Psst, Hierarchy

[thebrokencynic]

I can always write poems about the androgynous
Scheherazades that recite 1001 spiritual lies
Walk with me to limonene paradise, it is cheap
like monosyllabic lexicons of profound – nity
Polish my flip flops sentimental Eva and
photoelectrochemical tests, short Sir – quit

I hate your Gaussian complex, you should see
a therapist because I am the Messiah of postmodern art
Isotherms do not meet my full factorial ambitions
They say cephalization and bipedalism are
evolutionary milestones, but pottery is a craft
like Jackson Pollock’s unwashed shirts

You are a fossil in the Himalayas, the true bible
the halophiles that require no organic transplant
Heat death and semipermeable lipid bilayer
Crippling sloth that feeds on Raney Nickel
Everything nowadays is patented, and Venus
is travelling to the left without a lesbian partner

For one million years, stone tools did not change
much, but carbon dating is like carbon copies
mating with typewriters, let me borrow
your diamond cutter because all I see is your cock
and that salad glows like emissivity one
Dramatize boredom and win the Palm D’Or

Onse – bleed is a form of catharsis abolished
by the pseudo – radicals, the cat – eat – dog world
The sixth state of matter is not silicon – based
because I never settle like a jaw crusher
The love of ozone is blind, no questions asked
Eskimos do not live in Iceland, I worship Bjork

Yesterday, I ate a cheesecake I did not pay for
A diaspora dictated the fate of the human race
Phallocentrism is a fallacy, the 21 – year – old lad
that died in a duel, Paris 1872, panopticon
paranoia, the obsolete disguise of formulaic
films, the digitization of the poverty line

Generation Q stopped after that reindeer – looking
runway model grew taller by 1.5 inches
Meditative powders, in Justine Bieber’s video
The periodic table does not follow the estrous cycle
and those lumps and bumps make me sneeze
I want static on my parts per billion coffee.

[HowardM2]

All of your attempts at critique have been deleted as the work you commented on was anywhere from 1 to 4 years old; such work is, at the very least, long past the point of having been revised, so that critiques at this date are pointless.

[Chan]

Hi,

I think this is more traditional than experimental. For example, the use of commas, en dashes, phrasing, spellings, use of articles, modifiers, capitals, etc, all fall under the traditional mode. Nothing really makes me sit up and think, ‘WOW, so that’s what experimental poetry looks like!’ I even checked behind my computer screen to make sure I wasn’t missing any subliminal messages. (If there were, I didn’t see it, so this may well be experimental poetry, I guess. My bad.)

Psst, Hierarchy

I can / AL ways / WRITE PO / ems a BOUT / the an DRO / gyn ous (?)
or
I can AL / ways write PO / ems a BOUT / the an DRO / gyn ous (?)
SCHE her / AZ a / des that / re CITE / 1001 / SPI ri / tual LIES (?, 3 trochees, 2 iambs, although I’m not entirely sure how Scheherazades really scans, also stumped by 1001)
WALK with / me to / LIM on / ene PAR / a DISE, / it is CHEAP (?)
like MON / o SYL / la bic / LEX i / cons of / pro FOUND / – NIT y (3 iambs, 2 trochees, in 7 feet, ???)
POL ish / my FLIP / flops SENT / i MENT/ al EV / a and (iambic)
PHO to / e LECT / ro CHEM / i cal TESTS, / short Sir – QUIT (?)

As far as traditional verse is concerned, it is readable. Although I’m not sure what’s going on with meter.

Thanks,

[Janus]

As a whole, I can only vaguely intuit the connections and meaning of the poem. Normally I'd consider this a list of random absurdities and move on, but you've got good insights here. There's a lot to like. It reminds me of the thoughts I have just before falling asleep -- grammatically correct but illogical dream-stuff, like "take this cup and put it back full of airplanes."

I especially enjoyed "Jackson Pollock’s unwashed shirts", the comment on carbon dating, "panopticon paranoia" and "You are a fossil in the Himalayas, the true bible."

I didn't mind the under-use of punctuation, but I'm not sure how well it works. You separate thoughts with capitalization and occasionally resort to a comma, and there's a full-stop at the end, so it seems like the lack of punctuation was simply the easiest way to write the thing. You have a lot of one-liners and of course it wouldn't read well if it were properly punctuated. But I wonder how the poem would read if it were grammatically linked up as one long sentence (without abusing "and").

I would like to read more.


Janus

[thebrokencynic]

Hi Chan and Janus,

Thank you so much for your comments and insights.

Sincerely,

thebrokencynic

[aintu]

Initially I was inclined to dismiss this as a relatively conventional poem. On a closer reading though it strikes me that it does bear some relationship to the linguistically innovative poetry I'm familiar with.

But for me it never quite takes off, although I struggle to say why exactly. However, I'll have a go.

The poem is written in quite a conventionally lyrical way, which has the effect of muting its various elements. Phrases and sentences apparently from different sources, some baldly factual, others statements of opinion or belief are blurred into a single voice.

Differentiating these elements, allowing disruptions and external voices into the poem would draw attention to them, and make the poem more interesting to read.

One difficulty for the critic with this kind of poetry, drawing on different sources and traditions, is that banal ideas and writing can be just as much part of the texture as anything else. The skill lies in assembling the different parts in a way that is cumulatively interesting and stimulating.

There is a lot I like here, both in terms of writing (but pottery is a craft/like Jackson Pollock's unwashed shirts) and juxtaposition of elements (in Justine Bieber's video/The periodic table does not follow the estrous cycle). But somehow it never quite gels for me - even reading it aloud, which I find works well in this case.

The problem for me, is that the poem never fully embraces the irrational, the disruptive and the experimental. It simply stays too close to conventional poetry.

It's actually taken a while for me to write this review. I kept referring to examples of linguistically innovative poetry on my bookshelf (looking at around a dozen different writers) to see if I could find illustrative passages that might demonstrate the difference between poems I think work, and this poem.

I couldn't find anything close enough to compare. The poems I looked at tended to be a lot more economical and sharp. Even where they dealt with a single subject for an extended passage.

One of the closest comparisons I could find was with Richard Barrett (a poet I know and have worked with). But his work has a kind of confidence and a distinct identity that makes it stand out. Take the opening of his 'The Hard Shoulder'*:

How precarious this shit is
I mean: the door swings closed and
it's that way
the car park / you could
wear the weather. Hanging like
a tailors shop window
That's some sort of edifice
Keep your fingers crossed and
overcoats: they 'swish'
as what I say forms stalactites
up there / Before the carriage moves
How slow the inspectors are /
And if you want reassurance - time
has stopped...

*from Sidings, published 2010 by White Leaf Press

I think like all the poems I looked at this is much more wholehearted in its experiments in almost all aspects of the poem. The unconventional aspects of the poem are not made a feature of. Instead they're part of the texture of the writing. They're part of what the writer does, leaving him able to concentrate on actually writing the poem.

In summary, I think your poem's pretty close to doing something very interesting, but never quite gets there. As you can see, I'm still not quite sure why. I think in part though it's that it lacks the economy and confidence of the linguistically innovative poetry I'm familiar with, and stays too close to more traditional models.

If I have any more coherent thoughts I'll return and share them, but this'll have to do for now, sorry.