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December 11, 2004
Love Letter (Revision 1/03/04)
"Not easy to state the change you made" - Sylvia Plath's "Love Letter"
Itís never simple to change, once you live like
the stillness of glass. According to my nativity,
never to be bothered by it, though I could say
your name millions of different ways; it would still
come out the same. I am not sure what
color yours were; they always pointed to heaven,
with such unexpected descriptions; a close destination
where we saw disenchanting glibness, walleyed stars.
That will be all. I froze, say, two or three stares:
hidden in quarterly fish-wrappers as this fish does when
surrounded by metropolitan-ality of reviews in Fall.
Like like-minded dilettantes, ingenues with faulty wings -
Winged cheeks that engorge with blush and bite
my own pallid sauce with one vacant eye staring
snappishly at your moon visors; what will one more
be to me? These affectations bear no knowledge
of my hieroglyphic skin. These bladders remind me of
several other panpipes I played, with no treble response.
And still I carried on, a finger crawling with empty circumference.
The first thing I had had was dead air
and the locked vision that zeroed on nothings
that sprayed my incarnadine alloy, without preparation.
Full of aerated domes, I couldnít quite find my way out.
I froze, emasculated by the bedizens, the masks of flesh-
colored fluids mirror against the warm salt of a drug
of choice, mirroring smiles, swallowing away bistering sea.
I couldnít tell. I see you from the jump.
You fall, and catch the shooting light of ammonia, methane,
carbon dioxide, and water, always ahead by
the hair on its head. As my circumference closes,
engulfing a pose of an icebound effigy, the snare encircles me;
From sky to glass I have progressed, bending the language
to suit my needs. Now I dissemble those spindling stars,
twinkles that catch me. These snuff-colored stars gush ice,
freeze the brain in emerald negatives. Iíve a knack for it.
Posted by tony at December 11, 2004 04:02 PM
Comments
All I can say is I feel a little exhausted after reading this. This poem is packed to the brim with emotion. Only I'm not sure, at the end, what I just felt. A sense of disillusionment, disenchantment, unrequited love, sadness. All these things with a certain "Scoggins-esque" opacity to them. I'm curious about the lines being nearly all the same length and the cadence, were you going for a certain syllabic rhythm?
I don't really have any specific suggestions. Just the usual - condense it where you think you can. I actually get the feeling that this is the condensed version. Although this could easily be a prose poem. What if you tried it in prose poem form with a little more concrete detail?
Posted by: Josh at December 14, 2004 12:32 AM
Some things to consider....
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/612.html
..that's the link to Plath's "The Love Letter", what I pay homage to for this poem. I watched Gwyneth Paltrow's take in her movie, "Sylvia", which I don't entirely agree with, but I think was interesting. This take on personification, in changing speaker, is something I have been delving into all semester, and now to try a woman's point of view...
...This one was difficult for me, although I intertwine my style with Plath's style. Although lines such as "always and forever" and "pomp and circumstance" are more self-aggrandizing moments, I wanted to use her metaphors for tears and crying, and her focus of her self in characters such as fish, rabbits, etc. Her self-realization between Ted and herself, him being the Fox and Pike and predatory animals, while her prey relationship is very indicative of what her real life was like. Hughes told her once that she had a great subject for her work, which was her own life. That is the brilliance of her work, I believe.
...I have attempted to encompass her style, but have mine blended inside this poem, in the process of doing so. Blame Dr. Amber for this one: she pointed it out to me when I was reading, "Crossing the Water."
So, things to watch out for: personification of both the poet and the poet 'imitated' in the process; synecdoches, such as what relevancy fingers have on the speaker; and, of course, metaphors for tears. Josh picked up on the sadness right away, which is good, but there is a more specific incident mentioned here that I will attempt to solidify as I revise, without giving too much away. And, I will attack the lines that may be unnecessary, but the stanzas are there for a reason.
..And, now, on to Josh's poem...
...Good luck, all, on this final week!
Posted by: tony at December 14, 2004 11:34 PM