Collage

[shortstoryfan]

I am going to look at this closer and comment on it later. I am putting this here so I will 1.) remember and 2.) feel an obligation to do so. If I haven't replied in a few days, please begin to harass me.

[shortstoryfan]

Okay. The impression I get from this poem is a poet who is living in this non-poetic world. He's hearing all these meaningless conversations, but his mind can't stop going back to poetry. Maybe he's composing the italicized stuff on the subway while listening to people talk? The unitalicized stuff seems inconsistent. In the first stanza, you have the speaker reporting what he overhears. In the third, you have the voices of the people on the subway coming into the poem directly. My issue with this is that you have many lines in these unitalicized sections that are very lyric or poetic, for instance, "The stores are always on fire." What a line! It conjures up so much. It seems related to the material that comes after...the material/appearance stuff. I think some of these examples in the third stanza (that seem more like overheard conversations about hair dye, nails, etc.) are too general. Actually, the ones where the speaker is reporting what he overhears are kind of general too. Even though they are supposed to be kind of funny and depthless, it would still be more interesting if they were really off the wall in some way.

And I'm not too concerned about this seem cross genre.

I hope this helps, but I'm so bad with communication it probably won't. I can't totally see where you are going with this, and I think you just need to solidify the movie in your mind on the page.

[symphony]

Okay. The impression I get from this poem is a poet who is living in this non-poetic world. He's hearing all these meaningless conversations, but his mind can't stop going back to poetry. Maybe he's composing the italicized stuff on the subway while listening to people talk? The unitalicized stuff seems inconsistent. In the first stanza, you have the speaker reporting what he overhears. In the third, you have the voices of the people on the subway coming into the poem directly. My issue with this is that you have many lines in these unitalicized sections that are very lyric or poetic, for instance, "The stores are always on fire." What a line! It conjures up so much. It seems related to the material that comes after...the material/appearance stuff. I think some of these examples in the third stanza (that seem more like overheard conversations about hair dye, nails, etc.) are too general. Actually, the ones where the speaker is reporting what he overhears are kind of general too. Even though they are supposed to be kind of funny and depthless, it would still be more interesting if they were really off the wall in some way.

And I'm not too concerned about this seem cross genre.

I hope this helps, but I'm so bad with communication it probably won't. I can't totally see where you are going with this, and I think you just need to solidify the movie in your mind on the page.

Thanks for commenting. It does help. The friends I showed it to said they could relate to it right away so I wanted to know how readers who have no idea of what influenced this and are less familiar with my perspectives would make of it. Will they see the same things? Hear the same music?

You made a good point. I'll have to edit and put quotation marks in stanza 3. And no I didnt want to put in random or any overheard conversation in general. My intention was to address the modern (especially western) perspective (or should I say approach) on love. I failed if that failed to come through. Or may be not, there are so many ways to read a poem, whichever works for a reader will make me happy enough.

I appreciate that you also thought of it as the poet thinking of the poem -or if I may- seeing these flashes of another (although related) world in her mind while indifferently listening to the conversations in the subway. I wanted it that way (and it was sort of created in that way). The monotonous rhythm of the train, along with the broken conversations and perspectives on love that we know we hear everyday, where fashion also comes in, because of the dependence of this love on updated and upgraded looks. This, slowly turning into a slow jazz, taking one to a different evening. But it is the same lie, the pretentiousness that love has become. A love that will pass. One can look at their past and see those many loves passing by...
And yet there are the evergreen lemon trees to appreciate, and to have.

[ahsiam]

i'd like to say two sentences....
its wow!!!
its not you!!!