Guide

Wowee.

The first part is as perfect as I could imagine it. PERFECT.

The second movement isnt quite living up to the language of the first.

But this is very, very good.

More, please!

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Actually correction: its the third stanza that does not resonate as well as the other two....i.e. fights and fucks..eh....

Kyla:

Seeing good poetry here after quite a while...the first part is no doubt the best, but I think the last segment -- despite the language being a bit jerky -- conveyed a `poetic justice`! I found the ``traveling the spaces between fights and fucks`` particularly interesting if one goes back to your lines in the first segment: ``And I follow you more with questions than my body, /and you answer sideways, you won’t look back.``

Enjoyed the journey with the stasis...

Kyla:

worth the wait?!

..bus, walk, train, ...all the (com)motion comes to this:

At the still point
of the turning of the world,
there is no traveling cloak.
Come back from this deathlessness.

...re: the footnotes: ..hmmmm...wonder if they were necessary;)

and yes, welcome back:)

lve,

t

Kyla:

worth the wait?!

..bus, walk, train, ...all the (com)motion comes to this:

At the still point
of the turning of the world,
there is no traveling cloak.
Come back from this deathlessness.

...re: the footnotes: ..hmmmm...wonder if they were necessary;)

and yes, welcome back:)

lve,

t

I seriously doubt the literary credentials of this poem as a valid form of poetry. But since I am just a mechanic type aadmi, I will keep my critique to this comment only.

Where is that professor of literary genre when you need her?

Whats the problem Urstruly Sahib?

Well, critique it..duh

And save you the work of using that brain? Not on your life...

Usually poems arent read according to their structure but seamlessly. If the poet had chosen the longer line structure, her poem might look like this:


You’re a strange woman.
You ask me out into the night and wear your traveling cloak, your foul weather hat,
you pay for bus tickets to take us across this dark, dry land, you walk ahead of me.


-This is a more obvious flow. In fact, theelegiac lyricism of these verses is hidden by the structure the poet has chosen. Generally, good free verse works on some kind of stanzaic organization. Another example of the long line:

I’ve seen you before; singing out the blood in your veins, the wounds in your breasts,
bellowing in pain and anger at the passerby too stunned from being alive
to comprehend your dying over and over again.

Now you call me into this dark, dry land, you board a train that chuffs off some kind of stasis. And I follow you more with questions than my body, and you answer sideways, you won’t look back.


-What a gorgeous section: And I follow you more with questions than my body, and you answer sideways, you won’t look back. This is a fine example of explicating the inexplicable…more questions than my body…answering sideways…lovely, fresh language. Not sure if the repetition of ``dry, dark land`` is the best route to go.


I’ve been here before. I remember I slid from sore to sore, in chaos.
Now I’m on a locomotive tour of demon carcasses; the horizon separates black from black; the wan stars sicken - You take me across no land.


-What excels here is the repetitive couplets: I slid from sore to sore; locomotive tour (slant vowels?) the horizon separates black from black; this works because the couplets are paradoxical. Then there is the quiet, detached narrative-through the images, the author shows, doesn’t tell.

The tone changes too much here without any warning or transition. While I like that this conversation may happen in any relationship, placid or fraught with the kind of tension already indicated in the two stanzas, after the skill of the first two, the last seems a bit anti climatic. And this is no criticism of the author-how does one “finish” the intensity of the landscape she started? The injunction the narrator gives the “you” to come back is tender and played down-reminds me of Jane Kenyon’s Let Evening Come and William Matthew’s Misgivings. After the heightened language that precedes it- its like coming down from C.K. Williams-the master of the long, explosive line.

Come on back, love. This is an expensive habit, this traveling the spaces between fights and fucks between conversations between these are the times of my life. You roam bootless. At the still point of the turning of the world, there is no travelling cloak.

Come back from this deathlessness.

-Fights and fucks is too pat, too easy. But, whatever. I dont think it lives up to ``I slid from sore to sore``, etc.

Saminashah

Thank you very much. It is this kind of discussion that I`d like to see on the poetry boards- not the usual ``great imagery``, ``nice words etc.`` type of comments.

temporal, the official critic:

you are next,

Abey Urstruly,

Why dont you go back to taking credit for inventing fire, yaar?

can someone try to explain what is poetry to us simpletons? how does one go about apreciating it? i understand songs. they have music and melody, which is apealing (even to a 4 month old baby) kind of naturally. over time the song grows on you and then you start listen to the words and understand its meaning. later over multiple listenings, you may `discover` other facets of the song.

e.g. take this song about an indian womans existence.

Mere hathon mein nau anu chooriayan hain
Thoda thaheron, sajan majabooriyan hain

this song has tons of melody, beat etc. over time i listened to the lyrics and their are layers of meaning.

how does one go about liking or apreciating poetry?

thank you

Farzana, thanks for your comment. I`m glad you liked it. I submitted this poem a good 2 months ago and I think I might have gone back to part 3 since then to deal with the language jerkiness. But you found it! I was trying to remember why I was so attached the fights and fucks line, and you found it! Thanks.

# 5 - temporal.

Thanks for commenting. The footnotes are definitely necessary. They`re not mere allusions, they are actual lifting of words that aren`t mine, so I must give credit or be struck down or sued or have karmic badness for the next seven years. :)

Wow. I really wasn`t expecting literary criticism at all. I was expecting the ron dhon and rhyming comments, but thank you very much Saminasha for that long and detailed critique. That is very interesting and helpful.

In the immortal words of young Pakistani journalists everywhere, I have one thing to say and it has two parts.

Part 1 is free verse: the thing about it is the freedom to invent your own structure. Of course you could just ramble on and break the lines wherever you like, call it poetry and the only ones to question you would be those willing to brave the PC waters of who-decides-what-poetry-is. Thanks, Urstruly, for braving. I think it`s perfectly valid as poetry, but hey, I wrote it. In any case, I could venture into blank verse or rhymey poetry, but I find that I end up with a thakki hui rail gaari sound, and that`s just not attractive.

The real thing though is that it`s not meant to have the kind of flow that comes from a longer line. The line breaks have a point and the point is to inject breath where you wouldn`t necessarily if you were reading it as a sentence straight up. And the point of that takes it to Part 2, reading aloud.

In the school of English language poetry in America, poems are for the page, unless you`re black, in which case you have other rules, or lesbian/feminist, in which case you get into spoken word. Spoken word in itself is relatively new in it`s visibility on the scene. In the Pakistani of school of Urdu language poetry, though, you have the mushyra and the spontaneous recitiation of couplet to make point or declare love. Spoken word is in your face, couplet recitation is lackadaisical and romantic. Moreover, I have yet to find an English language poetry reading where the wah-wah instinct doesn`t get completely stuck in the throat and reduced to a squeak. Which is all a lot of words to say that between rap and spoken word and writing and imperialism and South Asians running amok in gora lands, it`s a good place and time now to give English language poetry more than two dimensions. Which is why my lines are the way they are - they are meant to be read aloud.

Now was that worth reading? I don`t know. I should have gone to arbi class this morning like a good little girl. Thank you for your comments and readings!!