Quote:
Originally Posted by Yves S L
Hello all,
So this poem is perfect for practicing iambic pentameter. For that reason I have begun to extend it. Here is the first cut. Any comments?
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Sure, I have a comment.
I notice that you often self-deprecate in your workshop threads, dismissing a particular poem as just an experiment or exercise. Here, you are characterizing this poem as iambic pentameter practice.
Not that there's anything wrong with writing persona poems. The narrative "I" need not actually be the poet for a poem to bear witness to Truth. Some of M.A. Griffiths's most devastatingly effective poems are persona poems in which the narrator is quite obviously not her, but one gets the sense that she is truly inhabiting that person's perspective and world in a way that evokes genuine emotional responses.
In contrast, this poem feels as if it's being told from the safe distance of a hypothetical situation and a fictional persona. The transgressive sexual scenario has edginess, first for its strangeness and then for its violence, but to me that edginess seems blunted by distancing strategies such as the narrator's claim to be "asking for a friend" rather than asking on his own behalf.
The longer Version 2 feels even more removed from the Truth than Version 1. The precise details of his interactions with the angry witch are far less interesting to me than the narrator's defensiveness about being judged harshly by others in general. I sense some interestingly genuine, autobiographical Truth in that reluctance to be personally vulnerable — even in the very act of writing what appears to be a confessional poem.
(Not that I think that what is being confessed has anything to do with the poet's actual life, of course; but the narrator's fear of making himself emotionally vulnerable by admitting to his own feelings seems to be coming from somewhere real and personal. I sense that there's something really at stake in the poem, whether or not the scenario described is completely fictional.)
I could be all wrong about that, in which case, bravo for fooling me so effectively in that regard.
Anyway, that's the aspect of the poem that intrigues me. More content about the witch doesn't. I hope that's helpful to know, even if it's only one person's reaction.