critiquing is very hard!
Justin, your poems are extraordinarily good. I like how descriptive they are and how you managed to infuse certain sentiments and ideas in them. It is extremely difficult for me to take it apart because they are so neatly crafted. I have little to comment on your style, it is very wordswordian yet distinctive. You create an interesting voice for the reader, distant yet still welcoming. These poems sound very private (especially "sitting across...") as if one had stumbled upon hearing a monologue amongst yourself.
I noticed you like to conclude your poems with some sort of diversion. The concluding stanza seems always curt and short. Its a little "punch" if you will. You pull it off well, but sometimes it seems the diversion is a bit tacked on for the sake of ending a poem. I notice this mostly in "to a willow....", the sudden rhyming pattern and meter is a surprise after such a strong prose. It sounds almost lightly comic, as to bring your romanticization of the tree "back to earth". i'd be interested as to know why you choose to write this last stanza. I like the poem, especially your description of the tombstones.
"Rust and Fire" is a very strong poem with much invested energy that is especially apparent in your language such as in the lines "...my heart’s eyes" and " you are ablaze" and others. I like how it seems you are speaking to someone in particular, yet the poem may be directed to all women. However, i find that the poem is a bit of a contradiction since you are speaking of women yet there is no voice from her. She remains your subject that you describe from your (masculine) point of few. it reads almost voyeuristically. I know your intentions are good, but this is such criticism you may receive from other readers. perhaps removing your intimacy with the subject by taking the "I" may universal the voice, rather than keeping it yours or belong to someone. To make it ambiguous of who is speaking is one strategy you might want to consider.
"Sitting across..." is a very sweet poem. It is very introverted and speculative of "common people". I refer to Wordsworth's romanticization of the peasants when i say that. You take a portrait of a stranger and make him familiar through imagination. It is a very sweet and magical transformation that only poetry can allow. My only question is why make this stranger suddenly become a close and gracious figure to the reader, and then take away that familiarity with a latin phrase? It is rather esoteric and often not associated with "an art of the people". And again, as in "To a willow..." the poem ends with a curt volta-like turn, bringing us back to grounds. I would like to know why you choose to end the poem like that?
thank you so much for submitting your poems; they were a pleasure to read. I hope to further discuss them and read more in the future.
Annie.
posted by . @ 8:08 PM
3 Comments:
Thank you for your comments.
The use of the rhyme scheme in "Willow" was more to bring the poem to a "cascading" end, and to give the tree more of a traditional feel of nature and so forth. Like how the branches kind of go here and there but at the bottom, they just fall and hang over.
"Rust and Fire" was more attempting to be an inverse of all of the traditional "I" poems that turn women into virgins and little girls, rather than seeing them as human beings. So it's interesting that you see it as still objectifying when I'm trying to create a subject out of this inverse. I'll have to think on this.
"Subway" is actually more about my insecurities. Here is this strapping, strong man, which I am not, who is probably romantic in ways which I am not (at least, in my head), and can be a certain way with a loved one - "you" - that I cannot. So I romanticize him, and the insert of Cutis ansirina is me - being more brainy and less romantic. My intelligence is what I have and not strong hands or arms, but that is not always what is wanted. And I ended that one in a way to juxtapose with how I started. "His hands are large and calloused," while "My hands are small and weak."
I was wondering if you recommend dropping the last bit from "Willow" altogether.
i think the concluding sonnet is cute, but it does substract from the tone you've already established...omiting it is worth thinking of, but maybe revising it maybe better.
i know the attempt in rust and fire is honourable, and really, i think overall the poem is very beautiful. But poetry on the theme of women will be scrutinize. That this poem in particular talks about a particular women (perhaps your wife) and then points to all women as "honouralbe enough" may border on romantizing women,...because it is a short poem, there is no argumenet as to why women are honourable and such...i mean, history makes it clear, but history is also wrought with patriarchical "honourable" definitions of "women".
i will comment more later...
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