Hi All,
I have posted a new version reacting to crits. I’ve made the beginning just a little darker, mostly in fixing archaisms and strange wordings. Botching is now defiling…does that work?
Hi Alexandra,
Thank you first of all for getting comments going. I’ve been a little gruesome lately examining animal mortality and am never sure how such themes will go over. I had just reread Hemingway’s “Big Two hearted River” before writing this. In that story Nick Adams bashes a trout against a log to kill it before dressing it out and returning it to his keel. Not for the first time, I came to question my own hypocrisies about animals, a question shared by many I am sure in that I eat animals others kill but I get squeamish if I have to be the executioner and butcher. When I wrote this and posted it I was visualizing the fish already in the N’s possession and that the N was struggling to proceed with dressing it out. Now I see it’s obvious for the reader to think the first part of the poem involves the catch rather than the cleaning. You asked about my comparison between the two, the sex, and the fish. One intent was to compare the apprehension present the first time one has sex with the first time one takes on a squeamish chore. Another intent was to make the reader consider that sense of hypocrisy I was feeling, and then to let meat eaters like me off the hook at the end when remembering some nicely cooked piece of fish. Another intent was to flip reader expectations just for the fun of doing so. In that, I am just a senior citizen seeking my juvenile side. All that said, a writer’s intentions are nothing if they don’t succeed in the reader asking the same type of questions as the writer is asking.
Hi Susan,
This is not the first time I have thought archaisms are going to be acceptable because I write a poem trying to be quirky and cute. So far on the sphere, I am batting zero in using archaisms to reach such questionable goals. You, Nemo, Ralph and John all question my use of them here. Alexandra had no opinion on them, probably only because she was withholding crits until I give her a poem without what she saw as a major fail. So let’s call it a consensus: the archaisms have to go. I’ve added a foot to L13. I am still working on coming up with a new ending couplet with a better rhyme. Thanks for the help.
Hi Nemo,
I think I’ve ditched the archaisms, although I sometimes use them without intent and they slip in. I too would like the poem to be more than just a trick played on reader expectations. My revision doesn’t really do much to change its general lack of something to chew on except the fish provided, so to speak. I’ll keep my mind open to ideas and my sense of humor too. Thanks for the comments.
Hi Ralph,
Thanks for commenting. I tried to fix some things per the crits, and hopefully more ideas will come. I tried to be true to the Elizabethan sonnet form, but I flipped the typical theme of love around a bit trying to be cute. Comments have been kinder than the poem deserves. I’ll keep thinking on ways to improve it.
Hi John,
I think you are giving me spot on advice. My problem isn’t only that I am trying to sound poetic though. I once wrote a resume when I was about thirty-five that was filled with archaisms. I didn’t realize it until a friend reviewed it for me. Apparently I am generally always out of date and playing catch up. At least this time most of the archaisms were intentional, if misguided. I have put up a new version but it still has that waxing poetic artifice I think you are talking about. I’ll work on it. Thanks for the help.
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