The Goods

[tectak]

Hello Donald,
 intensive crit required....you got it. A line by line will follow but first:  In the spirit of the forum I should not begin by saying I like, love, admire, drool or awsomely respect this piece...so I won't. Overall, you have "catalogued" a whole load*(sic) of observational niceties in to a rant. Nothing wrong with a rant BUT in this mood, you can easily forget that when you post a piece in the Intensive forum you are virtually ASKING what can be done, where are the mistakes, is the punctuation on the ball, does this scan, could I put this better etc., etc?....to which the answer is a lot, everywhere, no, no and yes.  

A train station opens. Books and waterenjambment...let's just talk about en-bloody-jambment. I want to know, I really do, what makes enjambing betwixt subject and closely associated verb a valuable device. You begin on an isolated statement...clean and simple. We have an open train station. OK...so what? Let's make an "event" occur. Your poem. BANG...a disassociated baggage car BURSTS. Surely, you do not want the mundanity of an open railway station to be part of this cataclysmic happening? No...you want the bloody BURSTING to be WITH whatever BURST...and you want the eruption of contents to be SEEN , visualised, imagined spilling out of the containing vessel. So get over the fact that the station is open....wonder of wonders...and leave that image in the past. Move on. Books and water BURST from a baggage car...one line...one cameo....one image... This is what always happens when the enjambment dragon rears its head...poets quake and do its bidding. Break free before
it is too
late.
burst from a baggage car like an arcane
ritual on platform 2B. People complainIt is just too easy to write this stuff, good as it may be in terms of its density of detail, without even bothering to add style and skill to the presentation. This could easily be a monologue...it IS a monologue...masquerading as poetry. You are chopping lines up in to random breaths like a coughing asthmatic. Read the thing out loud and ask someone, anyone, to blow a whistle everytime a natural pause occurs...be it through meaning or the ability to control breathing. I have tried it. I always do. There is NO correlation whatsoever which means that this is a thought train. Your brain does not need to take breaths but it DOES need oxygen...and "thinking" uses it up. What happens? Well, you start off running but then end up with oxygen deprivation...and the rot sets in, to mix a metaphor. You start leaving off capitals at the beginning of sentences, (T)he schedule does not alter, you punctuate for all you are worth...semicolons with incomplete phrases following AND no need for the introduced pause, curiously potent words creep in..."lenticular" (I know what it means) paintings? What they?...more of the same disassociations "...Liquid latex
pours". Why?  What the hell is wrong with "Liquid latex pours..."  The rot is rampaging, "...erupting with cheese and " on one line, but "...wild ferrets" on the next. Why? There is no discernible meter to enslave you, no blatant syllable counting...nothing to tie you down. See next comments. 
that such disruptions are not in keeping
with the spirit of the community.
the schedule does not alter. Liquid latex
pours out the doors of the eleven-thirty
and denouncements are made. Locals boycott So OK. Let's just call it a rant. Rants by their very nature represent an outpouring of indignant rage...poetry CAN rant but one would hope that by some imperceptible control the message will be enhanced by the poetic process. If you have decided NOT to write poetry in this one, then so be it. If this is just a shopping list of observations, then that's just fine. If you want to make up an "assortium" of words then that's alrighty...but if you do, you may be thought of as an unreliable writer, when even the subtly comedic "...denouncements are made" is just conceivably (or deceivably ) another word error. Tread carefully.
the rail service but still the carriages
come in, erupting with cheese and
wild ferrets. Staff strike but the empty
engines are undeterred,* loads arrive; pistols, Strangely dichotomous in that empty "engines" arrive with "loads". This is the simplest dichotomy...empty, full...but now I just do not trust your word sense and it is your fault.
anchors, chewing gum. Neighbourhood watch
sabotage the line and rip out the buffers,
nevertheless services hurtle the bent
metal and plow upside down throughI think you are now, as the writer, getting carried away on a great seventh wave of self-satisfaction. It is, to be frank, getting over-indulgent. You are no longer supportive of your theme but are instead, hell-bent on creating a drama-dirge.
the polished arches. Soil and off-brand...and still the great Dragon of Enjambment blows hotly over you. Run, run, break free! This last list is just made nonsensical by the splits and fissures in presentation. You are heading for the ripped out buffers and I fear nothing will stop you. Oh, you forgot to include terrapins, safety pins, built-up shoes and cockatoos, cans of soup, hoola-hoops, children's flip-flops, eye-drops, clothes props. Kapok packing, bubble-wrapping, cardboard tubes and chrome-tube racking...I mean, how hard is it? Cripes, it even rhymes   
energy drinks fill the ticket office,
curtain hooks and lenticular artwork
destroy the concessions stand. Soon
the assortium runs miles down the
track, worlds of freight between burning
locomotives. Most residents have sold
at low prices; the town is silent save
the regular crashing of new arrivals.
The remainers make their home in
the railway detritus, lulled to sleep
by the breaking waves of rolling stock
decimating itself on the station shores.
Fountain pens, hangers, goldfish pellets,
warheads, laminate flooring, orphans,
sunrise, crocs. Boxsets, five irons,
crampons, condoms, horse hair,
paper, nunchucks; the goods.

Sorry you got the brunt of this outburst , Donald, but there ARE some things you can and (IMO) should do pour encourage les autres. I hope you do...this is a workshopping forum.
 Best,
tectak

---

Hi Donald Q, this poem made me giggle and has a quality of delight. Thank you. Now I must try to tear it apart and that will be hard to do, but I will try my best to dive in.


A train station opens. Books and water                          
burst from a baggage car like an arcane
ritual on platform 2B. People complain                              what sort of people, normal people?
that such disruptions are not in keeping                             
with the spirit of the community.                                      people in the town don't like the train station or just the activity on platform 2B?
the schedule does not alter. Liquid latex                            The. I am not sure if this is a spill or what...
pours out the doors of the eleven-thirty
and denouncements are made. Locals boycott      
the rail service but still the carriages
come in, erupting with cheese and
wild ferrets. Staff strike but the empty                                hahaha wild ferrets...empty?
engines are undeterred, loads arrive; pistols,
anchors, chewing gum. Neighbourhood watch                 
sabotage the line and rip out the buffers,                          
nevertheless services hurtle the bent                                ] a tangle
metal and plow upside down through                               ]          of words
the polished arches. Soil and off-brand                              ]                these 3L
energy drinks fill the ticket office,
curtain hooks and lenticular artwork                                  maybe it's my poor vocab, but I had to look up lenticular
destroy the concessions stand. Soon                                explain how it is destroyed, is it by heaps and piles?
the assortium runs miles down the
track, worlds of freight between burning
locomotives. Most residents have sold
at low prices; the town is silent save
the regular crashing of new arrivals.
The remainers make their home in
the railway detritus, lulled to sleep
by the breaking waves of rolling stock
decimating itself on the station shores.
Fountain pens, hangers, goldfish pellets,
warheads, laminate flooring, orphans,
sunrise, crocs. Boxsets, five irons,
crampons, condoms, horse hair,                                         hey, crampons is chick secret code...
paper, nunchucks; the goods.                                           


Overall good description of the monotony of over abundance.
And then there's that bigger picture. Something to certainly consider.
Wise poem.

thank you so much for the wonderful read
and privilege to critique. blessings
janine

To janine et al.
Please note that this is NOT a red pen.
This is the Workshopping Forum. The objective is not to "tear it apart" but to comment, suggest, advise (in your own opinion) just where you can see that improvement could be made. You can analise the work but to much analysis leads to paralysis...I make this point regularly because concommitant with the summer surge in sloppy poetry ( i write sloppy, too) comes the equally apparent dozy and simplistic crit. Let's all try to lift standards, here...and blessings upon you and your cattle.
Mod