[Gail White]

VAMPIRE AT THE RITZ-CARLTON

Desires that consumed you as you drank
increased the void inside to suit your taste.
Now the mirror cannot see your face;
you've worn it smooth, and so have made it blank.

The dead are not invisible, but blind
and leeched away till beauty turns to style,
to spellbind with the rictus of a smile --
a puppet pulling strings within its mind,

a corporate perfection in a shell.
Emptiness designed to fit a mold,
your grip is so much stronger, being cold:
if I'm compelled to say you're looking well,

you're compelled to act as if alive
and spread your death to others to survive.

[Gail White]

I love this vampire. I think he's a lobbyist, maybe an actor or some other self-absorbed celebrity. Possibly I've met him.

[Martin Rocek]

Only nits--I think it would be better without "Vampire"
in the title--the image is clear enough, but I prefer not
to be told in advance. Also, I wish that in S1, the b-rhyme could
be fixed, but I assume the poet struggled with that and couldn't
make it work.

The way every line is end-stopped is a bit jarring; I haven't
decided if that is a defect or a deliberate way of enhancing
the coldness of the piece.

Over all, a powerful sonnet.

Martin

p.s Gail, I saw an investment banker.

[Tim Murphy]

I think it's awfully good, my only reservation being that acephalic line 13 flirts with being a tetrameter. That would be easier to deal with if it weren't coming in the final couplet.

[Jayne Osborn]

I love the title, mainly because I once stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, overlooking the Pacific. It's by far the poshest hotel I've ever spent a night in - but there wasn't a vampire in sight, I'm glad to say!

If it was my poem, and because of the repetition, I'd be inclined to make the small change from 'you're' to 'you are':

if I'm compelled to say you're looking well,

you are compelled to act as if alive
and spread your death to others to survive.

Enjoyed it, though, for its originality.

Jayne

[Pedro Poitevin]

It might just be unimaginative me, but alive/survive doesn't feel like a good rhyme with which to conclude. I would abandon the oxymoron of the couplet, frankly.

Pedro.

[conny]

it's all a bit glib, but for a shallow, insincere subject i guess
it kinda fits. Its a good draft but i think it reads like its not had
a chance to develop.

which makes it all a bit disjointed somehow. l.5/6 and the dead
and beauty turned into style, i don't really get, and why are they
blind? dunno.

[Martin Rocek]

Reading the comments by DaveC and Vernon, I feel even more strongly that "Vampire" in the title does a fine poem a huge disservice. It's a distraction.

[Catherine Chandler]

This sonnet commits a major no-no in that there is only one instance of imperfect rhyme and it sticks out like a sore fang.

Lots and lots of padding, like the use of "within" instead of "in". Maybe the author wanted to use "inside" but found he or she had already used that word in L2.

The ending wishes to be strong, what with words like "death" and "grip", but it goes down like a watered-down martini.

It seems like a very early draft, and needs major work to improve.

[Christopher ONeill]

The sonnet certainly wears its heart on its sleeve: it would be almost impossible to understand unless one shared its authorial distaste for corporate finance and government by consensus. The way the piece uses 'vampire', 'rictus' and 'puppet' reminded me very much of what Orwell says about standard 1930's Marxist vocabulary in Politics and the English Language: the words seem to be largely emptied of meaning as such, so that we can snug down in an emotional collusion with the poem's central drift of censure.

I had trouble with the notion of a mirror 'worn smooth': I don't think I've seen a corrugated mirror outside an amusement park. I also struggled with the semantics of ll. 5 - 9: is it 'the dead' who spellbind, or is it beauty, or even style?

Someone else has questioned the validity of the 'survive' / 'alive' rime. I am intrigued by rimes which fit the formal rule, but rime words which are semantically synonyms (or near misses for that). One doesn't normally rime a word with itself (in English, at any rate); perhaps some of us carry this down to a semantic level (I know that I sometimes do).

I am having serious problems with this piece. As far as I have understood it, it is the sort of thing one might endorse if one already thinks this way. I am hoping that someone will happen along to suggest some radically different way of reading the piece.

Vernon has received severe criticism for at least one of the pieces he has posted on the 'Sphere: I was responsible. If he now supposes that ingenuousness is always its own defence on a poetry forum (and that one can always dismiss an unpleasant critique by remembering that all critics are fallible); it might be fairer if people took that out on me, not Vernon.