10-03-2016, 12:22 PM
@Achebe and @CRNDLSM, thanks for your helpful comments. I realize I should have given some background to this poem. The poem is addressed to a woman, R., whom I met last Saturday. She and I spent a few hours together in a synagogue and later in her car. We met at the bus station while I was on the way to a late-night service, and I suggested that she accompany me. The plethora of details that make the poem incomprehensible to a third party are actually the shared experience of the two of us that night: there were strawberry and lemon pastries after the service, which involved several liturgical scrolls; we deliberated whether to wait for the bus or take a cab; after the cab there was a drive in her car; then several romantic hours gazing at the city skyline from the shore; Versace shoes, golden chain, heated seats, talk of money. The next day there was a coffee date. An old professor was reading a book at the cafe and editing a dissertation. He spoke to us for a while, though the message I put in his mouth is what I want to say to R. In other words, everything in the poem is true, only it's a truth that someone who wasn't there clearly has no way of knowing. It's not a poem for a universal audience. I should've mentioned that. My goal with this poem is to express this shared experience to the person who was there with me. The atmospheric, disjointed quality reflects the nature of our interaction that night. The experience as a whole was cryptic (neither of us being Jewish, for one). I have two questions.
1. Given that the addressee of the poem can relate to these minute details (unless she has forgotten over the course of the week), what would you say is the value of receiving such a poem? I would like to anticipate the impact of this poem on its intended audience. If you were the woman who was there with me, would you feel the mystery of that night augmented because of this text? Would you feel a sense of romance? How would you feel about seeing me again? In part, my goal for this particular poem is to get a second date with a businesswoman who apparently gets a hundred emails per day. I'm looking for a way to stand out from the endless stream of communication in her life. I was consciously trying for a kind of mystical austerity when writing this poem. This mood would fit with the image I projected that night and I think is one part of what attracted R. to me. I want to display a certain poetic agency and decisiveness to her. Does such a thing emerge in this text?
2. Most of my poetry writing has the same subjective quality that's there in this poem. My writing is usually filled with idiosyncratic details that make no sense to a reader who didn't share the experience with me. What are some pointers for moving beyond this subjectivity of form and bringing content into my writing that would be accessible to any reader? I have difficulty going beyond my immediate experience to say something that people in general can understand. I realize that if my writing is to improve, I need to work on bringing a degree of universal meaning into it. How can I start going about this? Perhaps my problem is that I don't have much to say. What's to be done about that, short of giving up poetic writing altogether?
1. Given that the addressee of the poem can relate to these minute details (unless she has forgotten over the course of the week), what would you say is the value of receiving such a poem? I would like to anticipate the impact of this poem on its intended audience. If you were the woman who was there with me, would you feel the mystery of that night augmented because of this text? Would you feel a sense of romance? How would you feel about seeing me again? In part, my goal for this particular poem is to get a second date with a businesswoman who apparently gets a hundred emails per day. I'm looking for a way to stand out from the endless stream of communication in her life. I was consciously trying for a kind of mystical austerity when writing this poem. This mood would fit with the image I projected that night and I think is one part of what attracted R. to me. I want to display a certain poetic agency and decisiveness to her. Does such a thing emerge in this text?
2. Most of my poetry writing has the same subjective quality that's there in this poem. My writing is usually filled with idiosyncratic details that make no sense to a reader who didn't share the experience with me. What are some pointers for moving beyond this subjectivity of form and bringing content into my writing that would be accessible to any reader? I have difficulty going beyond my immediate experience to say something that people in general can understand. I realize that if my writing is to improve, I need to work on bringing a degree of universal meaning into it. How can I start going about this? Perhaps my problem is that I don't have much to say. What's to be done about that, short of giving up poetic writing altogether?