[Kevin J MacLellan]

Turner Cassity comments on the poem
“The octave and the sestet seem to belong to different poems.” I have to disagree.
The conversation(s) between the couple (“I” and “You”) in both the octet and the sestet suggest to me a consistent prosaic backdrop, like a subtext, for the seemingly disjointed scenes in the two parts. The couple witnesses a breakup and comment upon it in the octet. In the sestet, the N mentions having dreamt of having recorded it in a rather exotic location, with images from the dream providing an unusual, inscrutable ambience. Both scenes. what they witnessed and what the N dreamt, are backdrop to conversations that the couple have. They inform the N's awareness in a (mysterious) way that colors what "you" says.They are the mysterious and inscrutable subtext of the mundane-conversation(s) – of the couple, which is what the noir genre brings to the foreground. Whether this works beyond merely suggesting a mystery which isn't really there or not, is another question. One that applies as well to the genre as to this poem.
LL 13 & 14 brings us back to the prosaic surface of things, with 13 being a wry nod to the genre.
The implicit sexual metaphor of the car-garage in the octet, which is bolstered by “he never could hold on to parking space” line, is only obliquely referred to again in L 14. Isn’t this the way most films in the genre end?


Some Nits: It is impossible to say whether the conversation(s) is one continuous one, or two disparate occasions. The car reference militates for one view, the intervening dream for another.
It is equally difficult, impossible for me, to say anything more about the couple than is contained in “couple”. I cannot even characterize the N. Is this a flaw?
The 'inanition' line is just a throwaway. In a poem that seems to play on surfaces and depths, it does neither; badly. A missed opportunity.
I am assuming L3 contains a formatting glitch. L6 is simply a departure from the meter, as is, I think, L 12.
L9 is rather playful; Does “this” refer to the poem as a whole, or to the octet, only? The ambiguity works for me, though I think it is more sur-real than noir.
On the whole, I think this is really very clever and successful as a poem, though I think it less successful as a sonnet. The form seems a bad fit and is treated as such—which is not really what sonnet writing should do.

[T.S. Kerrigan]

The doubly stressed "a" in the octave doesn't work at all, this is a sonnet only in the sense of it being a poem in 14 lines.

[Petra Norr]

The sonnet invites the reader to fill in the gaps. So I made up my own story. The fresh-dug grave in the sestet is for the man who owns the Lexus. The narrator and his/her partner were so fed up with him that they killed him. They put the body in the Lexus and drove off with it to Malibu. Of course, we’re probably not meant to see the events in the sestet as “real” (the opening of the sestet seems to imply that). But nonetheless, I can still see the story unfolding like that.

I love the voice in the poem. The octave is very good, and the sestet opens so well. I like this sonnet a lot. In some ways it’s more remindful of free verse (and I don’t mean the irregular meter), but that’s fine by me.

[David Anthony]

I'm thinking the inanition is because he'd just finished disposing of Annette's body.

[Lance Levens]

Two poems in one is too subtle for me, but I did have a cousin who tried the octave with one of his ex's.

[Alex Pepple]

This is darkly fun. Alicia is right about L3 which is not conversational one would expect of quoted speech. One possibility is "He just can't hold on to a parking space," which is direct and works better, even with the repetition of 'just'.

Quite a wacky plot ... but, dunno about that fresh-dug grave just for some beat-up Lexus though!

Cheers,
...Alex

[Rose Kelleher]

It seems clear to me that the narrator, in her dream, is subconsciously speculating (or maybe just fantasizing) that her lover has killed his wife for the money so that the two of them could run away to an island paradise. But then, maybe I'm the one who's confused.

[Gail White]

Are today's 2 poems by the same author? If not, then 2 people did something that I like -- variations on the typical sonnet abab rhyme scheme.

[Janet Kenny]

I like the attitude of this poet but I don't think the poem is a success yet. It has irritants as well as freedoms. " gutted it/Annette had split" is into showing off territory and adds nothing for me.

The"Lexus/Texas" rhyme made me smile. Now let's think...whose rhymes make me smile? Ah yes.

"Inanition" is surely too exhausted and flabby to be "chiseled"?

It's an incredibly cheeky poem and I think I know the perpetrator ;-)

[E. Shaun Russell]

No offense intended to anyone, but I REALLY hate it when there are statements to the effect of: "Oh, I know who wrote this one!"

When it comes to a bake-off like this, the "who" is completely irrelevant until the ballots are tallied. These should be judged solely on the merits of the poems, rather than on the presumption of who wrote it. Not that anyone is coloring their critiques because of their suspicions about the poets...but I've noticed comments like that in quite a few of these threads now, and they annoy me to no end! The POEM is paramount. The POET is, for now, irrelevant.

/soapbox.