10-20-2017, 10:33 PM
(10-18-2017, 05:12 AM)rose Wrote: Roses: She is not my grandmother I'm reviewing this one first because this is the one I first focused on. That said, the title's pushing it.
Painted face, eyes closed, lying still.
The scent of roses fills the air,
roses that lie heaped upon the coffin. Third roses (I'm counting the title) in the piece. Again, pushing it, plus "that" sort of breaks the rhythm.
Her lips dyed red
to match the roses. Roses four, though omitting the two pushing-it roses, and it's not bad.
Powdered face froze, ...whose face? Which could be the speaker identifying with the dead, but there's no such indication all throughout.
waiting to smell the floral scent. The speaker's face? But then the opening line suggests a fixation on the face of the dead, and "painted face" and "powdered face" are practically synonyms -- as well, to smell is such a passive sensation, "waiting to smell" isn't a sufficient enough personification of a corpse.
Painted face, alien face, "alien" is pushing the speaker's detachment -- it reeks too much of anti-immigrant talk (which, as far as I can tell, is not a thing in this piece) or of science fiction.
she is not my grandmother.
Lips flat, she is not smiling,
she is not my grandmother.
Roses bloom, yet eyes stay closed.
The floral scent fills the room. That said, the repetition makes this final stanza for me -- there's something about the mourner having, for her mantra, "she is not my grandmother", plus the ending's pained return to the world of (highly evocative, noting Proust) sensation, that gives the poem bite...
She is not my grandmother
Painted face, alien face, eyes closed.
A sickly sweet perfume traps me.
Her lips dyed red
to match my blood.
I see my blurred face
staring in the coffin side.
Lips flat, no loving smiling,
she is not my grandmother.
Roses bloom, yet eyes stay closed. ...and so, having lost it here, the piece seems a little worse. "A sickly sweet perfume traps me", without any indication of what exactly this perfume is (formalin?), then instead of roses, "blood", one well-worn image swapped for another: whatever metaphor was supposed to hold this together now falls apart. "I see my blurred face / staring in the coffin side" definitely clarifies the whole painted face, powdered face bit (although I would prefer it worded differently, there's something awkward about it: a coffin's not a cliff, what coffin is that reflective?, and who stares into a coffin('s) side?), but other than that, I think there's little merit to the additions -- "no loving smiling" is a far more awkward repetition than "she is not smiling, / she is not my grandmother". The fact that it's shorter and the fact that it's a few roses less is good, but perhaps dial it back a bit.