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Inbetween Lovers/Blueprint (Glosa) by Ranger
(quatrain taken from 'Blueprint' by god'swife; "Dream wife" from 'Penny
Loafer Blues' by ALChemy)
Tonight I hate your hands and their craft
I cannot sleep as you do
Pressed against the cool walls
Of sudden and strange houses
I should not secretly confess like this
Love with the lips, you always insisted
But then again, you prefer emotions to be audible
And I, ever the silent I
Have invisible wings wrapped about you all the time
Remarkable pain killer to take with every draught
That bears you up, away into the arms of some foreign sun
When early gold returns new lore will be spun
Although I'm prepared to accept it may seem like I laugh
Tonight I hate your hands and their craft
Your kiss, I'd guess, is as fleeting as your scarlet dress
I have no such flamenco flame to scorch me as I rest
I sleep alone. Does it make me seem strong in
Solitude? Mine is a scarf to cloak this voice but leave the body longing
How many times I have bargained, drunk with God
To take this lust - I'll plead again tomorrow
Take my heart, take my rib
Bring me the dream wife I've glimpsed in print
But don't think of me at night when you have much to prove
I cannot sleep as you do
Many evenings die, spent waiting for your Knight
Oblivious to the irony; a tall shadow splits in directional light
Ghostly spectrum - I admit my favourite shade is jealous
Of those skeletons of your offering whom you took inside
Too physical to hide
Too visible to avoid recall
Then you tell me I'm the only one who protects you through every storm
And you reduce me just a little more
With each new figure summoned to burn, to blaze, to fall
Pressed against the cool walls
In awe of the enchantment you engender
Days fold, stretch, decrease and end remembered
As tallied photographs of wasted air which does not thrill
I wish I was that Knight of myth, of sword, of skill
For he would be a blinding tempest wrapped in silver swirl
Whereas I am just the heir within this shirt and trouser hold
Who will watch the current make your banner wave
And if love is unknown, then I ought not say
How I hate that the mystery you espouse is
Of sudden and strange houses
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Arithmetic Mean: 8.666667
Weighted score: 6.8333335
Overall Rank: 338
Posted: April 6, 2006 9:05 AM PDT; Last modified: April 6, 2006 9:48 AM PDT
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Beyond_Dreams
Comments:
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There are some good strong lines and images. 'ever the silent', 'drunk with god', 'bring me the dream wife I've glimpsed in print', 'I admit my favourite shade is jealous', 'and you reduce me just a little more'.
I understand this has a certain structure that must be abided by and I know structure has much to do with choices, but the only way I can possibly critique this is simply as a poem, so bear with me if I make suggestions which go against the structure. My assumption, due to your ability to create images and sounds, is that you sincerely want to improve. Anne Sexton once said about her teacher at Boston university, the poet Robert Lowell, that "He works with a cold chisel with no more mercy than a dentist. He gets out the decay. He didn't teach me what to put into a poem but what to leave out." I have always been good at getting precisely to the point. I'm no Robert Lowel that's for certain, but many people have used me as an editor for every kind of writing from business letters to love letters. I don't know how much good I will do you, but- I know I can't do you harm.
I should not secretly confess like this
Love with the lips, you always insisted
But then again, you prefer emotions to be audible
This is very diffucult to understand on first read. The lack of a period at the end of the first line you wrote along with the comma between -...lips, and you always insisted- confuses what your trying to communicate. There should be a period at the end of line 1(when I refer to line numbers I'm not counting the first quantrain). the first piece of information, that you shouldn't confess, ends there. What she says is related but it is a seperate image. Then you reconsider how 'she' might like your confession, but alas, you don't confess, in fact you become silent and then the next 3 words tell us you have wings and then they're wrapped around 'her'. I am not saying you can't display many images in a small quantity of words. What i am saying is that here, without periods, pauses or sustained images the reader is sopreoccupied with trying to follow your train of thought that they can't relate to the poem. A reader can only be moved by art that strikes a cord in them. If they haven't experienced what you're discribing, then your discription should make them feel that they can imagine what it must. Ultimately you're trying to convey human existence, not some fabulous display of words and images, all poets are born with the ability to do that. The craft of writing is the ability to take an insight or emotion and express it, not only with style, but above all, the writer must do it with all sincerity. Say only the things that help your point get across. Everything else must go.
I think (having read your comments) in hindsight, that this is more abstract than I first thought it to be. The fact that it doesn't wholly follow the 'obsession' theme of Blueprint might not help my cause here, but I didn't want to just do a rewrite of your work, I wanted to add something to it.
The first three lines gave me a headache. 'I should not secretly confess like this [in writing, hidden away]/Love with the lips, you always insisted [open, honest speech and kissing]/But then again, you prefer emotions to be audible [no good being the 'strong and silent' type]. I guess I am going to have to rework this although getting round the structural constraints is going to be tough.
After that - yes it does deviate. I thought I could get away with it through the 'silent I' play to connect the two sections, but maybe it didn't work. 'Invisible wings' is actually pretty vital to the piece. I haven't included any filler in this, every line is relevant. I just need to make it a whole lot clearer. Maybe I should title it something like 'The Best Friend's Complaint'. Because that is the idea behind this. It's the traditional tale of 'her best friend being madly in love with her'. Hence the last two or three lines of each stanza, and the storm passage which you picked up on in your next post.
I should not secretly confess like this.
'This' is a pronoun which is used when the writer has already established what the pronoun 'this' is replacing. How am I suppose to know your saying you shouldn't confess in writing?
The verb 'writing', or any of its synonyms, is no where to be found. Why can't you say: I should not secretly confess in writing/on paper/with a letter/with my pen etc...? You can't use a pronoun when nowhere can be found the noun which the pronoun is substituting.
Love with the lips, you always insisted.
This line is completely understandable. Anyone reading it would come up with both the image of talking and/or of kissing/making love. That line needs no further work.
But then again you prefer emotions to be audible.
Again this line says nothing about the true meaning your trying to represent. there is nothing about her dislike of the strong and silent type. I could only come up with the images of her either wanting to make you wail from heartbreak or her sexually teasing you intil you screamed. And even then I was uncertain about my interpretation. Say what you mean. Conveying the information you want to communicate(in this case, that she doesn't like the silent type) is the first step you need to focus on.
"I haven't included any filler in this, every line is relevant".
Aye, there's the rub. That is the poet's great dilemma. Each expression, each phrase discribes something you felt. You just can't use them all at once. You have to choose, but if you focus on message first and style second, you will improve dramtically. You have to be ruthless about getting down to the bare bones. Once you establish a good foundation then you can test which embellishments make the poem beautiful. As for a title you should use --Madly in love with my bestfriend-- as a working title. If, while you're editing, you use a title that states what the poem is about, you will always be able to look to the top of the page and re-focus on what your poem is really suppose to be about.
As I said, I'm happy to give some guideness intil this works, but I am pressed for time these days, so I won't always be able to get back to you right away.
you do just that with "then you tell me I'm the only one who protects you through every storm and you reduce me just a little more". That's just fucking beautiful. It's not only what you say here, but how you say it, which gives this image the reality it needs to be understood. Any human being could imagine themselves thinking that thought. And for some you will have put into words feelings they had but could not express. That's poetry my friend. It's not a bunch of fancypants on a catwalk. It's engaging the audience and holding them all the way to the end of your poem. And that last line, that crucial line, must either hit them right in the gut or make them see cleary for a moment the loveliness and wonder of the world.
not in one of these stanzas can I make the connection between what's written before hand and what's written in the last line.
Is there suppose to be a relationship there?
The heart is in the right place but this poem is hokie overall and that's a real shame because there are so many exquisite lines contained within it. Keep plugging away.
1) 'Scene-setting'. This is something that the protagonist is dying for her to know, but doesn't dare say it. Silence and invisibility = the old cliche that you never sense what you have until it's not there. Pain killer = the way in which the protagonist is always there afterwards to 'pick up the pieces'. Foreign sun = moon = one night stands/short term relationships (which will inevitably hurt the protagonist as well).
2) He is talking about, essentially, boredom and loneliness when she's away on her jaunts. 'Dream wife I've glimpsed in print' is one hundred percent reality, hence the reference to ALChemy's poem.
3) Despite enjoying brief flings, she also wants that apparently universal desire of women (according to Hollywood, at least) - the knight in shining armour, while all along there's the protagonist right next to her.
4) Continuation of stanza 3, seeing each new lover (the current), and giving in to the knowledge that confessing all this won't do any good whatsoever.
It's a monstrously cliched story, but I've tried to practise what I preach and make it original. It'd be quite nice to create new cliches.
1) The scene is only visible after you decifer it for us. None of your metaphors have anything to do with each other. you have to stay with one metaphor for at least each stanza, and you have to use a metaphor that is plausible. what do the invisble wings represent? Love? Jealously? Obsession? then say:
A pair of invisible wings is my love/jealousy/obsession .....
or
My love/jealousy/obession is like a pair of invisible wings.
or
I wrap my love/jealousy/obsession around you;
a pair of invisible wings
to bear you up and keep you
far from pain.
You can't use painkiller as a metaphor for invisible wings and then say they take you to the arms of some foreign sun. Painkillers can't take you to the arms of a foreign sun. Invisible wings can but it's to late! You changed them into painkillers. Painkillers can take you to the arms of nirvana or to the arms of sleep; the arms of relief etc.... If you want the other guy to be a foreign sun then you have to keep the wings. If you wanted you could make her a comet/angel/Icarus or anything else that can make it to the sun. You make a mess of things when you keep changing the metaphors. If you want to introduce a new image you can try using a simile:
My invisible wings like death
take you away to the arms of a foreign sun.
Wings can carry you off to a foreign sun and death can carry you to either heaven or hell which can be represented as a foreign sun. All the metaphors and similes are related to each other. They make one cohesive image for the reader to build on.
You also start with a silent written confession but 'she' would rather you love with the lips i.e. with speech or kisses. But it could also be that she wants your emotions to be heard outloud.
How can you say but then again?
She doesn't like A she insists on B, but then again she prefers b. There's no logic.
I don't like waffles I insist on pancakes, but then again I prefer flapjacks. It looks to me like your trying to do to much to soon.
And as far as ordinary language and memorable poetry is oncerned Blueprint is completey written in common language.
Tonight - I - hate - your - hands - and - their - craft.
I - cannot - sleep - as - you - do
Pressed - against - the - cool - walls
Of - sudden - and - strange - houses.
Okay, I'm getting too defensive there. I can see the links without problem, but I guess maybe I do throw too many metaphors around. Maybe I should keep them all and expand the poem, or perhaps I'll edit a few out. I'll rewrite this as a completely new poem; I want to keep this version so that I can see where the improvements came from, and generally to compare the two (plus it's got a good score =D).
Blueprint - I actually disagree that the language is ordinary. Or if it is, I don't think there's anything in my piece that isn't especially common. No more so than the idea of 'sudden houses'. People might pick out certain words and say 'nobody uses that in everyday speech'. The same with the play on 'draught'. Nobody really uses those sorts of plays. But that's what poetry is, to me. It's a game. It's a challenge to hide things under the surface, to apply double meanings and see if people spot them. Good poetry is when it's made beautiful.
Anyway, that's off topic. I will rewrite this after having a good think. Having seen the recent lack of comments on here, I'm not sure I'll get much from posting it on the ranker. Do you use any other sites? I feel like I'm haven't really advanced recently (slight writer's block as well) and could do with learning new tricks.
Anyway, these are just general points, I will spend some time looking at how to incorporate your advice into my writing.
To take this lust - I'll plead again tomorrow."
Here's what Louise Gluck, the former Poet Laureate in the U.S., said on the topic of ordinary--well, simple--language.
"The axiom is that the mark of poetic intelligence or vocation is passion for language, which is thought to mean delirious response to languageâs smallest communicative unit: to the word. The poet is supposed to be the person who canât get enough of words like "incarnadine." This was not my experience. From the time, at four or five or six, I first started reading poems, first thought of the poets I read as my companions, my predecessors â from the beginning I preferred the simplest vocabulary. What fascinated me were the possibilities of context. What I responded to, on the page, was the way a poem could liberate, by means of a wordâs setting, through subtleties of timing, of pacing, that wordâs full and surprising range of meaning. It seemed to me that simple language best suited this enterprise; such language, in being generic, is likely to contain the greatest and most dramatic variety of meaning within individual words. I liked scale, but I liked it invisible. I loved those poems that seemed so small on the page but that swelled in the mind; I didnât like the windy, dwindling kind. Not surprisingly, the sort of sentence I was drawn to, which reflected these tastes and native habit of mind, was paradox, which has the added advantage of nicely rescuing the dogmatic nature from a too moralizing rhetoric."
[From Louise Glück, "Education of the Poet," Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry (New York: Ecco, 1994) 4-5.]
Gluck's not the final word on the topic, obviously--she's talking about her own experience, and certainly there's room for variation and experimentation. But there's something to be said for creating magic from common cloth. The trick to it is making simple, ordinary language seem fresh and your own, and using all the other poetic techniques--meter and the way the words play together--to make it something special. That's something not too many people can pull off, IMO--but it's worth striving for, I think.