Okay, I'm back. Sorry about the slight lateness in finishing up.
There is so much about the tone, the imagery, and the movement in this piece that is so wonderful, that I'm actually glad that I 'put it down' for a few days and came back to it. I realize now that for all its lovely sadness, there are a few elements that are unclear for me. It's a credit to you that I was so taken with it my first time through that I missed the fact that I'm fuzzy on a few things! :)
In the second stanza, you wrote:
I imagine being in the room, still too young to get out of the crib, on that fateful December evening.
I read through the rest of the poem and I can't tell if the speaker is recollecting being in the room at that time or simply imagining it.
The 'No' that begins the third stanza seems to indicate that the speaker is correcting his own memory. But then I'm confused again because you repeat this same one word followed by a colon structural beginning for the next two stanzas. This seems like it could indicate that each of these is yet another correction, but the choice of 'but' seems odd to indicate this.
I love the details you've included. I love the tone, the rhythms, the structure, the imagery, the relationships between these people. I just am struggling to understand how you intend them to go together, what their presence means to the poem.
If they are different possible memories, then what changes in the choosing of one over another? Or is the point simply that memory is an unreliable witness? And if that is the point, what is the speaker left with as a result? What are the pieces that he has that cannot be stitched together?
This is an absolutely gorgeous work-in-progress that absolutely deserves a rewrite. There is so much love and beauty in this. It just needs a bit of clarification so that you know you are guiding the reader along the path you intend for him/her/zie to follow.
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Date: 2012-07-16 12:29 am (UTC)There is so much about the tone, the imagery, and the movement in this piece that is so wonderful, that I'm actually glad that I 'put it down' for a few days and came back to it. I realize now that for all its lovely sadness, there are a few elements that are unclear for me. It's a credit to you that I was so taken with it my first time through that I missed the fact that I'm fuzzy on a few things! :)
In the second stanza, you wrote:
I imagine being in the room, still
too young to get out of the crib,
on that fateful December evening.
I read through the rest of the poem and I can't tell if the speaker is recollecting being in the room at that time or simply imagining it.
The 'No' that begins the third stanza seems to indicate that the speaker is correcting his own memory. But then I'm confused again because you repeat this same one word followed by a colon structural beginning for the next two stanzas. This seems like it could indicate that each of these is yet another correction, but the choice of 'but' seems odd to indicate this.
I love the details you've included. I love the tone, the rhythms, the structure, the imagery, the relationships between these people. I just am struggling to understand how you intend them to go together, what their presence means to the poem.
If they are different possible memories, then what changes in the choosing of one over another? Or is the point simply that memory is an unreliable witness? And if that is the point, what is the speaker left with as a result? What are the pieces that he has that cannot be stitched together?
This is an absolutely gorgeous work-in-progress that absolutely deserves a rewrite. There is so much love and beauty in this. It just needs a bit of clarification so that you know you are guiding the reader along the path you intend for him/her/zie to follow.
Always a pleasure. :)