08-29-2018, 05:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-29-2018, 05:55 PM by RiverNotch.)
Today's haze blocks out any minor notes (although I do have them), forcing my eye on a major one: this reads nothing like a botanist's love song. It does have a hint of scientific praxis (Your money in an envelope, / brown as autumn leaves --- although normally leaves collected this way aren't already colored by the season, instead coloring as they are dried out by the press), but it's a hint too subtle, considering how digging up dirt is not exclusive to the profession. It also has a hint of scientific lexis, what with stigma and the focus on asymmetry, but there's little stock in jargon if it isn't supported by something solid.
And, as a love song, I refrain from judging this piece's foundations, but as a love song to be associated with botany.... I wouldn't ask for something more arcane, of course, although that would certainly make your piece more interesting, but take the one example I almost always refer to when it comes to plant-based poetry: Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. What makes it shine as a botanical work is its eye for detail, with each plant's speech evoking a quality inherent to the plant itself (such as the Witchgrass's ubiquity or the Jacob's Ladder's verticality), and the speakers who aren't plants only referring to the more specific, universal-only-by-the-metaphor aspects of the featured garden.
The level of detail to be considered by a poet when writing on a specific, well-studied object may form itself into a sort of pyramid. At its base are the broad ideas almost everyone knows, yet few understand, at which point the pyramid is at its heaviest: the poem must go into great depth in order to effectively use them. Certainly something like Roses are red, violets are blue is not to be considered "botanical". At its peak, the pyramid lightens: specificity shifts the burden from a thorough understanding of concepts, such as pollination or double fertilization, towards a more superficial yet no less evocative series of details, such as the habit of a Trillium or the seasonality of a Wild Iris.
Your piece, so far, seems to fall near the bottom of the pyramid, yet without the necessary weight. The ubiquitous details of plants smelling and plants (sometimes) being asymmetrical are not explored with the right depth: why does the speaker consider his lover's sensual perfume so vital to her existence, as the intrinsic nature of a plant's allure to its pollinators makes pollination seem to be to the plant? Why does the speaker compare his lover to a plant in the first place, yet, even in the face of his lover's seeming activity (the focus on her money, or the speech she has in the second stanza), the comparison stops at details where a plant, at the basic level the poem treats with it, would seem most passive? In fact, this piece seems less like a botanist's love song and more like a gardener's love song, the focus is more on how to work plants to suburbia's aesthetic advantage rather than on the study of plants as themselves.
Of course, if it's already so arcane, then, pending your response, consider that it might be too arcane. At any rate, with this big problem in mind, I'm not certain how minor notes will help, my ultimate suggestion is wholesale revision (or, if not that, a change in focus, starting with the title), and, either way, this is moderate. I hope this helps.
And, as a love song, I refrain from judging this piece's foundations, but as a love song to be associated with botany.... I wouldn't ask for something more arcane, of course, although that would certainly make your piece more interesting, but take the one example I almost always refer to when it comes to plant-based poetry: Louise Gluck's The Wild Iris. What makes it shine as a botanical work is its eye for detail, with each plant's speech evoking a quality inherent to the plant itself (such as the Witchgrass's ubiquity or the Jacob's Ladder's verticality), and the speakers who aren't plants only referring to the more specific, universal-only-by-the-metaphor aspects of the featured garden.
The level of detail to be considered by a poet when writing on a specific, well-studied object may form itself into a sort of pyramid. At its base are the broad ideas almost everyone knows, yet few understand, at which point the pyramid is at its heaviest: the poem must go into great depth in order to effectively use them. Certainly something like Roses are red, violets are blue is not to be considered "botanical". At its peak, the pyramid lightens: specificity shifts the burden from a thorough understanding of concepts, such as pollination or double fertilization, towards a more superficial yet no less evocative series of details, such as the habit of a Trillium or the seasonality of a Wild Iris.
Your piece, so far, seems to fall near the bottom of the pyramid, yet without the necessary weight. The ubiquitous details of plants smelling and plants (sometimes) being asymmetrical are not explored with the right depth: why does the speaker consider his lover's sensual perfume so vital to her existence, as the intrinsic nature of a plant's allure to its pollinators makes pollination seem to be to the plant? Why does the speaker compare his lover to a plant in the first place, yet, even in the face of his lover's seeming activity (the focus on her money, or the speech she has in the second stanza), the comparison stops at details where a plant, at the basic level the poem treats with it, would seem most passive? In fact, this piece seems less like a botanist's love song and more like a gardener's love song, the focus is more on how to work plants to suburbia's aesthetic advantage rather than on the study of plants as themselves.
Of course, if it's already so arcane, then, pending your response, consider that it might be too arcane. At any rate, with this big problem in mind, I'm not certain how minor notes will help, my ultimate suggestion is wholesale revision (or, if not that, a change in focus, starting with the title), and, either way, this is moderate. I hope this helps.