on the word "started": if Death, she started bc her own mother died; if "darkness," she started because something bad happened to her in the dark
--fireflies. If Death, they represent vitality; if darkness, they're just things that glow
their dried, lightless husks
--if Death, the husks reference some familial entity's corpse; if darkness, they are a confusing narrative event, causing the reader to ask why lightless things would be kept by a person afraid of the dark
filling up old mason jars;
--Death: "old" references dying; darkness: old is irrelevant
she refused to throw them out?
--start breakout--
"throw them out" is the weakest phrase in the poem. The reason why is that the attempt to construe the phrase triggers a cascade of convoluted analysis, as discussed herein.
First, as discussed, the asking party must be either (1) Mama, herself or (2) a cruel person. Imagine you saw jars on a windowsill filled with dead beetles. You wouldn't say, "Please, throw those out" unless the owner's preference was unimportant to you. Rather, you'd ask, "Why do you have jars of beetles? The only person likely to ask Mama to get rid of them would be Mama herself. In that case, an internal conflict between keeping an eyesore and throwing it away makes sense, as would a determined refusal. But if it's Mama asking and refusing, we're suddenly given a narrator with omniscience unsupported elsewhere in the poem.
Further, the daughter's getting rid of the beetles after her mother's passing becomes an act at odds with a natural reading of the poem. Let me explain.
What I "want" the poem to be about is this: A daughter responds to her mother's death by adopting one of her mother's traits, a fear of the dark. To that end, she lights candles nightly. But it could also be about this: a mother's death triggers the development of a phobia in her daughter. That phobia of darkness parallels her mother's wry explanation for a compulsive collection of fireflies. That is, her mother, questioned about her dead firefly collection, says it's because she fears the dark, even though burnt-out fireflies would do nothing to alleviate such a fear.
Do you see the confusion I'm confused my trying to piece out? I hope so, bc I'm getting lost in that effort to do the apart piecing. So . . . Moving on.
--end breakout--
even after they’d lost their glow.
I never knew Mama to be afraid of the dark
but she said so one day when I asked
why she kept them.
--as with the analysis in the breakout just above, keeping fireflies that don't glow has no literal relation to a bonafide fear of the dark, and trying to figure out the real reason she's keeping the jars quickly becomes a unpleasantly convoluted activity.
The jars still sit on her windowsill,
clean and empty of husks,
a vanilla tea light candle inside each one now.
--just figured out what I think the issue is w this poem. See above, at the beginning of this crit
--The poetry-vs-prose issue could take the word "vanilla" here as its genesis. It is very difficult to see how that word interfaces with the rest of the poem. If this note, that "vanilla" seems more a reporters detail than a poets elaboration, needs clarification, just ask and I'll air it out.
I’ve lit them every night since she passed;
—again, the major issue here is discussed up top, but it's worth noting that the euphemism "she passed" contains several layers of meaning. First, it references the full saying, "she passed on," a saying that assumes an afterlife. This argues against the fear of darkness being in actuality a fear of death, bc why fear death if there's a Heaven? Second, using the euphemism feels insincere. It's a poem about a death, being euphemistic about the actual passing feels aloof. And third, the euphemism here promotes the idea that the last line's "they don't need to know" might likewise be euphemistic
people ask me why, but I don’t answer.
--note the contrast between "don't" and "refuse"
They don’t need to know that I’m afraid of the dark.
--"They don't need to know," is the second-weakest phrase in the poem. First, it reads as a euphemism. As such, it could be standing in for either "I don't want to tell them" or "They wouldn't understand." As stated above, ending a poem with an ambiguous euphemism isn't ending it strong. But, second, perhaps more importantly, I get the sense that you want to be cheeky, here; compare "They don't need to know. Maybe I'm just scared of the dark . . ." If that's so, it means your mother was likewise hiding her real reason for keeping the dead bugs.
OH!!! Now I see what was bothering me. I'll put it in a short note at the very beginning of this response. I'm guessing I've made more than a few typos, and with apologies, I'm likely going to leave them instead of editing them out, since what I really want to say will be just a couple of short sentences at the beginning, above.
A yak is normal.