12-15-2016, 01:35 AM
It is worth noting that most readers won't care about the 'textual accuracy' of your references as long as the end result is musical. The strongest parts of this piece are the places where myths blend together, i.e.
However, you also have weak images in this poem, and places where the referentiality loses its music and veers into cliche. Saying that a woman has "a Fury's eyes" doesn't actually mean anything, even though the image of the furious red-haired woman is otherwise tangible. The stanza
Likewise, the tomb imagery is insubstantial and unclear. How much time did the degradation process take? The "muddy flood" seems to imply that the hill melted in a rainstorm, but that seems unrealistic (although I'm sure that there are powerful enough storms to cause that sort of environmental damage). How does the hill actually look, or the tomb? I kind of feel like it's not supposed to look like anything, and that the image is purely an example of intertextuality, but in this case it is still an uninteresting image. A reference alone is not musical. You need to transform the referenced text in a way that surprises the reader or reconciles something impossible.
A minor quibble: the introduction of the 3rd person in the 3.5th stanza is odd, considering the epigraph references an "I" and the lack of a 3rd person in the first major stanza.
(12-14-2016, 02:49 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: The basket fell,The other good parts of this poem are the clear images, which don't need to be referential in order to stand on their own. The lines about the cellar/notepad, "he scatters lamps across the ocean" and "dye her hair, powder her skin, and wear/ nails for bracelets, strips of leather/ for a shirt?" are the best examples of this sort of imagery.
a pomegranate rolled, and the text
was filled with themes --
Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve.
However, you also have weak images in this poem, and places where the referentiality loses its music and veers into cliche. Saying that a woman has "a Fury's eyes" doesn't actually mean anything, even though the image of the furious red-haired woman is otherwise tangible. The stanza
(12-14-2016, 02:49 PM)RiverNotch Wrote: In the beginning,says nothing new: How does god make the heavens and earth? What is water like without light? How does writing come from light? I like some of your ideas here--the "brand" line for me represents the way that language characterizes experience and thereby constrains it, but this idea (or whatever idea you were trying to express) is not expressed sufficiently within these lines to be a satisfying revelation.
God made the heavens and the earth: as his spirit
hovered over the face of the waters, he said,
"Let there be light", and there was light --
and all writing came from that great light
like scars, brands on experience.
Likewise, the tomb imagery is insubstantial and unclear. How much time did the degradation process take? The "muddy flood" seems to imply that the hill melted in a rainstorm, but that seems unrealistic (although I'm sure that there are powerful enough storms to cause that sort of environmental damage). How does the hill actually look, or the tomb? I kind of feel like it's not supposed to look like anything, and that the image is purely an example of intertextuality, but in this case it is still an uninteresting image. A reference alone is not musical. You need to transform the referenced text in a way that surprises the reader or reconciles something impossible.
A minor quibble: the introduction of the 3rd person in the 3.5th stanza is odd, considering the epigraph references an "I" and the lack of a 3rd person in the first major stanza.