09-23-2020, 09:04 PM
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Hi Klis,
thanks for the detailed response. Very illuminating.
It was clear that it was a deeply personal work, bravo for daring to share it, and it's down to you (as it should be) as to how open or closed the work is to the reader.
I thought that the situation (your paragraph "what actually happened") was clear in the poem. Like I said I couldn't be certain how you came to be there though, and from a narrative viewpoint it bugged me. The options seemed to be either happenstance, you just called by, or that they (forgive me if I get the pronouns wrong, new to this) had called you. If it was the latter, and you say it was, then that suggests something about them, their mental state, and about you, and about the relationship the two of you have. Further reasons to be curious about the detail's omission, for me at least.
That sib was a contraction was clear, that it implied 'chosen family' was not (but, like I said, new to this, only just encountered 'deadname' for instance. Live and learn) - however, the nuance doesn't change the reading, so I'm not sure it's something you need to explain in the piece
Names. As you say "I recognise the choice to have these names in lower case might be confusing."
Perhaps put those parts where you lower case the names, the reported speech, in italics, to visually distinguish the from the rest?
Rereading in view of your reply I thought you were using colons as an marker for speech, but there's one in L27 which appears to be contradicted by the capital S of Strong, and not one at the end of L30.
unrelatable stanza - I rather like that verse, it encourages one to look more carefully at names (and may push 'sib' in the direction you intend) - though, of course, it depends where it fits into the piece.
Act III - I didn't doubt it was the truth. It had a ring of squirming awfulness about it that fairly screamed verisimilitude
I simply wondered if including it was serving the poet, rather than the poem, And, to be clear, any objections I had were not about it's content, but about its relevance to my understanding of what had happened in the poem up until that point. My personal reaction was that I wanted to be processing what I had just read and you were interrupting with something else. This may be a little blunt but, as a reader, my concerns were for Vivian, while you, in Act III, want me to focus on you.
Also, when you describe it as 'the garbage part' I'm inclined to take you at your (non-ironical) word
(and not look to further disambiguate the phrase to 'this is the part where I, the author, feel like garbage'). It leaves one feeling ever so slightly insulted, however unintentionally.
Anyway, were you to cut it from 'Calling the Samaritans' but keep it as a separate/companion/continuation piece (you've already got a title, 'Safe') what would be lost? Arguably, you might also gain from having the reader being able to return to 'Samaritans' with a new perspective and find extra layers/meanings in there that they missed before.
And finally, as I said before, Act II offers a much, much stronger ending to the poem than the whimpering Act III.
Good luck with the revision.
Best, Knot
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Hi Klis,
thanks for the detailed response. Very illuminating.
It was clear that it was a deeply personal work, bravo for daring to share it, and it's down to you (as it should be) as to how open or closed the work is to the reader.
I thought that the situation (your paragraph "what actually happened") was clear in the poem. Like I said I couldn't be certain how you came to be there though, and from a narrative viewpoint it bugged me. The options seemed to be either happenstance, you just called by, or that they (forgive me if I get the pronouns wrong, new to this) had called you. If it was the latter, and you say it was, then that suggests something about them, their mental state, and about you, and about the relationship the two of you have. Further reasons to be curious about the detail's omission, for me at least.
That sib was a contraction was clear, that it implied 'chosen family' was not (but, like I said, new to this, only just encountered 'deadname' for instance. Live and learn) - however, the nuance doesn't change the reading, so I'm not sure it's something you need to explain in the piece
Names. As you say "I recognise the choice to have these names in lower case might be confusing."
Perhaps put those parts where you lower case the names, the reported speech, in italics, to visually distinguish the from the rest?
Rereading in view of your reply I thought you were using colons as an marker for speech, but there's one in L27 which appears to be contradicted by the capital S of Strong, and not one at the end of L30.
unrelatable stanza - I rather like that verse, it encourages one to look more carefully at names (and may push 'sib' in the direction you intend) - though, of course, it depends where it fits into the piece.
Act III - I didn't doubt it was the truth. It had a ring of squirming awfulness about it that fairly screamed verisimilitude
I simply wondered if including it was serving the poet, rather than the poem, And, to be clear, any objections I had were not about it's content, but about its relevance to my understanding of what had happened in the poem up until that point. My personal reaction was that I wanted to be processing what I had just read and you were interrupting with something else. This may be a little blunt but, as a reader, my concerns were for Vivian, while you, in Act III, want me to focus on you.Also, when you describe it as 'the garbage part' I'm inclined to take you at your (non-ironical) word
(and not look to further disambiguate the phrase to 'this is the part where I, the author, feel like garbage'). It leaves one feeling ever so slightly insulted, however unintentionally.
Anyway, were you to cut it from 'Calling the Samaritans' but keep it as a separate/companion/continuation piece (you've already got a title, 'Safe') what would be lost? Arguably, you might also gain from having the reader being able to return to 'Samaritans' with a new perspective and find extra layers/meanings in there that they missed before.
And finally, as I said before, Act II offers a much, much stronger ending to the poem than the whimpering
Act III.Good luck with the revision.
Best, Knot
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