06-29-2024, 06:09 PM
I’ve spent an hour and a half trying to develop decent crit, here. I can’t.
This poem has a good stanza,
“ The mark is there from my wedding ring
from a life tattooed
having lived a life in servitude.
Love has whittled me to a point
a singularity of thought
as though enlivened by a drought.
I've no need of a way out
though rains do not fall.
In fact no moisture here at all
for plants to grow.
My landscape sere
I have nothing left to fear.”
It’s ruined by the title about lying and the errant allusion to Beatles music.
That doesn’t make it bad—it’s a rather good poem—it makes it meaningless. Am I trying to crit a prevarication?
I don’t think poems are good at lying. I think they’re good at mystery and truth. When a poem prevaricates, it gets too stringy to eat.
Do what you want, but how do we crit a poem written by a liar?
“He Who prevaricates Is Lost
“I read Prufrock again today [. . . ]”
“He” never appears in the poem, so is “I” “he”? Is “I” lying? Is this a post-modern inquest about the meaning of words? Or is that a prevarication?
You have prevaricated drop-capped and Is capped. That’s a mistake.
Or is it?
My point is, a lie makes a poem like this unmanageable for purposes of feedback. So ditch the prevarication idea, ditch Eliot, ditch the Beatles, ditch the Post Modern reference, and build the poem around your strongest stanza.
This poem has a good stanza,
“ The mark is there from my wedding ring
from a life tattooed
having lived a life in servitude.
Love has whittled me to a point
a singularity of thought
as though enlivened by a drought.
I've no need of a way out
though rains do not fall.
In fact no moisture here at all
for plants to grow.
My landscape sere
I have nothing left to fear.”
It’s ruined by the title about lying and the errant allusion to Beatles music.
That doesn’t make it bad—it’s a rather good poem—it makes it meaningless. Am I trying to crit a prevarication?
I don’t think poems are good at lying. I think they’re good at mystery and truth. When a poem prevaricates, it gets too stringy to eat.
Do what you want, but how do we crit a poem written by a liar?
“He Who prevaricates Is Lost
“I read Prufrock again today [. . . ]”
“He” never appears in the poem, so is “I” “he”? Is “I” lying? Is this a post-modern inquest about the meaning of words? Or is that a prevarication?
You have prevaricated drop-capped and Is capped. That’s a mistake.
Or is it?
My point is, a lie makes a poem like this unmanageable for purposes of feedback. So ditch the prevarication idea, ditch Eliot, ditch the Beatles, ditch the Post Modern reference, and build the poem around your strongest stanza.
A yak is normal.