Hello Jo,
Yes, as stated, the idea is good, but the expression falls short.
You need words that are easily mixed up with others, and your choices don't suggest anything to me.
But I'd love to see if you can nail it............P
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Hello Jo,
Yes, as stated, the idea is good, but the expression falls short.
You need words that are easily mixed up with others, and your choices don't suggest anything to me.
But I'd love to see if you can nail it............P
Hello Jo,
One way to make the poem more grounded may be to answer the joke / simile with concrete imagery. Saying that, it might ruin the postmodernist consequences of the intentional joke.
Hope this helps.
Hi Jo,
So, I've learnt a new word which is always a good thing. The poem has the structure of a joke or a riddle. I thought maybe it was solvable by misreading one of the words, for example, "mitigate" for "militate", but if so, I can't see any that work well. That said, maybe there's more than one word to misread, which would make it harder. Then there's the content of the poem: Metaphor works by comparing two different things to draw out figurative similarities, so I could be maybe see such a comparison being made in the poem (e.g. a metaphor is compared to a soprano, a soprano is compared to a racing driver), but then I don't see the catachresis of the title. Anyway, I'm intrigued and looking forward to the reveal.
best,
Matt
moderator
Hi Jo,
What a fantastic word!
It reminds me of a television show I was watching last night and the fellow described himself as a ‘very vivacious reader’. I almost took a sip of something so I could spit it out.
I read the text like a definition or an intentional mis-definition of the showcased word in the title.
For me, since I didn’t show up knowing the definition of catachresis, it was a very enjoyable process of reading a word I did not recognise, followed by a text that did not make sense - then looking up the actual definition only to realise that the text was in fact a definition, itself.
Lots of fun - look forward to the rest!
Steve
Phillip, Cameron, and Matt,
Thank you for the suggestions. I think the idea of leaning into the joke with further violations might just be the way of allowing more imagery. I'll have to sleep on it for a few months to dream up more malapropisms.
JFN,
No worries. I should ask myself how badly and how often I want my audience to read my poetry with a pocket dictionary on hand.
Steve,
Thanks! And "vivacious reader"...that's so funny it might even be inspiring...
Jo
Breakfast-To-Go
It happened on the ride to work.
He schlumped down the aisle past too many partially filled rows.
The windbreaker, leaking cotton at the seams, argued with the felt backing each seat,
Eliciting periodic nylon shrieks.
He found me in the back,
Introduced tuckus to cushion,
Which spilled under the armrest
And beached me against the window.
Then it began.
On his lap, he cradled a duffel bag.
From its velcroed pouch
Sporting the L.L. Bean emblem hanging by two threads,
He withdrew a red bell pepper
By the bend of its stem.
He held it to his silver-stubbled lips
For a second
Before chomping in.
Eyes fluttering,
He moaned
Like he was savoring the finest produce
Imported from Eden.
The simulated Beatles
Imprisoned in my earbuds,
Couldn’t muffle such prandial delights
As they belted a chorus of “Help.”
And what if they could?
Not a single commuter deviated their gaze
From the backrests mounted ahead.
Another crunch into the pericarp
Sent a savory spray onto my cheek.
Since when did Monsanto make vegetables so juicy?
Except now, he spat the unchewed chunk into his palm
In favor for the prize inside.
With mounting vigor
He tore into the pith
Streaking the core in ivory ribs.
Relishedly, he minced on the inner skin
With the seeds sticking to his chin.
He blinked,
Perhaps reading my slacked jaw as envy.
He shifted,
And presented the half-masticated pepper
In invitation.
I seized the signal cord, which reciprocated no ding.
In a sweat, I kept tugging
With three short bursts, three long, three short,
Repeating
Until the captain set me free.
So what, if switching buses made me late for my meeting?
It was sweet relief to take the front seat
Beside a woman in a pinstriped pantsuit
And a snakeskin briefcase.
But when the hydraulic hiss set the bus back in motion,
She unlatched her bag.
Lining the interior were eggs nested in five cartons.
She plucked her first victim from the center.
She cracked the yolk and white into its mother divot.
She peeled a translucent membrane from the shell
And sucked it off her nail.
Nice twist.
You had me at "tuckus"!
The storytelling is deftly done, and the revulsion of the narrator is made clear.
The ending makes me imagine that a perfectly cut scream of disgust is going off in the narrator's head.
Keep up the good work!
BrianIsAtYou
I think I think, therefore I might be.
Breakfast to go - Momentum of detail was excellent. Everything was noticed, from the unchewed chunk, to the sound of the chair. Quite an uncomfortable ride for the N. Good details.
Hi Jo,
I hope you presented this poem to your co-workers like a note from home excusing your tardiness.
This works as a strange story but I think it’s still trying to find its way as a poem. I think your challenge to is retain the central images while paring down the text.
I’m not clear if your ending is supposed to be grounded in a similar reality to the man eating a pepper, or if this is a kind of descent into a nightmarish bus-scape. I didn’t have any problem picturing a guy eating a pepper like an apple, but the last bit I found harder to believe. I think, if this is to succeed, you need to push harder in one direction or the other - the grimy reality or the hallucination.
Interesting stuff - I’d be curious to see where you take this!
Steve
Last edited by scraps; 01-10-2021 at 01:04 PM.
Beautifully disgusting. I think you have a talent for the narrative, which is visible in this instance. Like Steve, I wonder where the poetry comes into it. Maybe the accumulation of details could in someway be invested with music, that is you could yank the language into a more dislocated form to serve the main emotions of the narrative.
Hope this helps.
Brian and Drumpf, thank you for the encouraging words.
Steve, thankfully, my coworkers have long accepted that I'm hardly worth having around until 10:01 AM. I like your suggestion. I think pushing the absurdity will help me isolate and emphasize a central image while hinting where I can cut.
Cameron, excellent suggestion as well. To make sure I follow for when I revise, you are suggesting more varied lineation, right? As a tool to parallel pace with the degree of absurdity?
Hi Jo,
The visceral descriptions in 'Breakfast-to-go' are very well-executed and the central idea is fantastic. I particularly love the secondary reading which pokes fun at the narrator for taking nice clothes/fancy handbags (a signifier for money) as an assumption that the passenger will be 'nice' (i.e. not as shocking as their previous neighbour) and the reveal.
I think you could probably trim down in an edit - and tidy the structure. Where it works most effectively, in my reading, is the images and narrative - where it might need some work is in how you are structuring the narrative (line-breaks, what to edit out, how to present it etc).
Sarah
Thank you, Sarah, for your insights!
Jo
A Compass Other than Memory
My analytical balance,
Accurate to the microgram,
Can’t measure how much flour
Is needed to recreate her recipes
Vaulted in amyloids.
Yet occasionally,
She feels the way back to her kitchen
Through the tangles entwining her
To the mire of Lethe
With a compass other than memory.
Perhaps those plaques are no match
For the knots she kissed into pasta dough
By the rolling pin
She carved from a branch
Decades ago?
Note: I attempted to fracture this, but I can't preserve the formatting--even in advanced mode. I also tried embedding and pasting screenshots with no luck. Is there an instructional post on these advanced features that I missed?
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Last edited by JoKingly; 01-11-2021 at 01:58 AM.