Mid-January Deconstructing Blues

[islandclimber]

.....

[Charles Darnay]

Great, now I'm depressed - I'm going to go drink a bottle of whisky until I fall asleep all because of your poem.....fine I was going to do that regardless.

Overall, this is fantastic, but I do think that it hits its peak just a bit too early. The penultimate stanza seems to break away from the rising action of everything that came before it, as if the poem got too tired and has to stagger towards the end. I re-read it and just skipped that stanza, going straight from 9 to 11 and I preferred it - but that's just one opinion.

[islandclimber]

Charles D! I'm terribly sorry. Atrociously bad form on my part. These types of things are best served chilled, in the mid-afternoon, when they can be shrugged casually off shoulders simmering in the sun. Wait a minute. A bottle of whisky... Sleep... I don't feel so bad anymore.

Thanks for the criticism. It is always appreciated. I didn't catch that before, but I do now. I suppose I could toss S10 in the great communal poetic refuse heap... Yet, I can't help but wondering if it might not be saved; maybe there is a way to lift it up to a smashing Wagnerian crescendo of sorts? Ideas?

[qimissung]

I like S10. It's S9 that seems interminably long, like an endless dark hallway, and you just want to reach the whiskey...

Other than that, I like it, although I have no idea what it means, nor am I at all sure it matters, the words just roll off one's tongue.

[hillwalker]

Some great lines here - painting a tortured picture of seasonal ennui. Too much to absorb in a single reading so forgive my cryptic response.

H

[miyako73]

I think the poem is about unrestrained writing--writing whatever one thinks, feels, sees, and remembers. It is a brilliant presentation of a postmodernist process--de-familiarizing the familiar.

Like this:

finding coffins at sunrise,
I'm battered by fragments of bones
and changes from season to season.

This, to me, speaks of the familiar abstractions--such as silence, stillness, memory, melancholia--that are all written in metaphors that de-familiarize them.

I'm curious to know if you read Chilean poets.

Your images and intense words remind me of Neruda's, Mistral's, Andres Morales', Raul Zurita's.

I'm impressed. This is the kind of poetry I want to read but struggle to write because of my minimalist tendency. This is poetry. If you read Lorca, your writing has duende. If it were a dance of a gypsy, even the toes, the fingers, the tips of the hair, the faintly visible grains of the skin are playgrounds of the free spirits singing their beats and liberation.

Again, this is poetry people here should be glad to have read.

[AuntShecky]

Dear islandclimber,
Let me say at the outset that I greatly admire your previous postings, including your astute comments on the works of others. That is why I have some misgivings about what I am about to say about this effort, though I'm sure you'll accept the comment in the spirit that it is offered.

My impression is that the operative word in your title --"deconstruction"--is right. I am sorry to say, however, that the notion of widespread destruction is much too broad a topic to unify the list of multiple and varied images in this piece.The glaring omission is a unifying theme to link them all together; as I said, the mere free-floating association with "deconstruction" doesn't quite cut it. It seems to me that a poem this ambitious might be more than a superficial catalogue of disparate images.

The overall picture in my mind's eye is like that famous sequence in the circa 1970 Antonioni movie, Zabrinski Point with the exploding fruits and vegetables, the meaning of which is to this day inexplicable. In your verse a whole range of images are likewise shot up into the air: dust, shadows, faces, faded robes, ashes/earth, poisoned honey, tongue/ dull knife, lips/stomach, etc. Among the jumble of images we have instances of far-fetched excess: it's hard for me to picture or wrap my mind (albeit feeble) around the sight of "empty stomachs standing disemboweled."How can a part of the digestive system itself become "disemboweled"? There are also some examples of pathetic fallacy: "carnivorous sheets," "weeping hallways" (you mean water-damaged/ leaking?) "sad bells" and "desolate sand," (that last one is hackneyed, as well.)

One stanza ("strophe") began with an echo of Eliot: "I enter desperate houses" but quickly degenerated into the incongruous, almost humorous line"unnaturally supported bosom/. . . toes bitten." It looks as if that motif belongs in a different poem. Indeed, you have the germs for several different poems here.

Here are some of the more effective phrases you might consider developing into shorter poems of their own: "afterbirths of silence," "unity of a horse's hooves/clad in dark iron." The motif of song constitutes the least disjointed set of images in this piece: "blues" (in the title) "to share rusted-out voices," "singspiels. . .on nocturnal streets" (though I'd drop the superfluous and prose-y phrase "on somewhat disestablished."

Finally, I admire your free-flowing writing skills, but this piece as a whole needs some tightening and discipline.

Sincerely,
Auntie

[miyako73]

I'm sorry, Auntie. With your caliber, I expect you to go beyond literal reading.

"carnivorous sheets" is evocative of loneliness one feels when he is under a bed sheet--swallowed by gloom and unable to get up.

"weeping hallways" is what I see and feel in my solitary existence in my big house in which the long hallway looks so vast, dull, and gloomy.

"sad bells" is what I hear when bells toll for a funeral (in my village we still have that) and if the sound of the bells is low and slow--almost dull, almost struggling to ring, almost without life.

"desolate sand" is how I will call a seashore that has no hint of life on it.

I don't know if Island will agree with me. This poem, in my reading, shows the different facets of a writer's solitude and melancholia.

[hillwalker]

The overall picture in my mind's eye is like that famous sequence in the circa 1970 Antonioni movie, Zabrinski Point with the exploding fruits and vegetables, the meaning of which is to this day inexplicable.

Honestly? I was able to understood that particular sequence from 'Zabriski Point' even when it was first shown in the cinemas - it was a spectacular if rather rather naive attack on the evils of consumerism.

H

[blank|verse]

Hi islandclimber - For what it's worth, I'm in AuntShecky's camp, I'm afraid.

I started writing a critique to 'Nostalgia…' but gave up as everyone else liked it so much, but this poem seems longer and more indulgent than the last, so perhaps a reality-check isn't a bad thing.

The influence of Eliot and Ginsberg is in evidence, and the barrage of imagery shows a great deal of energy and enthusiasm, but I struggle to find anything beyond that. As a result, as AuntShecky said, it's all quite superficial as nothing is dwelt upon and we just get a flood of abstract, surreal images, arbitrarily lineated, which adds to the sense that I'm not reading a poet in control of his work.

The Scottish poet Don Paterson offers this advice:


Don't confuse originality with novelty. For something to be original, it needs to be already partly familiar to the readers, otherwise they can't verify its originality, only its weirdness.

For me, your poetry falls foul of this. It matters because I stop caring about what you're writing and worse, become quite irritated by it, in the same way I might with a prog-rock guitar or drum solo; I feel the artist is getting more out of it than the reader. If you disagree, try sending your poetry to a few decent magazines, and see what response you get.

My advice would be - slow down! Think about every line you're writing and ask yourself why it has earned its place in your poem, because at the moment it feels like a case of quantity over quality. You've clearly got some imagination, so perhaps you need to be harder on yourself and ask if you're using it as effectively as you could.

[miyako73]

I'll bet my piggybank; this poem is more publishable than the rest of the poems posted on here.

[ShadowsCool]

I'll bet my piggybank; this poem is more publishable than the rest of the poems posted on here.

It's a very fine piece, if understood. By why compare it and denigrate other poems on here? That seems what your opinion implies. I don't get it.

[islandclimber]

.....

[islandclimber]

Oops. I just hijacked my own thread! :p

[Charles Darnay]

I'll bet my piggybank; this poem is more publishable than the rest of the poems posted on here.

I'd throw my piggybank in the bet too....but that poor ol' horse has been drained dry, save a few lingering pennies (soon to be an artifact in Canada).

[islandclimber]

.....

[miyako73]

I assure you and others that I read your poem three times before I wrote my comment. I saw some lines that I would have changed if I were the writer, but I felt changing them would cut, interrupt, ruin the flow, the free spirit, the duende that were uniquely yours. One of the features of a good poem, at least to me, is when I notice something seemingly problematic, wrong, lavish, or wanting but I don't want changed, corrected, deleted because they add textures, shades, layers in the whole poem. Like Lorca's dizzying repetitions or Neruda's disjointed, illogical images he put together or Mistral's almost intellectually insulting simplicity.

I call a spade a spade when I see it. My comment was solely centered on the text. I don't know you, so I cannot do a biographical reading. I even thought of not including the Chilean poets in my comment, thinking maybe other poets have influenced you. But in each line I read, the profound/poignant images, the unrestrained words, and the intense flow of the Latin-American poetry jumped out like they wanted to be talked about. Thus, I included them.

I apologize if my comment is divisive. It's one of the reasons why I don't usually critique poems here. I sometimes come out acerbic or bombastic even though I just want to be honest.

[qimissung]

Thank you for your explanation, IslandClimber. I'll go back and look at it again in a day or so; it is a bit overwhelming, but you seem to have a theme in mind and to have answered, for yourself, what Blank|Verse referred to: " Think about every line you're writing and ask yourself why it has earned its place in your poem ." I trust-and applaud-your poetic judgement.

Although I will say that was some of the most astute criticism I've seen on here, from all parties.

[blank|verse]

Thanks for the reply, islandclimber; and it's clear you have read a lot in a certain field and have thought about what you want to express through your poetry. I'm convinced you can develop as a writer, and it's also very encouraging that you have had some work published in smaller magazines (I know the sort!). But as someone who has had poetry and reviews published in a peer-reviewed magazine in England, I know that what I'm reading here just won't make it to the next level. Yet.

And I hope you take the following detailed, honest critique in the spirit it was intended – ie. to treat you as a mature artist and someone who is serious about his writing.

My main criticism in terms of the poetry is that there are plenty of noticeable flaws and weaknesses with your writing. You obviously know your stuff and you mention some influences that I'll freely admit I've never even heard of; but that doesn't change the quality of the text on the page / screen.

In fact, for me it's quite telling that you can make a list of influences, draw a manifesto of abstractions, yet fail to mention features like language, syntax, rhythm, sound, music. You mentioned imagery, and for me, that's how your poetry works; but that's the only way it works, and even that's not convincing. There's so much more that is ignored. As a reader, I want much more. There's little consideration of HOW you are expressing yourself; it's only WHAT you are expressing – it's content, not form.

I think most people are familiar with this idea of presenting 'fragments' of the world in order to reflect the fragmentary nature of life today; in fact, I'd say it's a bit of a cliché in itself now. But that shouldn't stop you using that technique. So ok, you're expressing that; but what else?

I was sent back to Ginsberg's 'Howl' after reading your last poem, and it's so rhythmic and deliriously desperate and alive I wanted to shout it from the rooftops. If I'm honest, I don't want even to read your poetry aloud. I think that's one area you could certain improve. The broken lines have no rhythm or flow; there's little sense of poetry to them beyond basic repetition, or of how to use line breaks effectively; the fact they're full of dense abstractions slows the reader further because he or she has to figure out what you're trying to tell them. Let's have a look at the poem:

with different versions of dust,
with shadows swallowing faces
as they fall…slowly,
bewildered themselves,
here,
only faded robes stumble down these roads
and spread the ashes of the earth
upon the earth.

Ok, so we've got a sentence starting with a preposition, repeated anaphorically at the start of the second line. The imagery is confusing and already you're forcing the reader to work hard to make sense of this; a risky strategy for a long poem. In fact, I enjoyed the phrase 'different versions of dust', but I would like that dwelt on and expanded, not thrown away. The second line is imaginative as well, but, in its emotive use of pathetic fallacy, sounds a Gothic / horror note, so already we have familiar genre conventions; and things slacken thereafter.

'as they fall…slowly,' is just a weak line of poetry – using an ellipsis to try to enact the 'slowness' of the falling is clichéd; but you also tell the reader that they fall 'slowly' – which is tautological and to be avoided unless used originally. And that's line 3 of the poem. It spoils a decent start. Then you have that one-word line 'here', a technique too often used by beginner poets to try to convey some importance on a single word which it just doesn't have.

The diction is also quite Gothic: 'dust', 'shadows', 'bewildered', 'faded robes', 'ashes', etc. which makes gives the poem a gloomy, archaic tone. But it doesn't 'defamiliarise' anything, because there's nothing recognisably familiar here. Paradoxically, what I can grab hold of (Gothic conventions) aren't disturbing because this sounds like something that happened centuries ago, from which I am safely distanced. The Gothic imagery appears elsewhere, in this questionably emotive section:

there is a shadow of sword scratching
at the door to my abandoned heart,
where a hummingbird lies dead,
or a white dove is far too red

'My abandoned heart' is sentimental and self-pitying. The 'dead-red' rhyme is, frankly, terrible, and in context, bathetic (in fact, it's the sort of rhyme a certain other LitNet critic wouldn't hesitate to point out as terrible in a poem written by a different poet – perhaps someone should change his avatar to that of Louis Walsh :) ).

The reference to the 'white dove' is a cliché, and the line 'or a white dove is far too red' is poor. The TWO intensifiers 'far too' are quite fey, English upper-class: 'Oh gosh, that's far too common' or whatever, and seem out of keeping with the rest of the diction, and appear to have been used just to make up the line; they're expletives. If you'd said something like 'or a white dove is red', or 'a red dove', then at least that would be more original.

But it's one of many examples where you're not doing anything different or disturbing with language or syntax; it's only imagery. The syntax is mostly predictable, standard English.

I feel the unity of a horse's hooves
clad in dark iron by the same
weathered hands that raised this prison,

This bit is strange, if you're trying to present a world that is fractured and disjointed, because here it is reassuringly Victorian; Dickensian. It's a world in which honest men make honest things, and the horses hooves are in 'unity'. The 'weathered hands' image is not only well-worn (excuse the pun), it also has an air of reverence to the traditional working man, particularly combined with the clichéd, archaic 'raised'. Is this what PostModernism is about? Revering traditions? Also, is this reflective of contemporary society? Moving on…

I enter desperate houses
as unnaturally supported bosom,
as toes implacably bitten,
as the dampness of an axe singing,
sometimes swinging,
and all I ever see are sick old eyelids,
and rundown stoves,
and tables with last year’s rags
masquerading as tablecloths.

As AuntShecky pointed out, the narrator here is saying he (presuming it's a 'he') entered the house as a pair of breasts. Is that intentional? I can't help but find this ridiculous; but not in a way in which I know I'm expected to find this ridiculous.

And what does the surreal, synaesthetic 'the dampness of an axe singing' actually mean? Perhaps it’s the sound of the axe striking through wood. But it must be damp wood, so why would someone do that? Moreover, the 'singing-swinging' rhyme is poor in itself, but also sounds like the first thing that came into your head – and by your own admission to this being 'automatic writing' probably was. Even if we accept this, what you're saying is that the narrator 'entered the house' as a pair of breasts and toes and this damp axe sound / feel. It's all abstractions of abstractions and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. (And 'masquerading' is somewhat over-used as well.) Later, we have:

and it might be a scene
from a crumbling book:
the bloody fingerprints;
the edge of oblivion;
the cruel boards across broken windows
that scream so ****ing loud about the end.

Again, more clichés; and having to rely on a profanity (and one of several examples of pathetic fallacy, which again would be criticised in other poems) to make a point is weak, as it fails to express why it should be 'screaming', we're just simply told. Show, don't tell is a useful adage to remember.

The poem also centres around an 'I'-narrator; something related primarily with Romanticism, not PostModernism, which is very distrustful of this single perspective, the poet shaping the world around him, God-like, to his own ends, able to act upon it and pass judgement on it. The Romantic movement also gave rise to the cliché of the suffering artist, which we've already seen expressed in the poem with the imagery of the 'abandoned heart', and also here:

finding coffins at sunrise,
I'm battered by fragments of bones
and changes from season to season...

it is me, still a surface wounded by wind,
an immense moment filled with bleeding,

and at the poem's end:

discarnate,
I vanish at times like this, along strange lines
and fractured themes...

I could go on, but I think I've said more than enough. Basically, all this investment in your writing feels like it's not rewarded sufficiently, if at all. There's nothing that shocks me out of the familiar, because a lot of it is already familiar through genre conventions, or is so abstract it doesn't have any emotional or intellectual impact on me. And because of that, to quote Don Paterson, I can't verify its originality, only its weirdness. The use of language is straightforward and the poem relies too heavily on familiar rhetorical techniques, mainly repetition. Likewise, the narrative perspective is familiar and self-centred.

But other people like it, and that's great; but I've yet to hear a convincing argument of why it's a good poem beyond personal preference. You've got some very grand ideas and ambitions, but don't yet possess the ability, or if you do, haven't found the right way, to express them. Perhaps too many of the ideas are abstractions, which get lost in translation between idea and page. I would suggest that you try and read a lot more contemporary poetry, and see how modern poets are trying to express their experience of the world around them. But keep writing, and keep thinking about what you're writing, a line at a time. And I hope you find at least some of this useful, challenging, or thought-provoking in some way, and accept it in the spirit in which it was intended.

[miyako73]

Why did you delete your work, Island? Let other people read it and judge who makes sense and impressive poetry. Even your explanation detailing the mechanics and skeletons of your work is a good read. Don't quit writing and commenting. You can't do anything if others prefer literalism. You should not have deleted your work. Let them read postmodern poetry and poetics first before you give up. I know educating the heardheaded is tough and a waste of time. Good luck.


"Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology" is around ten bucks including shipping.

[miyako73]

Also, a lot of Neruda's images won't make sense if we remain literal.

My favorite example:

"dark smell of seaweed"

A literalist will definitely say an odor has no color (dark or light) or mood (dark or bright), but Neruda's fans don't care because it makes sense in his poem and its meaning is clear--it is about vagina.

[miyako73]

"But as someone who has had poetry and reviews published in a peer-reviewed magazine in England, I know that what I'm reading here just won't make it to the next level. Yet."

I'm curious to know your standards and your criteria for what is publishable. Can you direct us to that magazine that peer-reviews your poems and reviews? From what I read, It's only one magazine.

[islandclimber]

Blank|Verse. Thank you. That was fantastic. I don't necessarily agree with everything you wrote, yet I am incredibly appreciative of your insightful analysis. I didn't delete the poem out of some sort of upset over the deconstruction of it, more so to spend the last week determining what I really wanted to express with it.

I suppose the most appreciated suggestion was the disconnect between my personalization of my work here and my identification with post-modern to some extent. Now, I would suggest that there are cases where the "I" works well in a fragmented, obfuscated, post-cognitive narrative of sorts, but in rereading this particular piece, my over-identification and reliance on the self was a severe failing, to put it lightly. The single perspective, especially the self-centred single perspective has been used many times in post-modernism to emphasize the frailty of it, the intrinsic failure hidden within. I refer to a work such as Peter Nadas' "Parallel Stories." Certain sections. Or Ishmael Reed's "The Free-Lance Pallbearers." Of many examples.

One of the reasons when I first replied that I had not mentioned language, syntax, rhythm, sound, music... was due to no one really mentioning either of these things in comments prior. I'd read the poem aloud to myself, and analyzed it, yet had not really discovered its failings in those areas. I had read it too many times, become numb to it in a sense, overly familiar with it, the way one becomes overly familiar with one's own name even if it sounds terribly awkward to another the first time hearing it. Does this make sense? This over-familiarization with one's own poetry to the point where the music/rhythm/sound of the poetry becomes almost irrelevant, as it starts to sound fluid regardless because of all the repeated scourings of it. I think you are right though, I was trying to veer rapidly away from something and was dropping too much into clichéd and ordinary sound, syntax, and diction to make it at all reasonable.

The two rhymes in the poem were terribly banal and embarrassing to note. I'm unsure as to how I did not catch that myself.

I've read a lot in many areas of literature, post-modern literature is just the area I enjoy most. Yet I've read extensively of ancient, classic, modernist, and contemporary (non-postmodern) literature. I've also had a couple poems (much shorter and less disjointed poems) published in one of my country's most respected literary reviews, however small its distribution likely is, this being Canada. The other two publications are certainly of the sort you know!

Some points where I don't completely agree:

-Pathetic fallacy. I don't have such a problem with this. Well, let me clarify. I have no problem with measured and controlled use of it for a certain effect. I do subscribe to a couple of Canada's most well-respected poetry journals, and pathetic fallacy is not so infrequent. Of course it's also not an overwhelming device, used every few lines. Many great poets used it regularly. Many Latin American poets. TS Eliot. Ginsberg. Etc.

-The surreal synaethesia of certain sections. Though I would suggest ideaethesia is more appropriate. This is post-cognitive, the random criss-crossings of cognitive/sensory pathways and experiences. Or this is my idea of it. Now the example you listed (dampness of axe swinging/sometimes singing) was terrible on my part, especially with the automatic rhyme that should have been edited out. It broke to suddenly from nowhere and went nowhere. As you also noted, there were several places in the poem like this. And even though I want this fragmented, disjointed, obfuscated narrative, certain lines, were rather inanely misplaced, or maybe mis-timed?

-I think part of my attempt to portray a fractured disjointed world was a jump from reassuring to disturbing and the areas between. Admittedly, with all the textual failures and the likewise failure to escape from rather ordinary syntax and language this was lost to a degree and came across quite poorly. But in my opinion it can work. The honest men making honest work, the reverence to the traditional working man, these are not at all at odds with post-modernism. They in fact show up frequently, only in an ironic vein which was my intent here with the "also raising prisons continuance." I admit again, this did not work well, not so much because of my intent, but due to language chosen, and lack of coherence of the idea. Or lack of expressing the incoherence of this dichotomy with poetic language. "Raised" is not so archaic for a building. Clichéd to some extent. But I've worked off and on raising timber-frame homes for years, and "raising" a building is a somewhat common term. And post-modern literature often purposefully mixes the disturbing and strange with the overtly familiar, with no clear demarcation of the boundary between. The reader must determine.

Okay. Enough of my words. I edited the poem. I'm not sure if I created something more coherent or less coherent. I attempted to create something more to the point of what I was trying to emphasize before. But not so at-odds between content and style. Not with so many stylistic failings obscuring intent. I'm not even sure what I'm saying here. I've attempted to place more emphasis on the structural and musical integrity of the text, though the musicality I want to express is, I hope, somewhat discordant.

Anyways. Regardless of whether I agree with every single point you made, that was a fantastic deconstruction, and certainly helped me see many of the flaws in this particular poem, and allowed me to analyze other works of mine for similar problems. So, with that in mind, thank you for the wonderful analysis.

[miyako73]

The "I" narrative as Romanticism not Postmodernism is just bullshyt. He/she should read poems, short stories, novels in the first person narrative voice included in the Postmodern literary canon.

[miyako73]

Island, can you post the original? I'm not trying to confuse you. This one seems overworked and stylistically paranoid. Some edgy lines are gone. It feels like you compromise and tame your wild, vivid voice. Just too much.

example:

"masquerade of tablecloth" sounds forced while "masquerading as tablecloth flows effortlessly.

This one is just too much:

wrapped in sad bells, the disconsolate
halfhearted abbreviation of sand