Wellwaters

[La Enflamieda]

Wellwaters
Dressedboyblacken wellbysitshe.
Toofarinleaning, intoslipshe
watersdarken.

[Dave Wiseman]

I'm not sure that a malfunctioning space bar and a bit of convoluted grammar qualifies as experimental, but maybe that's just me.
What you have here is a thin narrative, boy leans over too far and falls in a well, probably drowns. That's about it.
There's no meat on this bone, and not much bone either.

[Arthur]

In an experimental piece I would like to know what the intention of the poet is and what he is trying to achieve then decide if, in my opinion, his experimental use of language or form or both has achieved that goal. Since we are conversing at a distance I cannot probe you personally on your purpose so I am left to try and discern your purpose since you have given no real indication of your purpose, reasons and aim, in adopting the mode in this piece of work.
All I, as your reader, am given is the piece itself, simple, unadorned and without explanation.
Given this I have to guess at your intent and it seems to me that you are looking for some form of condensation of language, a compression towards a simplification of language while retaining the gist and understanding of the narrative. If this is the case I do not think you have been bold enough in the narrative you chose nor have you really succeeded in that compression itself and again here you need to be bolder and look for compression in distorting spelling, forming puns and neologisms through compression.
Basically I am saying you have not really succeeded in acheiving what I have defined as the purpose of your piece. If my definition is incorrect i await the poet to define his purpose and then judge again.

[GiantRumblebuffin]

I like how, by removing the spaces, you have created a poem that looks like someone falling into water. Nice

[billmoss]

Hello.

"Experimental" does not mean that one should post something and see if it's a poem, though this piece reflects that point of view. As with any experimental technique in any art, one has to have a thorough knowledge of what's within the artistic pale in order to rationally venture beyond it: that's not evident here.

Thanks,
Bill

[Badger11]

Wellwaters
Dressedboyblacken wellbysitshe.
Toofarinleaning, intoslipshe
watersdarken.

The sounds, structure, and possible meaning are slipping in and out of focus. I quite enjoyed the disorientation and some moments of lucidity.

I saw a boy dressed in black, sitting by a well, leaning in too far, and slips into the dark waters. A parallel to a reader falling into this poem. I played around with a 'she' in the poem for a while. I enjoyed this play as well as the speculation on reflections.

I couldn't derive any sense from 'blacken', it didn't fit into any re-ordering of words by me, although blacken/darken sound thread help structure the poem.

Why bring punctuation into this disorder? I found no direction in the punctuation.


regards

badge

[John2]

Hello, La Enflamieda, I’m about a year late, but I was about ½ through the crit before I noticed the post date, so hey if you happen to stop by here and if you happen to be looking to revise this at all, here are some thoughts:

Like a previous poster, I considered the idea of the poem’s shape meant to demonstrate the mirror-image effect of one’s reflection on water. That is, while the boy is alive above the water, the reflection remains, but in the last line, as the boy has fallen and been swallowed by the darkening waters, the reflection is gone. However, the logic fails for me in that I’d imagine a well to be too dark/deep to provide any reflection at all. Then I thought maybe it meant to reflect small lapping waves on water’s surface, but that didn’t work again because the slipping into the water should’ve provided a splash that isn’t demonstrated by the poem’s structure. And so, now I’m lost as to why the poem has these words mashed together. Perhaps the meaning is beyond me at this time, but you may want to consider that you’ve lost some of your audience with that effect.

The poem has a nursery rhyme sort of lilt that I enjoy. Playful, but darkly so.

The title is itself a mashing of two words. Subtle, but useful.

Dressedboyblacken <-- boy that’s dressed in black. The dressed in black works to foreshadow the death that’s to come, but I’m not so sure that isn’t too cliché. A staple of horror and most Western cultures is to have black symbolize death, but I’m not sure it’s needed. The final line with its darkening waters is a rather finalized image on its own. Moreover, the dress in black presents me with the question of why he would be so garbed and I begin to wonder if he’d come from a funeral or something, and since the question isn’t answered, I think the poem loses some impact with the detail. Something to consider at least. I take the –en in ‘blacken’ to also serve as a foreshadowing that the boy is blackening towards death before he even knows it. If that’s an accurate reading, it beats that idea over the reader’s head too much, I think. If that’s an inaccurate reading, I’m really lost as to why those two words are there beyond maintaining a syllable count of sorts.

Toofarinleaning, <-- couple points on this section. First, is the ‘in’ necessary? Toofarleaning would get the same point across – I’d argue it gets the point across more clearly as the words aren’t so convoluted and yet the mashedwords effect remains – and in such a stark poem, every word (letter) counts. Also ‘toofarleaning’ would keep the four-four beat that’s set up in L1 and tightly closed with the four-syllable L3. Second, the comma really isn’t necessary. The space between wordmashes provides all the pause needed, and if you’re not going to put a comma in the first line of the poem, stay consistent and leave it out here.

I like the final line’s succinctness. There’s that subtlety that is lost in all the black and blackens of L1.