[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

I agree with a lot of this. There's interesting language and phrases in this that I enjoyed, but I felt like my attention was being pulled in different directions, and it didn't cohere, or coagulate into a whole that I could see.

Another thing you could do vis-a-vis sharpness is continue to shroud the whole, but pare it back into it's most essential parts, and interesting language. But I think you'd still want to hint at some kind of narrative.

Thinking a little more about cohering into a whole, and having more of a focused narrative, I'm starting to wonder if some narratives and themes are just hard to pull together. No matter how you dress them up, it's hard to turn them into a compelling story.

One of the issues I'm finding in my own writing lately is that I just can't find many topics that I'm passionate about. All of the themes I'm interested in - I've already written down. New ideas and concepts are hard to make work because I just don't care about them that much, and they're difficult to make interesting.

But take something like Michael Cantor's recent poem about his wife. That's stunning subject material, which is bound to give you a resonant poem.

So if there's no overly strong central narrative, maybe we're left with focused, stunning language to pull the poem through.

Jim, when I look at this poem there is a lot to like re: language, but along with a bit of focus, I wonder if there is also an underlying chord of negativity which is a hard sell for a reader.

I think, generally, when people read anything they're hoping for an uplift or dopamine hit. And when a poem offers that it can go a long way in how it reads.

So maybe it's a question of whether you're writing this for you or for others (it sounds like it's for you). I've had a similar thing with some of my writing - poems that were absolutely pleasant and interesting for me to write, but when they were in front of the eyes of others it just looked like I was depressed.