Saturday, June 20, 2009

Blind Review Friday



The author is not actually very anonymous to people who read this blog! But the magic words ("workshop the hell out of this poem") were spoken, and, lo!

Those commenting are welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.

Incendiary comments will be removed.

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to http://www.blogger.com/salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.
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:

J.E. Stanley said...

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.

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

Good copy-editing, Jim, thanks. My bad.
I corrected the text to put the italics back where they belong.

michael salinger said...

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

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

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!

John B. Burroughs said...

Excellent poem!

Runechris said...

Like this piece a lot...

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau