[Gail White]

Film Noir

You know that, in the movies, they must meet—
those lovers whom the script has torn apart.
Though they loved with a passion bittersweet,
war or bad karma upped their applecart.
He perhaps deceived by some blond tart,
or she, to keep her brother out of jail,
with weeping eyes said yes to some old fart.
Fadeout with violins and nightingale.

Flash forward twenty years. A fairy tale.
They meet again—what luck!—both wiser, older.
And he is rich and strong; she fair and frail.
Oh, happy end. He reaches to enfold her.
That's when I blow my nose, cause in real life
I go to films and you go to your wife.

[Gail White]

CATHY CHANDLER'S COMMENT: “Film Noir” is a finely crafted Spenserian sonnet, where the rhyme scheme weaves from quatrain to quatrain, ending in a couplet in IP. The shift comes at precisely the right moment it should in this rather difficult sonnet form. The poet has set the tone perfectly with the italicized word must in line 1 and the snide reversal of the phrase “passion bittersweet” in line 3. I’m not sure about “upped their applecart” as opposed to “upset” (a metrical fix would be needed), and the repetition of the word “some” in lines 5 and 7 may be construed either as an oversight or, again, irritable sarcasm. Though line 14 is good, I feel its tone is weaker than what we’ve seen in the previous lines.

[Tim Murphy]

Not too hard to guess whose this is. There are sotto voces, and then there are Voices. I like it very well.

[Gail White]

COMMENT BY GAIL: The speaker who sounds like a cynic when dissecting the plots of old movies is revealed at the end as a sentimentalist who hides out in a three-hanky weeper while her married lover goes back to the home she can 't have. In that final couplet all intellectual pretense is gone. There's to be no fairy tale for this woman.
The sonnet has become a self-portrait.

[Nigel Mace]

This is neat, well-crafted and nicely turned - yet the volta seems a bit too whimsical for a potentially heart-rending reality. In other words, it is too like the superficiality of the movie plots which form the heart of the trope - all very aptly scaled, if one wants to be positive - yet diminishing of the real lives evoked at the conclusion of the final couplet. Craft greatly admired - but, for me, the content playing well below the needed emotional strength.

[Maryann Corbett]

I think I'm saying again what I said on day 2: It's hard for a mostly tart-tongued, cynical sonnet based on stock content to compete with richer fare.

Yes, the stock content is being used to artful effect, and there's no reason not to enjoy the craft and the nicely snide tone. But there's much less here to dig into than in sonnet 6.

[R.A. Briggs]

The volta comes too late--I've gotten what's up with the cliched movie lovers by the end of the octet, and want a better look at the narrator's real-life drama, so that there's more of a contrast between three-dimensional real people and one-dimensional movie people.

[Melanie Wright]

I liked this very much.

Upped their applecart is awkward and feels forced to fit the metre.

I think cause in the penultimate line should have an apostrophe. Or maybe change to "for".

Very heart-wrenching, self-aware and nicely done.

[Woody Long]

L4 - "upped" - Besides fitting the meter and varying the cliché, I think the poet may intend some mild innuendo, suggesting "screwed their applecart" perhaps. Also, "upped" gets a lot of stress I think, which helps some to liven up the applecart image.

L13 - "cause" in this sense is a difficult word to use in a poem. " 'cause " is grammatical but doesn't look all that good. "cause" runs the risk of being mispronounced by the reader. "cuz" looks very bad, IMO. Perhaps:

"...nose. In my real life"

L13 - Note "real life" contrasted with. "reel life" (not explicit in the poem). Maybe not intentional, just natural language, but subliminally there, if only for some readers.

[Scott Miller]

I'd been pacing for hours trying to find the right words, and by the time I was ready to respond, moonlight was cutting through the blinds like a dozen silver bullets on my cheap carpet. Sure, the sonnet had moxie, but it was all tied up in knots, tighter than one of those broads at the bondage club on the bad end of Hollywood. I remember when it first waltzed across my desktop with this sob story 'bout some poor dame and Johnny what's-his-name, that nice guy: too nice, we all knew would never make it. What can I say, the poem knew how to talk the talk, right up to those violins, then the inevitable fade to black.

Next thing I know, the poem's got this cockamamie coda, like a banjo after a fancy Italian opera. They meet again and... what? Boom, happily ever after? Not in this town, sister. I'm from the City of Angels. The Big Lazy. Film noir is like a masseuse in Brentwood -- it doesn't do happy endings. Remember Johnny? He's doin' 20 to life with the Valley Fever Chain Gang north of Fresno. That dame played him for a patsy and got the old fart de-gassed to boot. That's noir, doll-baby. Those tears at the end, I think I know the crocodile you got 'em from.

When it all hit the fan, there were only two things I knew for sure. First of all, a romantic noir ending is like a Hollywood budget -- it's all lies. A poem that would chain itself to that idea will sink faster than a snitch in cement shoes, with a lead apron for good measure. Second, you gotta get that slanting half-light in there. You ain't got noir if you ain't got that chiaroscuro.