This isn't half bad, in my opinion. I rather like it, even. I liked the "celebration" (if that's the right word) of the old woman. There are some extraneous words in my opinion and a few misspellings, but on the whole, I thought it read well. There is a narration to it. I certainly wouldn't call it a drunken ramble. I have to run to work right now, but I'll get back to this later. Cheers.

i don't think it works as a poem.  it has the beginnings of a short story.

like all ack's work.

 

i want to know, O, what points, or what qualities this piece has which make you think it's a poem.

keeping in mind this is posted on the Metacriticism Board.

 

s.

i agree it is a narrative.  but how does that make it a poem?

keep in mind that i translated it into narrative form.

 

s.

I understand, suse. There is a history here I don’t know anything about. I’m not fond of nastiness, either. Sloppiness can be fixed. Nastiness probably has to be ignored. If ack doesn’t like what I might have to say about his stuff, I can live with that. I agree, it would be nice if he would take the time to read other people’s work and respond to them; at least spend as much time as he would like us to spend with his. On the other hand, if all he does is call people names, I can do without that kind of attention. My reply here is getting a bit long, as you’ll see in a sec. It may take me a while to get it all in. Sorry.

And speaking of sorry, I unintentionally violated one of my principles earlier. I’m sorry, bear,  I wasn’t meaning to pick a fight with you by disagreeing with your impression of ack’s poem. I am disagreeing with you (and susan, apparently), but I’m not trying to ridicule your opinions. I should have prefaced my remark with words to that effect.

When is a poem not a poem? Good question. I don’t have any absolute rule for deciding where poetry “ends” and prose “begins.” For the most part, I’m willing to accept whatever the author claims it is. Occasionally, I might think something works better as prose than as poetry—my “Kennedy in Black and White” started out as a “normal” poem, but I thought the lines got so long that it worked better as a prose poem, not that I’m holding up one of my pieces as some kind of standard; and Ashberry has no trouble using lines as long as he pleases and I’m still convinced he’s writing poetry—especially if he tells me he is. So I don’t have any real trouble with the organization of this as a poem. Cleery used extremely short lines to good effect, and so sometimes did Bukowski, to name at least two. And zig zag death even reminds me of Bukowski, so I guess I’m primed to accept it as poetry anyway. For example, here’s a short Bukowski poem:

8 Count

from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and I am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought I’d
let you
know
fucker.

To my mind 8 count reads just as well Bukowski’s way as in conventional sentences. I can enjamb anything I need to and he’s given us some directions for pauses with punctuation. I don’t always like Bukowski’s viewpoint, but he has a droll sense of humor I like and can be very perceptive about human nature.

So, to get back to zig zag death, content-wise and stylistically it reminds me of Bukowski. This isn’t a rule or anything, but if I can read through something as it is written without stumbling terribly, then I am willing to accept it as a piece of writing, and I’m not overly concerned with what you want to call it. I can do that—mostly—with zig zag death. There are spots I would change or delete, but I can accept the short lines and non-sentential syntax. Actually, like the Bukowski, there are sentences. You’ve already written them out. They just aren’t in standard linear form; they extend vertically rather than horizontally. But does that prevent them from being read as sentences? I can’t speak for everyone, but for me it’s not that difficult. I’m going to try and post one or two examples in the Irreproducible Results thread on the General board where the poem doesn’t work for me either due to typographical gobbledygook, or stupid (in my opinion) line breaks, but I need some time to gather the examples.

My reply is getting too long. I’m going to have to split it into this part, which is mostly addressed to you, suse, and another more specific to zig zag death which I’m still working on. I'm not sure if I answered your question completely, suse, but I'll keep trying.

 

Meanwhile, back at zig zag death…I like the portrayal of the old woman as a celebration of life—like Zorba the Greek, maybe. And I like the self-reflection the experience seemed to stimulate. I like droll humor, anyway. I think (speaking to ack, now) you don’t need to spread it out vertically so far as you have—you can group more lines together, for example—but I don’t strongly object to the layout the way it is.

How about dropping “death” from the title, or changing it to something else like “dance” maybe. It is clear from the poem that death is involved in the story.

There are places where there are too many words, in my opinion, and where changes make it read more smoothly, at least to my ear. Let me just revise it some and see what you think. I’ll try and provide rationales as I go.

zig zag [dance?]

it was a strange day
people walking into me
like I didn’t exist.

I had been to the flea market
looking in junk bins to see
if I could come up
with anything
to make life
seem to be
worth livivng
again
when most of the time
it did not.

—needs something else here, not sure what—maybe
what is there
to show for anything
but a lousy
hangover
a wet sofa
and sick
on the floor?

The way it was, I found I came to a full stop between “I had been to the fleamarket”-stop-“I liked looking…” Going to …looking continues the flow for me and I can read it in one breath down to where I would put the first real break. If you prefer the stop, then don’t change it. I debated whether to keep the aftermath of the drink stuff because I really wanted to end the thoughts with “…when most of the time/it did not.” I decided to defer to your sense of realism, but I’m not arguing hard for their inclusion and the way I’ve got it now, the words seem kind of stuck on. I’m not happy with it, so I don’t think it’s quite “fixed” at this point.

And now I hit the first real snag for me. I can’t quite tell if you really are back “home,” wherever that is, or whether you’re only on the way back from the fleamarket. I think it’s the latter. I don’t think it’s a major issue. It messes up the sense of narration for me if it’s not clear—or else there has to be a good reason why there should be confusion. Being en route is more consistent with the action that follows: you're on the way home, you’re at the metro, you see this old woman dancing…I really liked that lady. She is the poem to me. I want the setup introducing her to be intelligible with no questions or distractions. Not that you or I know who she is—maybe she’s your guardian angel, ack—but she is the central image of the poem. She even makes it into the title. I wanted to keep the “once in a lifetime/fight” but I’m having difficulty with the stuff in which it’s embedded. Got to try and free it somehow. So, fearlessly taking the fickle scissors of editorship in hand, let me hack a bit and see where I can go.

so there I was at the metro
with a rucksack full of
stuff I’d hoped
would help with this
once in a lifetime
fight,

listening
to an eastern European—
probably an immigrant—
playing his
accordian.

It’s clear to me from the opening that you’re talking about suicide and the referral to this “once in a lifetime” decision accentuates it. You don’t need to belabor it with thoughts of “halting it all.” This “once in a lifetime” phrase is a form of dark humor when you consider that typically people are optimistic whenever they use the expression; often the next word is opportunity, whereas here it seems the only opportunity would be the chance to kill yourself only once. I’m trying to cut out all the stuff about why you’re at the metro—you’re on your way home, remember? As a reader, I don’t really care if you wanted to smoke unless it is important to the story and I don’t see that it is. I’m uncertain that we need to have the speculation about the immigrant status of the eastern European, either. I left it in, but I’m not convinced. You do need his accordian, though. Continuing on, then:

I liked his music.
it had heart.
he was collecting
pennies,
but you could tell he did it
for love
and it was
wonderful.

the old lady standing in front of me
carried a bag and wore
an old hat.
you could tell she was really old
by the way she stood.

I guess she liked the accordian, too,
because she started doing
a kind of zig zag dance
right in front of me
with her arms outstretched like a bird
waiting to take off
for the last time.

[Back to death again, but it is going to get a positive twist with the old lady’s Zorba-like dance.]

then she started zig-zagging
between the shoppers
who carefully tried to ignore her
but you could tell
they all thought
she was insane.

it felt wonderful
that she could do
this crazy thing
and not get locked up
for lunacy or
something,

so I guessed I was still in
England.

[I don’t see that the dance to the shop adds anything more. It has the line about the gift to the gods, but how important is that line? You can convince me it’s needed if you want to, but I recommend taking it out. I think you’re ready to wrap it up at this point.]

if I had been close to death
like her
I wouldn’t really
give a fig leaf either
what people thought
about me
or shopping
or how bad it all can be.

if I had lived a happy life
like maybe she did
I could just
reflect on how
these moments
can make up a life—
unconcerned about
how much money you earn
or what car you own
or where you shop.

me, I just had a fun time
picking up things for 50p
at the fleamarket
trying not
to die.

she must be so old I thought
that even death
didn’t worry her
anymore.

I just wished I could be
like her,

not to be afraid
of closing time
but to be overcome
with life.

the keys as I hit them
sound like bullets.

they sound
damn good
sometimes.

sometimes
everything
makes sense.

sometimes you even
smile.
[in wonder.]

OK, so that’s what I would do to this. You can’t possibly know whether this woman had lived a happy life or not. For all you know she’s a bag lady—and maybe she was—and maybe it doesn’t matter. But you can still get something positive out of her dance—at least a respite from the dark, brooding side of things. As I revised the revision in Word, the last line fell off to the next page. When I got to “sometimes you even/smile” I was thinking that was the end. You know, it’s not half bad ending with “smile.”  It accentuates the positive in a way.

I think it works. I would chop it and change things a bit, but I’m happy with it on the whole.

Ortho, don't worry about it.  I was not insulted.  I have grown duck feathers over my 63 years and most stuff just roles off of my back... bear

not one metaphor.

bukowski not only uses metaphor, he has intensity.

this person is a wanna be.

i challenge him again to read another poet.

 

you should read the rest of his "peoms".

when you have a lot of time to kill.

they lack the ability to be read aloud,
except as weak stories - and he feebly tries to make it a poem.
not even you could make it work.

you read more into it than is acually there.

 

ack does not know the meaning of connotation.

this has no meter, no music, no rhythm, no sound.
this person does not have the basic tools.

 

it does not leave me feeling better off for having read it.

bukowski says much more and steps up the intensity.

 

why do you suppose buk calls his poem:

8 Count
or writes:
my typewriter is
tombstone

hank has got the tools -
and knows how to use them.
great imagery.
& he is peculiarly effective.

 

Ashberry has the tools.  and i have heard him read.  very effective - and funny.

 

now as for content - i don't see the comparison.  at all.
try reading those - oh yeah - i think ack petulantly deleted them.

 

go back the previous 50

and then the previous 50 to that.

 

you'll find them.

 

s.

here's a good one.

called: Oven chips

 

just so you sort of get it.

 

previous 50, then previous 50 posts.

 

a real doll this ack.

 

s.

btw, i think that one (deleted) had a lot of 'fecks' in it.

not sure - as he deleted it.

There are sometimes too many repeats of the same word, though that can be effective. There are sometimes too many words that disrupt rhythms—but that can be a very subjective thing. (I feel that my stuff has too many runnings-along and abrupt stops. I think it’s because I’m too fond of anapest and parenthetical asides. (I need to work on that.))  I will go back and read some of his older posts when I have time. Still, there were things I liked about zig zag death. First and foremost, I enjoyed the old woman’s dance. It reminds me of Zorba’s dancing in the face of disaster and its reaffirmation of life. I liked the idea of shopping at a flea market for junk, hoping to stave off thoughts of suicide or depression or whatever. Rejoining that “theme” at the end, I liked “me, I just had a great time/picking up things for 50p/at a flea market/trying not/to die.” And if it isn’t metaphor, it’s at least a figure of speech to say “I just wished/I was like her/not to be afraid/of closing time/but overcome/with life.” And saying that the typewriter keys sound like bullets is at least a simile, though I think I’ve heard something like that before. I’m not trying to say this is as good as a Bukowski—and I don’t always like Hank, either, but that’s no nevermind. Only that I wouldn’t dismiss it because it is more narration and description than metaphor or symbolism. Bukowski himself never claimed to be writing poetry. He said all he ever did was write down the things he saw. We all know he did more (I understand 8 count as a reference to a boxer down for the count; at 8 he only has two more counts and he’s out for good), but the point is he wasn’t necessarily trying for metaphor all the time, either. Irony and realism count for something, too. zig zag death is rough in spots and should be chopped and refined, but there is a nucleus of something I find worth reading and even liking.

The following has a story, but it's a poem..  ack, do you see the difference?

Do you at all care about the difference? Must it always be, what you call 'instinctive?'

'Instinctive' meaning to you: whatever, however, you feel like writing?  Forget form?

Any form?

There is more to poetry than what you write.  Here, in yours, there is nothing to
awaken me.  What?  No consideration for your readers?  Only yourself?

Refine it.  Take away.  Add the poetry.  Or else you simply have a story, prose.

Ortho took a lot of time on this, yet I wonder how much of his advice you will take.

But not to worry.  I won't comment again on your work.  Nevermore...

 

After the Movie
by Marie Howe

My friend Michael and I are walking home arguing about the movie.
He says that he believes a person can love someone
and still be able to murder that person.

I say, No, that's not love. That's attachment.
Michael says, No, that's love. You can love someone, then come
     to a day

when you're forced to think "it's him or me"
think "me" and kill him.

I say, Then it's not love anymore.
Michael says, It was love up to then though.

I say, Maybe we mean different things by the same word.
Michael says, Humans are complicated: love can exist
     even in the murderous heart.

I say that what he might mean by love is desire.
Love is not a feeling, I say. And Michael says, Then what
     is it?

We're walking along West 16th Street-a clear unclouded
     night-and I hear my voice
repeating what I used to say to my husband: Love is action,
     I used to say to him.

Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to
     look at someone you want to eat and not eat them.

Janis Joplin says, take another little piece of my heart now baby.

Meister Eckhardt says that as long as we love images we are
     doomed to live in purgatory.

Michael and I stand on the corner of 6th Avenue saying goodnight.
I can't drink enough of the tangerine spritzer I've just
     bought-

again and again I bring the cold can to my mouth and suck
     the stuff from
the hole the flip top made.

What are you doing tomorrow? Michael says.
But what I think he's saying is "You are too strict. You
     are a nun."

Then I think, Do I love Michael enough to allow him to think
     these things of me even if he's not thinking them?

Above Manhattan, the moon wanes, and the sky turns clearer
     and colder.
Although the days, after the solstice, have started to lengthen,

we both know the winter has only begun.