[Matt Q]

Hi Glenn,

I find the close less satisfying than it could be. I think there are a couple reasons for this:

1) I think the series of four feminine rhymes in the last stanza add a bit of unintended comic effect/sound at odds with the poem's intent. Try reading it aloud. I think that's both because feminine rhymes can have a tendency to do this, and having four of them intensifies this.

2) if the poem is exploring the principal's perspective, I wonder if the poem should return to the principal after the woman speaks to him. Something more is needed to show us how he is affected by this -- or not affected by it even. Maybe he can return to defend his choice not to allow tributes and say why? Or something else. I like how he ineffectually offers to put the flowers in water and hide them away. Maybe that can be developed or returned to at the close? But the poem needs something more, I think. Something to develop, resolve or undercut what's gone before.

More generally, I agree with others that the poem needs to do more to get the language/syntax to sound natural despite the constraints of the form, to appear as if your word choices and choices of detail aren't driven by the need to rhyme and scan, despite their inevitably having to be.

S1L4, why not just "fix"? Sounds more natural (to me) and it works better metrically too.

S2 "clearly in command" seems unnecessary (and "telly"). She's the only adult. She's the only one who engages the principal. And, if Carl's reading is correct, her tallness shows that she's a commanding presence. We can see she's in command.

"The woman [...], loud and cold, asked me". What is loud and cold intended to modify. Is the woman loud and cold? Or is what she says loud and cold? It reads like the former, but seems like it should be the latter.

S3L1, Maybe something like, "but sadly, floral tributes have been banned", so that he's implying some regret? I like the detail of the banning. It suggests that this isn't the first student death, and maybe not the first suicide either.

S5L1: I'm thinking the mother wouldn't say, "Do you have a school-age daughter?", but just, "Do you have a daughter?". Firstly, it seems over-precise language for the context. Second, what would it matter it the principal's daughter wasn't yet at school, or had left school. The "how would you feel if this were your daughter?" point would be the same.

S5L2: "if so" -- I'd find a way to lose this construction. For me, it takes away some of the power from what she's saying if she has to hedge it this way. One option would be to just have this woman know that the principal has a daughter. Another would be to have her ask something along the lines of, "how would you feel if this were your daughter?" which wouldn't require her to check first.

The "slaughter" line is better in the revision but still seems rhyme-driven. But if you're keeping it, I don't think you need "the". "lambs to slaughter" works too, I think: it means the same and keeps the metre.

"My girl—just look where you and your school have brought her.”

Seems a little awkwardly phrased, so as to get the a referent for "her" to maintain the "her" rhyme.

best,

Matt

[Julie Steiner]

Glenn,

The best part of the poem is its title, and that is undermined by first-person narration. Even with third-person narration, this scenario needs more objectivity and objectification in order to be presented as a still life. The minimalism of shorter lines (and perhaps not even complete sentences), a less-showy rhyme scheme (and maybe even free verse), and no POV to filter the reader's perceptions in a particular way might help to make this less about the administrator and more of a still life—a collection of objects from which the reader might connect certain dots.

I first encountered the poem in the first-person narrator version. The suspicion that the narrator might actually be the poet, the impression that this narrator/poet lacks sensitivity (not only in the described moment, but also in the reflex to equate, or at least associate, the woman's brownness with trouble), and the content's very awkward fit within the chosen form combined to make me feel that a real-life tragedy had been regarded as nothing more than a sensational Poem Opportunity.

I've done that before, on more than one occasion, with similarly unflattering results. (Sometimes intentionally, to see if it would work in the way I had intended. It didn't. But more often unintentionally, because I'm kind of an asshole sometimes and don't always see it.) But I digress.

when I got to Line 4 and recognized the form, it already felt wordier and less lilting than expected, because these days, the rubaiyat form is more closely associated with Frost's tetrameter poem than with with Fitzgerald's pentameter translation of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat. The enjambment across the first stanza end intensified that sense of excessive length. I found the rhymes themselves so pedestrian and unsurprising that having four of most of them seemed a bit fill-in-the-blank. The feminine rhymes at the end crescendoed both the too-long and rhyme-driven impressions. I thought, "Maybe the poem is just too successful in conveying that this administrator doesn't have the soul of a poet."

I have my doubts that this can be salvaged without a total rewrite, but at minimum I would strongly advise reverting to the distance of third-person narration and dumping the rubaiyat form, which seems to be painting every stanza—and ultimately the poem—into a corner.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Matt and Julie—
I appreciate the very insightful and well-considered feedback. As much affection as I have for this piece, I’m becoming convinced that it may be a lost cause. I can try, at least, to learn valuable lessons even from my epic fails.

Matt, you’re right that the stiltedness of the woman’s speech is a major problem, and the demanding rhyme requirements are at least partly responsible. I think it may also be partly my difficulty in achieving distance and objectivity about the situation. That’s one reason that I rarely indulge in socially conscious poetry. I have strong opinions on most issues, so it’s hard for me not to get preachy or ranty. I can see a kind of cartoonishness in this piece that may come from my need to reduce a complex issue to a simple good vs. evil scenario. The far-fetched rhymes don’t help.

Julie, you’re also right that the rubaiyat form just doesn’t work for this subject matter. John said as much earlier. I might think about repurposing this subject as a short story. With that in mind, I think your advice about the third-person POV being more effective is helpful.

Thanks so much, both, for your wise counsel.
Glenn

[Glenn Wright]

I reaccomplished it as a short story and posted it on the Fiction Forum. Fingers crossed.

[David Callin]

Hi Glenn. I haven't read the short story version of this, but what I think I would like to read is the free versification of it, if you can come up with such a thing. It seems to me, in its present form, like a good poem that just wants to get out of its current straitjacket.

I would like to read the liberated version. (But perhaps I'll try the short story now.)

Cheers

David

[Jim Moonan]

.
I think the switch to first person works great.

I think the opening two lines are spot-on in terms of authentic education jargon. The opening line says so much. It influences the reset of the poem in ways I think others here are overlooking. The graffiti bricks is again spot-on. It speaks to the cross-culture of which high school is made: teachers that daily do what they can to make a difference in the lives of teens, likelt=y when they need it most, and the subculture of the student body, subversive, clandestine, scrawling defiant graffiti. I think those two lines are beautifully stated.

The rest of the poem dives into a complicated mix of internal (the principal's disconnectedness) and external (the grieving students) worlds. I think you handle it deftly, with enough detail to pry open the whole complicated paradigm but not too much.

My sense is that any school administrator, teacher, etc. would immediately recognize themselves in this. Two of my kids are public schools educators (one a middle school math teacher and the other an assistant principle) and I'm sure they would relate strongly to this poem — if only they liked poetry! Still, I may share it with them with your permission, of course.

.

[Glenn Wright]

Thanks for the encouraging words, Jim. Please feel free to share.