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This week's offering (a day late - sorry) is from a Cleveland poetics blog regular.
Gonzo Canon
He came on a fury of grin vapors
when time was wine, space cream,
and he chose shelter in an ancient
diction. I can be the god
you never knew, the how and why
in your darkness. Elephant fiction
written in acid dreams at knife-point –
proper names changed in odd ways
to protect the sick and feeble. Eternal
listeners, I will make you ears. Big plans,
little starts and halts. Bits of lobe itched
our head holes until The Thirteen Fears
erupted. I bleed at every pore. Stunned,
we shot him high into the blue river.
6 comments:
I'll have more to say about this piece later, especially since I greatly admire the work of this particular poet. Initially though, I just wanted to mention the shifts in POV. In the original, the phrases/lines:
. . . "I can be the god
you never knew, the how and why
in your darkness." . . .
. . . "Eternal
listeners, I will make you ears." . . .
and
. . . "I bleed at every pore." . . .
are italicized. While I can't speak to the author's intentions, I assume she did this to clarify that there are two distinct and separate voices here. And yes, I am being too picky. Me being me. Still, I thought I'd point this out before there's too much discussion, since I feel that, in this case, the italics make a difference.
Italics often get lost when cutting and pasting, posting to sites/blogs, etc. In fact, I can't even find a way to italicize in this comment. My own email won't let me italicize at all, which is a problem when it comes to submitting certain pieces in the body of an email.
Good copy-editing, Jim, thanks. My bad.
I corrected the text to put the italics back where they belong.
Thanks for jumping in on his Geoff - I am currently chasing fish off the coast of North Carolina and was without internet access for awhile there.
mgs
michael: Sounds like fun! If you see a giant catfish while you're out there, stick your head in its mouth and see if it's got any poems in there!
Excellent poem!
Like this piece a lot...
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