Critique of a Will Dockery poem

Ozzie wrote:
 > Will -- here's an analysis and suggestions as promised.
 >
 > A typical verse from your archives ---
 >
 > Crescent moon
 > on just fresh Autumn
 > waves lapping
 > from the river.
 > Myth and reality at once.
 > Bon Bon
 > Good good early chill.
 > Memory like a haunting shadow.
 >
 > This verse illustrates your primary difficulty: disconnected images.
These
 > fragments create an emotional response in you because you're seeing
the
 > whole picture in your mind, including the narrative that connects
those
 > images. By simply recording individual images, however, you are not
 > conveying what you feel to the reader.
 >
 > Let's see if we can create a narrative from the parts.
 >
 > A crescent moon shines on the
 > fresh autumn waves lapping
 > from the river.
 > An early chill stalks my memory
 > like a haunting shadow.
 >
 > If I blink I can feel myth and reality at once.
 > ---------------------------
 >
 > This isn't very good because it doesn't lead anywhere, but it
illustrates
 > the point: Use your images (some of which are quite good) to create a
 > coherent narrative. This needn't be dull or academic - look at
Gregory's
 > poem, I Am 25, reproduced in the newsgroup. Wild and wooly and
 > quintessential Corso - but with a distinct story line.
 >
 > Here's another example from Bukowski:
 >
 > drunk
 > ol' Bukowski drunk
 > drunk*
 >
 > I hold to the edge of the table
 > with my belly dangling over my belt
 >
 > and I glare at the lampshade
 > the smoke clearing
 > over
 > North Hollywood
 >
 > the boys put their muskets down
 > lift high their fish-green beer
 >
 > I fall off the couch
 > kiss rug hairs like cunt
 > hairs
 >
 > close as I've been in a
 > long time.
 > ------------------------------
 >
 > Do you see the story he's telling? Going in reverse here's how
you
 > might've written this:
 >
 > The edge of the table
 > Belly dangling over belt
 >
 > The lampshade hides yellow light
 > smoke clears over north Hollywood
 >
 > boys putting muskets down
 > their beer is fish-green
 > guzzle guzzle
 >
 > The heavy couch
 > Rug hairs like cunt hairs
 > --------------------------------------------------
 > I just disconnected the images from the narrative.
 >
 > Simply taking narrative into consideration will bring your poems to a
new
 > level very quickly. It was fun writing this analysis - I'd be
happy to
 > discuss it further.

Thanks for the observation, I see from bukowski's descriptive verse
that keeping it simple but keeping a focus, a narrative flow, works
much better. I'll work with getting some similar attention to detail
into the re-write of "Gold Like A Broken Ring".

If you have time, this is one I have a problem with changing, perhaps
you'll have an idea on where to take it:

----
Tuesday With Little Spain.

And I am shoved back into this night life.
Well, she said, she said, she said it was impossible.
There is a place, it smoulders, it is the past, dreamtime,
wander these dark corridors of memory.

I sleep so deep, I don't like to sleep,
my dreams threaten to take me away.
Floating in a sea of bad vibes,
I do these things over and over,
repentatively, feel regret but keep doing it over and over.
Then the whole thing becomes a blur.

Grey and pasted, patched together with spackling
and sheet rock mud, a disgusted perversion of humanity.
During the decline and fall of poetry,
in the summer of sardonic excess,
I sat with Little Spain on her steps,
and felt her softness.

Still a sky poet, though tattered and glowing,
brought down from Blue Territory,
no longer in Blue Territory.
I wandered by a cold river
in the flaming copper land of summer.

This complete process of remaking we had,
your mix of pales and shades,
your, disctinctive, mythic self,
one distinct sing of your eyes...
I must bitterly understand our fate, we were never meant to be,
Like lost in the mirror'd rooms of a crazy house.

Crimson on the napkins,
pink fuzz on the clover.
Maneuver to the left, and forward,
into a mud soaked future.

-Will Dockery 1998
----

Thanks again, Ozzie. Good to have some really helpful critique on these
shallow wastelands of jeering hecklers.

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