09-28-2021, 05:06 PM
I liked the first version. The second one was weak, and the third an improvement but still too much telling, not showing.
What I liked about the first version:
'hot rod angel'
the ending - somewhat enigmatic
the specific detail of Rainy Night in Georgia
compactness
my observations on V3:
I found you in a folk-dance class
confessed my instant attraction....I don't feel you need to tell everything (telling / showing etc comes back to this point). This line conveys no new information,
and you took my phone number...same as above. don't need each specific detail
You called me out .....ditto. can be combined with the next line
into the early spring night.
I remember your laughter
echoing inside our embrace.
You told me you wanted to live .....this and the next 2 lines tell the reader what he needs to know, and are colourful to boot
on a beach in Oregon with a man
who didn’t care who else held you.
You were a rabbi’s daughter become
a dark Romani princess ....not sure this piece of exoticisation works. Not that the Roma people are necessarily exotic. The contrast between a possibly dark haired rabbi's daughter and a dark haired Romani princess isn't that striking either.
hungry for men. ...racial stereotyping of a kind that works only if we were to suspend our disbelief
I followed you for weeks
until the weight of your wildness
wore me down to a bent loneliness,
but those hours
I spent in sexless surveillance
never left me alone again. ...haven't learned anything from 'weeks' till here. Too much telling
Forty years later
marooned with only
those moments for shelter ... a weak metaphor
you’re the fire of my wan signal
to the passing of time.
Love’s reckoning
still waits on this empty shore
for an impossible beginning. ...nice ending, but the rest of the poem doesn't lead up to it the way it should
What I liked about the first version:
'hot rod angel'
the ending - somewhat enigmatic
the specific detail of Rainy Night in Georgia
compactness
my observations on V3:
I found you in a folk-dance class
confessed my instant attraction....I don't feel you need to tell everything (telling / showing etc comes back to this point). This line conveys no new information,
and you took my phone number...same as above. don't need each specific detail
You called me out .....ditto. can be combined with the next line
into the early spring night.
I remember your laughter
echoing inside our embrace.
You told me you wanted to live .....this and the next 2 lines tell the reader what he needs to know, and are colourful to boot
on a beach in Oregon with a man
who didn’t care who else held you.
You were a rabbi’s daughter become
a dark Romani princess ....not sure this piece of exoticisation works. Not that the Roma people are necessarily exotic. The contrast between a possibly dark haired rabbi's daughter and a dark haired Romani princess isn't that striking either.
hungry for men. ...racial stereotyping of a kind that works only if we were to suspend our disbelief
I followed you for weeks
until the weight of your wildness
wore me down to a bent loneliness,
but those hours
I spent in sexless surveillance
never left me alone again. ...haven't learned anything from 'weeks' till here. Too much telling
Forty years later
marooned with only
those moments for shelter ... a weak metaphor
you’re the fire of my wan signal
to the passing of time.
Love’s reckoning
still waits on this empty shore
for an impossible beginning. ...nice ending, but the rest of the poem doesn't lead up to it the way it should