From: gaillard@panix.com (Ed Gaillard)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: STORM
Date: 26 Dec 92 21:22:22 GMT
Organization: Radio Free Hades

gorokho1@husc10.harvard.edu (Zhenya Gorokhovsky) writes:

>Here's another poem. Whoever cares, please comment.
>Happy holidays to all.

I like it.  I have a couple of technical criticisms, which I'll insert
in the poem, and some questions about the style, which I'll append.

>		STORM
>		
>		At whose oblique request,
>		conclusive as it nears,
>		avenging whose suppressed
>		tart mutinies of tears,

>		unstifling whose lament,
>		assaulting whose terrain?
>		A monstrous laundromat,
I'm not sure you want to use an off-rhyme here.  Since the first
stanza had perfect rhyme, the reader expects more of the same;
otherwise you give the impression of not having control of the form.
It would actually be better if you had an off-rhyme in the *first*
stanza, I think; your reader would then be expecting more of them.
You can also use off-rhymes later in the poem, after the rhyme-scheme
is firmly established in the reader's mind.  Your mileage may vary.
>		abetted by the brain.

>		On the soaked city plan
>		some districts still persist,
>		so pert and soi-disant,
>		so distant through the mist.

>		The grey dominion forms
>		an atmospheric gap;
>		vast chunks of Harvard dorms
>		are swallowed from the map

>		as lightnings from above
>		perform the first sortie
>		of self-inflicted love
>		with vibrant cruelty.
Not a good rhyme.  This is an identical rhyme, *and* it depends on the
theoretical secondary stress on the last syllable of cruelty.  One of
these flaws might be OK by this point in the poem; but both in one
rhyme is a little too much.

>		A welcome cleansing mess
>		blasts from the baffled vault:
>		surely a careless
The meter is rough: "SUREly (a) CAREless" has a headless first foot,
and either a pyrrhic or an unnatural stress on "a" in the second foot,
and then a trochee in the last foot, with the rhyme coming on an
unstressed syllable.  Again, I think this is more variation from your
form then you want in a single line.
>		ill-shaven angel's fault.

>		Teenagerly, revealed
>		through shifting sheets of spray,
>		resplendent to a field
>		of hesitant dismay,

>		he spells and celebrates
>		a silver-melting glow.
>		Through him reverberates
This rhyme depends entirely on secondary stresses.
>		the perfect vertigo.

>		A chain of sparks ignites
>		from an initial flame.
>		Quintillions of lights.
This doesn't scan right.  "Quintillions " has only three syllables,
and the line has only two stresses.  How about "Quintillions of white
lights" or "A million billion lights"?
>		Abandonment of shame.


As I said, I have a couple of questions about the style.  The poem is
sometimes obscure - for example, it is not clear to me what
"resplendent to a field/of hesitant dismay" really means, or what is
meant by an "atmospheric gap", or why the districts on the map are
"pert and soi-disant".  These don't create any clear image or idea in
my mind.  The language in the rest of the poem is very clever, but
pretty clear.  Anyway, if you didn't *intend* those passages to be a
little obscure, you might want to re-think them.  Or perhaps I'm just
being dense.

Lastly, what is that "monstrous laundromat" doing in lines 7-8?  Why
is it "abetted by the brain"?  Is it intended as the answer to the
questions of lines 1-6? (The "ill-shaven angel" seems to be the real
answer, yes?)  Once again, you may decide I've just missed something
obvious.

Anyway, good poem.  You showed nice control of the meter, except in
the two lines indicated, and clever ideas; I especially like the image
of the rain falling on the map.

-ed g.
<gaillard@panix.com>
"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct." - Disraeli