[W T Clark]

Yes, I can't help feeling here that there is something like gaudiness: like over-explanation that becomes so thick it gets wispy. In a way, I want the poem to be starker, to have lines of evocation standing in sharp relation to each other:

If I’m an Eddying Pocket in a Stream
you're like a leaf—you simply slipped away:

“Forever yours!” you cried inside my pool.

And then you slid between my twiglet-tips
back to the streamlet ripples scurrying south . . .
I sank into the barrel of my mouth
but tasted your remainders on my lips.

What I think I miss in your poems is something fragmentary: elusive: silence, really. I wish you let the breaks, the gaps between the moments in, to let the reader's imagination work, instead of feeding them up with detail. Maybe it's that element that made some of your poems always feel a little "quaint", somehow: not quite in the same universe as where I live: which feels harder, crueler, and lmch more fragmentary than the universe in your language.

Hope this helps.

[David Callin]

Hi Alexandra.

Originally Posted by A. Baez

Particularly, I think it's important to emphasize the jarring irony that the "leaf" thought it was going to stay forever. Without this element, I think the theme risks being too commonplace.

Funnily enough, I don't get that irony from lines 5-10 anyway, despite rereading it several times. (That could just be me being thick.) That would be an important element, I agree. (I do see it here:'“Forever yours!” you cried inside my pool.')

Originally Posted by A. Baez

What in the last eight lines do you think needs work? I'm guessing that in the couplet, you think that the mouth and lips allusions are not as clear as they need to be.

Yes, that's exactly it. And the twiglets are a slight problem too, for a British reader ...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiglets ... but that's a purely parochial problem that you needn't trouble yourself about.

Good luck with any amendments you decide to make.

Cheers

David

[Alexandra Baez]

Jim, wow! It appears that you’re an ideal reader for me. I’m glad you got the sense of tantalizing glimpses of something profound. I felt them while thinking and writing about this, too.

It's like you've succeeded in getting every thought/word on the tip of your tongue to spill onto the page.

It’s funny that you’re presenting this as a positive whereas it’s exactly what some others have bemoaned!

I wasn’t “on site” at the metaphorical stream, but I’m glad it feels that way. I take regular walks around streams and they've imprinted themselves in my memory. Also, I’m so pleased you responded to the sonics—as you know, this is a pet element for me.

Actually, I don’t see lineation tinkering as necessarily disrupting the meter. For example, I wound up breaking up a line, between stanzas even, in my last post, but by the time I hit that line as a (admittedly primed) reader, I’d become accustomed enough to the meter of the poem to continue following it through the break. (I never got any feedback from others on this experiment of mine, so of course I’m not sure whether they would feel the same, or if they’d think that there was a gain in clarity by this line break, and if so, if it was worth the visual jolt. And visual joltingness would naturally be a concern in this poem, too, if I tried to relineate it as you suggest.) Anyway, heck, I’ll try some relineation here and see what it feels like.

“Restive” as a title? Well, it became apparent from earlier comments that without that title, people weren’t clear who the n was in the poem—that she was a metaphorical stream pocket. I guess I could make the current title the first line of the poem, but that would mess up my rhyme scheme (though no one seems to care about it but me [and possibly you?]). I also hate titles that are telly and that don’t say anything that isn’t said in the poem proper. I do love the word “restive,” though, and the nuanced distinctions that it has from “restless.” The former was the perfect fit for the subject in this case.

I would also consider bringing the line “Forever yours!” you cried inside my pool." into S3 rather than making it stand alone.

I could consider this. I thought that this was a key point, and a jarring turn, in the poem, which is why I had it standing alone.

Nemo, I’m glad that at least you’ve gotten something of what I was trying to put across here. I do tend to get obsessive; testimony to this is the fact that I’d thought I was already being tremendously succinct in this poem except for S2! I do tend to be a punctuation nut, too, always wanting to choose the most apt mark for every situation--but yes, that can get in the way of the bigger picture at times. Your feedback on the poem’s stumbling blocks is interesting and worth contemplating--not annoyingly vague at all. You’ve given me plenty of specifics and I understand exactly what you’re driving at. I was really nervous about being looser than I was because I perceived the danger of ideas getting lost in translation to metaphor (which did happen in my original, despite my efforts). But I guess that once a poet has gotten all tight everywhere, then he or she can better perceive where it’s safe to loosen up a bit. I’m gratified that you see something powerful in here. I’ll “not-work” to bring it out more.

Cameron, yes, I know that you always tend to have similar problems with my poems. I’m glad to see demonstrated what you’d perceive as a more effective version of my poem, but I must say that it leaves me barren, both in terms of content and of style.

Still, I really appreciate your articulation, in general terms too, of what you find lacking in my poems. I can see the value of the understatement you crave and in fact, I consciously went after it in this poem and even think I achieved it at various points. (And Jim did mention "glimpses of something profound.") Still, I tend to miss in your poems the opposite of what you miss in mine! The universe in my language is, of course, reflective of the larger universe of my worldview. And it’s hard for me to aspire to one that’s “harder, crueler, and much more fragmentary” than the one I already have. Nonetheless, I will seek any ways that, without a sense of compromise, I might bring my poem closer to the ideals of you and others who’ve voiced a preference for more succinctness--even starkness.

David,

Funnily enough, I don't get that irony from lines 5-10 anyway, despite rereading it several times. (That could just be me being thick.) That would be an important element, I agree. (I do see it here: '“Forever yours!” you cried inside my pool.')

My comment that you quoted above refers to your second idea that I present Ls 1-4 alone as a complete poem. I agree that there’s none of said irony in Ls 5-10.

Oh, I hadn’t known about the Twiglets! Ack! But there must be other things than the ones I’ve mentioned in the couplet that you thought I should work on in the last eight lines, right?--otherwise you would have just specified a need for attention to those last two lines. Anyway, thanks for the luck—it looks like I’ll be needing it.

[Jim Moonan]

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Alexandra: "Jim, wow! It appears that you’re an ideal reader for me. I’m glad you got the sense of tantalizing glimpses of something profound. I felt them while thinking and writing about this, too.
It’s funny that you’re presenting this as a positive whereas it’s exactly what some others have bemoaned!"


Yes I noticed that… I hope that between my effusive reading and the others’ more measured critical reading you’ll find what you need. You should be pleased to know that everyone likes what you are doing. I don’t mean to soft-soap you into thinking it’s a perfect poem. It goes without saying that any poem posted here is done in hopes of making it better. I could start (or end) every crit I’ve ever made by saying “This could be better” or “Come back to it after letting it sit and see what needs attention.”

I know how lopsided I can sometimes be with praise. (For the record, I am considered by those close to me as being "critical" : )) I appreciate others who can provide a counterbalance to my praise-heavy comments. On the other hand... sometimes I can’t help but think, too, that some critters, as skilled as they are, make the mistake of re-imagining the poem to be in their own language/voice vs. the language/voice the poet has chosen. In this case, the voice I hear is the water talking. It speaks with a certain resignation; it is reaching for the outer limits of the imagination and wants to stitch it into something tangible (a leaf, a twig) for the reader to take away with them. It has a life of its own; it is wildly imaginative and, I think at least, transcendent in its passionate telling. (There I go again.)

I do think that poetic inspiration, our muse, oftentimes sits on the tip of the tongue hoping to be poetically expressed vs. being swallowed or spit out.

I want to repeat that the subject of the poem — that shape-shifting space within a stream of moving water that momentarily snags, gathers and ultimately relinquishes the leaf, the twig, etc.— is positively ripe with beauty.

Please don’t give up on this. (I know you won’t.) It is already so pleasing that I think the only thing you should be careful of is not to diminish/minimize it in any way. (There I go again : ))


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[Susan McLean]

Alexandra, for me, the clutter of detail in the middle stanza stalls me and starts to get tedious. Here is a more streamlined version that occurred to me, with a few possible changes and a title whose rhythm seemed more appealing. These may just be due to differences of taste, so ignore them if you don't find them useful.

If I’m a Swirling Eddy in a Stream

You’re like a leaf—you simply slipped away.
The current always meant to take you—you,
the little twirling thing that caught my eye,
as I caught yours. Life’s restive things don’t stay,
just ornament the place they’ve paused awhile.

“Forever yours!” you cried inside my pool.
And then you slid between my twiglet-tips
back to the stream of ripples scurrying south . . .
I sank into the silt beneath my mouth
but tasted your remainders on my lips.

Susan

[Jim Moonan]

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Susan that's very good!
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[Alexandra Baez]

Jim,

You should be pleased to know that everyone likes what you are doing.

Well, I think the most optimistic representation that might still possibly be true would be that everybody who’s commented likes what I’m trying to do. (I suppose that’s what you mean, though.)

As I’ve told you before, I think that your heart-centered, intuitive voice is a valuable counterbalance to more dispassionate, cerebral crits. I agree that it’s very hard to crit incisively while allowing the poem its own voice, and that most of us probably give short shrift to the latter. So it’s nice to have at least one (unofficially) designated person to concentrate on that! Your comments to me suggest that you have correctly perceived the nature of the voice of this poem. But I wonder if you do not feel that important parts of that voice have been lost in Susan’s version.

No, I haven’t given up on this! Coming back now to my most recent revision after about two days, I’m actually quite pleased with it, except that I found myself wanting that “Forever yours!” line back on its own. (Sorry!) So in this case, I think what I need to give up on is pleasing the majority. I believe I’ve moved this poem about as far as I want to in the directions that some others want while still keeping it the poem that I want.

Susan, I’m afraid I love the clutter of detail in the second stanza; clutter is its entire point and I’m simply trying to embody clutter here. Perhaps there isn’t a way to do so without tiring some people, but personally, I’m carried along by the language here, how it evokes feeling (for me), and the symbolic drama of it all. What’s more, I believe that the entire rhythm of this poem, its narrative arc, depends on this build-up. There’s little drama in the leaf’s sudden disappearance if one has spent almost no time in its presence, in the struggle of that presence. What I’m trying to do here is create a compression/release effect like that which Frank Lloyd Wright often employed in his architecture. S2’s compression is not of the language, but of the reader by the language. Then, after the pivot of S3, S4’s relative speed and lack of detail can be fully experienced as a contrast, a release, rather than just as part of an unchanging baseline—at least that’s my intent.

What’s more, many of the sonic relationships with the end words have been stripped away in your version. Did you notice this? Did you think it doesn’t matter? In any case, you have some ideas I may like in S1's “you—you/the” (although there would be a sonic sacrifice with the end word there) and S4's “silt beneath.” I will think about these. On a nit note, it seems to me that all eddies are swirling, so that aspect of your title would be redundant, I think. I'm surprised that the anapest in my title apparently bothered you, of all people!

Protestations aside, thank you for showing me how you think this poem would work better.

[Susan McLean]

Alexandra, as I said, different tastes produce different effects. I hoped you could find something useful in my version of what would fit my tastes better. I have a lack of patience with extended description, even though I did pick up the symbolism of the accumulation of details and slowing of the narrative about the eddying pocket. I don't mind anapests in iambic verse. Readers, however, don't necessarily expect titles to be metrical, so I thought if you made it more clearly metrical, they might notice that. I noticed that "off/eye" don't rhyme, and it occurred to me that if you moved "you" to the rhyme position in place of "off," you would have a "you/eye" that would evoke the "you" and "I" of the poem. I don't always have time to explain all of my suggestions, so I sometimes use show instead of tell to demonstrate the possibilities that occur to me.

Susan

[Jim Moonan]

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Originally Posted by Susan McLean

Alexandra, as I said, different tastes produce different effects. I hoped you could find something useful in my version of what would fit my tastes better.
Susan

Susan, your rewrite struck a chord with me that I most always hear when I read your own work. I liked it almost as if it were a translation of the language/phrasing/detail of the original poem but put into your signature taste for a neat, everything-in-its-place symmetrical/metrical style of poetry that touches all the bases, clears the high bar of formal poetry and, in the process, strikes deep at the heart of a subject. It gets me every time.

But it is exactly that fact — that your version is more a translation — that now gives me pause…I don’t think that is the effect that Alexandra seeks (and that she is now fiercely protecting). Her language, meter, phrasing, etc. is so fluent and fluid and without constraint but still beautifully orchestrates the poem to be a symphony of sensations fueled by her imagination. To say it is inspired is an understatement. As you say, Alexandra, the “clutter” of the detail in the second stanza aligns very nicely with the whirl of the eddy and the slipping free from it that is the end.


Alexandra: "Your comments to me suggest that you have correctly perceived the nature of the voice of this poem. But I wonder if you do not feel that important parts of that voice have been lost in Susan’s version."

I know, I appeared to flip-flop a bit... I overlooked much of what I liked about the original including the dilution of the sonics in the last stanza of Susan's version. Sometimes I struggle to say exactly why I say something and it ends up coming out the wrong way. I am easily buffeted by beauty and look for it everywhere. As I said earlier, you use the language of water in this poem — and I dove right in.

I think I do like Susan’s tweak of the title, though: If I’m a Swirling Eddy in a Stream

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[Carl Copeland]

Alexandra, I’ve been caught in my own weir of twiglets (more thorny than yours), so I’m too late to be of much help. Just for fun, though, I’ll tell you how my bad habits get me into trouble. I started with your revision, but since I tend to ignore titles, I fell into all the old traps: assumed the N was a person, wondered why they were tasting leaves, even tried reading in a fish that was “like a leaf,” but a little raw fish didn’t seem very tasty either. (I love sushi, but still.) Your title makes all the difference.

I also get hung up in the flotsam of that run-on sentence, particularly the missing subject and verb promised by “as,” but I do see that the muddle works for you, and at some point I stop looking for the grammar and just go with the words. “The lettings-go of fall” is lovely, but shouldn’t there be a comma after “awhirl”?

The cry “Forever yours!” is awfully loud. Would you consider losing the exclamation point and going with a quieter verb: “said” or “pledged” or (with “in”) “whispered” or “murmured”?

Your rhyme scheme is too subtle for my ear, but I do get enough rhymes to keep me happy, so that’s not a nit.

A little Frost in L4? As with some of your other poems, I had to be in the right frame of mind to get into it, but once I was, I enjoyed it.