03-25-2025, 03:58 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-25-2025, 04:08 PM by RiverNotch.)
pleasant work, as with any sonnet rightly done. rightly conceived, too, as the ideas in the poem aren't incoherent at all. my notes, all but one technical:
L6
the "in flower" tripped me up the first two readings, especially as most of the rest of the poem has each individual thought or image kept well within each line. I think better:
"as poppies (adjectives) posit sleep:"
ending, you must notice, with a colon, rather than a semicolon.
L9
"alive to danger" also kinda tripped me up, even if I got its idea from jump, but thinking about it, the world "alive" is at least an interesting contrast with the sort of sleep one gets from poppies...i dunno, maybe you can think of a better term for that than one which implies the rest of the subjects invoked in this poem are already dead.
L10
i love that "oxygen" is rhymed with "antigen". jargon wordplay is the best kind of wordplay.
[L11-12
per L6, i don't think "spilled wildly" should be here (plus it could be read as *oxygen* spilled wildly, rather than hemoglobin). maybe:
"or of lovers' suicidal leaks
spilled wildly, lacking cynics' antigen"]
re-read L11-12, i suppose "through suicidal leaks" is supposed to parallel "wildly" instead...my mistake, or maybe it's difficult to read the parallel between an adverb and an adverbial phrase? i don't know...maybe to make it more amenable to idiots like myself:
"spilled by adventure or by self-made leaks
of lovers lacking cynics' antigen"
L14
i don't quite like the bunching of "lust" and "rust", just from a sonic perspective, and i also don't see what that harshness accomplishes for this piece, not when the speaker is softly addressing their love.
L6
the "in flower" tripped me up the first two readings, especially as most of the rest of the poem has each individual thought or image kept well within each line. I think better:
"as poppies (adjectives) posit sleep:"
ending, you must notice, with a colon, rather than a semicolon.
L9
"alive to danger" also kinda tripped me up, even if I got its idea from jump, but thinking about it, the world "alive" is at least an interesting contrast with the sort of sleep one gets from poppies...i dunno, maybe you can think of a better term for that than one which implies the rest of the subjects invoked in this poem are already dead.
L10
i love that "oxygen" is rhymed with "antigen". jargon wordplay is the best kind of wordplay.
[L11-12
per L6, i don't think "spilled wildly" should be here (plus it could be read as *oxygen* spilled wildly, rather than hemoglobin). maybe:
"or of lovers' suicidal leaks
spilled wildly, lacking cynics' antigen"]
re-read L11-12, i suppose "through suicidal leaks" is supposed to parallel "wildly" instead...my mistake, or maybe it's difficult to read the parallel between an adverb and an adverbial phrase? i don't know...maybe to make it more amenable to idiots like myself:
"spilled by adventure or by self-made leaks
of lovers lacking cynics' antigen"
L14
i don't quite like the bunching of "lust" and "rust", just from a sonic perspective, and i also don't see what that harshness accomplishes for this piece, not when the speaker is softly addressing their love.