Hi Carl, Barbara, Matt -- many thanks for your generous crits here.
Carl, thanks for coming back. It's helpful to know that the specific Stevens poem didn't leap to mind.
Barbara, thanks for weighing in with the lines that work best for you. I've never been accused of trying to make too much sense! It's helpful to know this could stand to be more playful with its language and approach.
Matt, I came to the same sort of conclusion minutes after posting the poem here. Rather than prose-poetry I've been trying it in long single-line strophes, which seem to gel nicely with the idea of blinds and of things being half-obscured. But putting it into longer lines also revealed fairly immediately to me what many have commented on here -- that swaths of the poem are lacking in thrills, for want of a better word.
I'm a very slow redrafter, so I probably won't be adding new drafts to this thread (in fact, it'll likely take me years) but your comments here are very useful and will inform the process as it gradually happens.
Thank you again.
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