& now big scary gets less big but more scary
Kate! I want to shake you with simultaneous frustration and giddiness. This assignment was ridick. Thanks for a good one. I really do think I tried for the Olympics in this poem & it ended up over the top in a I'm-wearing-too-much-makeup-kind-of-way. DNA + heredity + dance + silverfish + magnetism + repellence + well you get the idea.
i. fishing
The dance was not simple
rather felt with intention.
The wonderbread like earthworms
drooped limply on fish hooks.
I really did catch fish like that
planting differences out of the arms and reach,
out of your neck ties lengthening the walls.
ii. sticky
Salsa is easier when produced
from a distance. A certain push frame
repelling the arms it rests on.
"You don't learn from touch,
just absence of touch."
She showed me a current
you can only ride in the chase away
or towards
the cultivated frame.
iii. sliver
but the halve has more work to do
a further flair to coax;
we align post to stars,
nails to peak, yet
the dance is contained in its infinitude
it is contained
in the thrum of the fish-eyed dark.
Alesia-
ReplyDeleteumm… first?
okay, now that that’s out of the way…
no joke, this is the most intensely symbolic poem I’ve read in a long, long time. almost fucking allegorical. which is a plus, and a minus in some ways.
now, the obvious. your poem is highly dependent on knowledge outside of the poem itself. first read through, I had no fucking clue what was happening. I looked up silverfish, read a little bit, figured out some more, and was less confused. That said, this is still symbolic to the point of madness, which is okay, actually, I like the feeling.
I think the poem needs some buoys, though. You’ve got silverfish right there, which should act as a signifier for “LOOK THIS SHIT UP ASSHAT” but it doesn’t, really, because it opens with fishing and dancing, which don’t really point the way, somehow. So maybe make the intro even more symbolic, make it the kind of symbolism that makes my mouth water and pushes me to over-research.
So, that out of the way, those first two lines feel like a “telling” statement and also a weird bit of self-evidentness, and I think that’s because of the delivery, not the meaning. “The dance was not simple” shows me an exacting speaker who is unwilling to relax and use contractions. also, rather felt with intention seems like a statement of defense. a weird sort of defense, because “felt with intention” is a descriptively empty phrase. you make me say “oh, right on, wait, I don’t know what that means, what, I’m confused” all at the same time.
then you wonderbread me. does not compute with the contraction-hating speaker. The syntax changes, speaker starts using words like “really” and “droop” – words that are gooey and vague in a specificity way. So that throws me off, too. Also, I feel like the wonderbread/earthworm couplet is ordered incorrectly, I think. bread dooping limply on fish hooks / like earthworms, ____________________.
ReplyDeleteI’m confused by the “planting….” line, but I love the last line of the stanza. But it’s a tease. You snag me there, then throw me back out again, to adopt your conceit. Also, in terms of dancing, the poem feels weirdly static. like a series of statements delivered, not a discovery forged. but, then again, I really am confused by this poem, and I’m feeling through it like a cavefish. So, there will likely be others (kate and bendi, really) who might be more useful, meaning-wise.
Don’t get the quote – it throws me right out of the poem… sadly. I like this idea of the distance salsa, but once again the sense of urgency is gone, transubstantiated into this weird layer of symbolic language that I can’t quite penetrate. It is a pleasure, absolutely, to read a poem with its own discourse of symbology, I like it, but it makes it hard for me to know what’s meaning, what’s symbol, what’s just an article. It’s tricky.
I’m intrigued by the current, but you snap it away from me. I also haven’t a clue what the frame is (frame of an object? reference frame? picture frame? some frame for a net? ad infinitum)
I actually really like the third stanza. I don’t really know what it’s about, but I love the feel of it, the aligning of posts to stars, etc.
I wonder if there’s any sort of help that could be given by clarifying pronouns. “it” gets confused for me a lot. the “she” is out of nowhere, without referent, and thus exists as something solely allegorical in my reading.
I enjoyed this poem, but I don’t quite get it. but, really, you win, because that last line is fucking out fucking standing fucking. It’s really, really really really really really excellent.
That last line is like a made for Target dress via Issac Mizrahi via Marc Jacobs via Versace. I.e.- It sounds and feels a shitton like Yeats' "bee-loud glade."
ReplyDeleteI'll gladly echo the cannon all day, so long as my diddies make it to the front banner. Thanks, Jon.