Poetry / Small Rooms

I really loved the visualization in this poem. I could picture everything, and I could feel the loneliness. I got kind of a city vibe from it, which I love. Being trapped in a small town, I love the poetry that puts me somewhere else. I really loved the words used. I am not very good at using “big words” in poetry so I always marvel at people who can. Overall, it was very nicely done.

Amazing, i felt everything you wrote. Everything you seemed to desribe was everything i’ve felt before. It made me feel cold in some parts in need of coffee and a warm sofa. I love the part about the photo fading on the fridge, cause it’s just so normal. I think everyone has a picture like that on their fridge. I love writers who do that, take something so normal and make it seem so different.

well done..image well developed..emotions came to me,..perhaps not those intended..but again a good piece.

Fairly decent for an early attempt (your guidlines seem to indicate it’s your first) You did at several points seem to change your mind on what you writing about though. Maintaining a single idea is the key and hardest part of writing great poetry. Also at several spots you just wrote a single sentence and broke it into pieces. While you didn’t do it as much as some people i’ve reviewed it is something I’d suggest trying to avoid as it can be a crutch. Not bad though good luck in the future. Au revoir

a photo fading on the fridge,
        the last echo
        of temperate, after-hours breezes,
        purchased on lay-away,

this is my favorite part …I love the reference to lay away. It gives me a sharp clear vision and feeling.

I also like the reference to “neon preists”

and the “angular ache of daylight savings time”  I like your imagery

Gives a very lonely isolated feeling

and the ending is very potent.

one of the best I’ve read thus far

My favorite line is:
against the first seasonal flurries of
   oh, how i hate to be alone.
I think it is an interesting twist – you don’t waste words and by combining the image of early snow and the idea of lonliness that seems to become more pronounced as the weather gets colder, you make the point more effectively.

The description in this poem is amazing.  I love how everything relates to loneliness or solitude in some way.  There were some stand out lines here:

up urgent streets,
bats at sunset,
oyumel-hungry monarchs
indentured to millennia-old instincts

LOVED indentured to millennia-old instincts.  

     There is a lot to talk about, so give me a chance to unfurl my thoughts.  First, the obvious, your metaphors at times really sparkle.  I really like “refugees…cobwebbed corners of solitude,” “orphans of solstice,” and “clamour’s expatriates,” not to mention the implied metaphor, or so I think, regarding the speaker as an “Inuit, a very strong image that juxtaposes our fragile existence of “small rooms” against the outer world.  The line that finishes off that verse paragraph, “oh, how I hate to be alone,” seems notable since it both strikes the reader as a sudden personal (and the only emotional) exclaimation from the speaker as well as a phrase made into a metaphor.  
     I like how the poem reads like a brisk observant poet’s walk, formed of a hurried litany of common-place objects and experiences as they go past the speaker during the walk and, in fact, through the mind as with the inclusion of a seeminly finished poem inside the speaker’s thoughts, evoked by memories of “holiday furloughs” and perhaps once inspired by them as well.
     “Inspiration’s/ inebriated saunter” is too good a phrase to leave out of this critique before I finish with one small point, two.   First, I cannot imagine from the evidence of the poem what the metaphor/and or phrase “neon priests” refers to or brings to the poem.  The second point involves this wistful littany.  The world of the poem is well established.  Your readers walk with your speaker “hurrying at day’s final fading.”  The voice is almost nostalgic in it’s tone, as is the speaker in the almost operatic, yet commonplace, walk of the poem.  Nevertheless, for some reason, I feel less emotionally involved than analytically, and therefore wonder if you might have room to add a tad about your speaker.  I get that this is a poem about “small rooms” in which people never quite touch.  Images exist in this walk, but not in relation to each other, not touching either in some ways.  And I know it’s a little Kafka-esque.  Still, I wonder if the addition of one thing, whatever it might be, would lure readers back to the walk and the poem.  
     I never like to hear what the poet has to say before my visceral impressions.  I will see now if you’ve added any writer’s thoughts to other critiques.

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September 12, 2006

by w84gdo

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No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
64	90.9% (11 votes)	17.0%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
48	M	KC, MO	February 11

thanks for the kind words.

alas, i too feel the slight blip caused by “neon priest”, but being besotted with all things urban, i let it slide.  

it does have a purpose – since the poem is about seasonal affected disorder (other than the first couple weeks of daylight savings time and how it seems to draw people together and in doors, i have a serious unease with the lengthening evenings). most people treat the disorder with psychologists, prescriptions or increased visits to mass – i respond by getting out around people even if i don’t really know them.

i fear that there isn’t so much a single speaker as all those who get depressed and fear the solitude of longer evenings.

thanks again for the thoughts. i’ll revisit the ‘neon priests’

peace

will

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At some points it becomes hard to follow and I began to lose my train of thought.  However, the images that I did get were vivid and well painted in my mind.  I really started to get into it more toward the end and I thought your last two lines of “not good company, perhaps, but company none the less.” were very good and left satisfied with the entire piece.  I think this was well written, but could use a bit more structure or flow.  Keep it up!

This is a delicate piece.  Some references are probably obscure for most, which narrows your audience significantly…and if you are writing to those with broad knowledge or the ambition to do what it takes to educate oneself to unknown references (both species exceedingly and increasingly rare), you may find it a little difficult to find a place in the writer’s marketplace if that is your objective.

If your incentive and objective is purer and simpler and that, then your ability to evoke such complex thought and meaning with simple words and ideas is pretty impressive.

I was particularly stricken by the lines: “oyumel-hungry monarchs
indentured to millennia-old instincts”  This somewhat obscure reference to the migration of the monarch butterflys to the oyumel forests of Mexico, a genetically-programmed phenomenon very much like the up-stream return of the Salmon from the sea each year to the points of their origination to spawn and die.
The evening migration of people through the “urgent streets” and into their tenement hallways as something compelled in their nature was beautiful.

However, I found that image somewhat contradicted by the image of “bats at sunset”...at sunset bats explode from their caves like black shadowy specks of snow in a blizzard storm…their migration is outward.

Thus, you have bats migrating outward from their homes, butterflies returning to their “homes”, and people migrating to their homes.

Maybe the bats should be salmon in Gorge of the Columbia River?  That would be a little more consistent imagery for me.

I understand the reason for the bats, it being dusk and all…but dusk could have a second implication, a twilight of life implication, with the imagery of salmon and monarchs…their migrations so similar in purpose…fulfillment of the innate and overwhelming drive to reproduce before death, compelling each of them to journey thousands upon thousands of miles, so many dying in the attempt, to fulfill that programmed need.  Bats just fly out of a cave they made home by convenience, even the attic spaces of the apartment dwellings you describe, merely to feed a lesser hunger.

I think the complexity of the oyumel-bound monarchs deserves a more fitting mate than bats.

Okay, I’ve beaten that point to death.  Enough has been said.

I truly enjoyed your poem.

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September 11, 2006

by w84gdo

personal info reviewer stats

No. of Reviews	Overall Quality	Comment Followup
64	90.9% (11 votes)	17.0%

Age	Gender	Location	Last Login
48	M	KC, MO	February 11

ah-ha! i knew your type was out there somewhere – a worldly-wise reader with a new critic’s touch.  

thank you for the words and thoughts. i will consider the salmon (the Columbia river gorge, adds just that poetic touch…damn, you’ve now got me thinking on a poem i thought was done…)

not to sound ridiculously self possessed, but i quote Blake: “i do not write for those who don’t understand”

i think that statement is out of touch for those seeking an audience, but this endeavor must also feed me as well.

the bats: i may have failed (which now gives me a second reason to revisit this poem) in communicating – the individuals in the poem are heading out from their caves, due to seasonal depression (except for the novelty and ‘closeness’ of the first few week of the autumn time change, i loath the long nights of winter), to seek what little comfort they can find in the company of shoppers, coffee house denizens, etc…

thanks again for the thoughtful words. they were a breath of fresh air.  when time allows i will visit your page to peruse the verse you choose to share with the world.

peace
will

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