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October 27, 2004
Pond Side in Georgia
The ugly green stinking thing wasnít dead
even with two lead bullets in its head.
It crawled and hissed and reeked like rotten meat.
They plugged the beast again; held by its feet
it leaked blood from the holes under its eyes.
We pointed, grinning, loving death and I
admit to being excited by notions
as old and gory as lifeís first ocean.
This snapperís final breath an exercise
in Darwinís little game ñ now food for flies.
Thinking of this now, I want to go back
and spare that leathern victim our gross lack
of respect, having newly found my own
voice that can see what I had not then known.
Life, being life, was not ours to discard
so casually. Invisibly scarred,
yet truly convinced; death has no owner,
it belongs to us all (turtle, father,
brother), a strange communal crime to blame
on those who are not us. We take their name,
reorder its letters to fit the sin,
and call it evil ñ worse than that within
us at our darkest, prodding dead turtles
as boys ñ each generationís new hurdle.
Posted by Josh at October 27, 2004 05:59 PM
Comments
I am mostly curious about your responses to this being in heroic couplets. If read aloud it shouldn't sound so formal, see what you think.
Posted by: Josh at October 27, 2004 06:02 PM
Okay. I fixed line 15. Too bad it wasn't caught before I turned this one in.
Posted by: Josh at October 28, 2004 08:44 PM
ok, unfix line 15. i really liked it better that way. It breaks up the couplets. also it indicates the turn.
was this for an assignment? have you tried it broken up different? that might change the reading. i don't know if you would want to do that, but i think this poem is good and *might* be hurt by the format. what do you think?
Posted by: garth at October 29, 2004 04:47 PM
I agree. Although I like the challenges the format presents, I am thinking of extending the lines in a more Whitmanesque fashion. I also think that line 15 was better the way it was. This brings up an interesting question that many, many essays could be written upon. If a poet makes an inadvertant mistake that ends up ADDING to the poem, was it actually intended somehow? Does the subconscious mind actually work with or against the poem to enhance or detract from it? Yes, somehow the answer can only be yes.
Posted by: Josh at October 30, 2004 12:17 AM
Damn, I wish I had seen line 15...
...Your first stanza sounds strong; enjoy line 1
especially, a line that sounds childlike, with
that fascination with death. There are many good substitutions, such as trochee "held by" in line 4, to imitate the helplessness of the turtle, and line 7 "being excited", with the quick movement of an anapest
...line 8 seems a bit didactic. I enjoy the specifics of the rest of the first stanza, but that last line's "life's first ocean" somewhat
allegorical (this comment coming from a poet who IS a walking abstraction).
...the second stanza seems problematic, and I can see your point about changing up to "Whitmanesque" lines (congeries, quanderies?.
Anapests run rampant: this would be a good time to ask about this usage of anapests. To me, anapests seem to run lightly for comic effect, or over ironic statements, so they don't always work here:
-line 11 used to go back in time and change things (works well)
-line 16's anapest moves a little too lightly (Dana Goia, I am at your service) for such a serious line, especially when there are iambs in the first two lines (giving you iambic tetrameter)
-line 17 iambic tetrameter,with trochee, double iamb, anapest, and extra syllable ending: can't really stress "has", since a medial caesura seems to lie before "death": line has a great sound for syntactic effect, but falls short of heroic couplet i.p.
-line 18: I get 2 anapests and 2 trochees: unbalanced and in tetrameter.(I love the trinity of "turtle, father, brother", however)
-line 21: medial anapest fits word "reorder"
...best advice would be to get this out of heroic couplet form and write it to your liking: however, if problematic lines are restructured, then it could still stay in heroic couplet form, but I do see this coming in your nicely cut stanzaic form I am used to seeing. Overall, I love the specifics, but lines need work.
Posted by: tony at October 30, 2004 11:09 PM
The first few lines would be helped by changing the punctuation slightly, and getting out of the heroic couplets. Were you intending to make the first lines voiced from a child? If you were, I think its awesome- like The Sound and the Fury- but it would need to use more child-like language.
The point of view changes from "they" to "we," and I think that it would be cool if you began with "we" from the get go.
Overall, it reminds me of a darker version of "The Fish" (I've forgotten the author). I like the subject of your poem very much.
Posted by: amber at November 6, 2004 04:50 PM