Wall Street

It was indeed intentional, and also thanks.

Thanks so much! I'm really glad you were able to get something out of this, since a decent amount of myself went into it. I have a fairly deep obsession with the idea of "The Universal", and this poem is, if it is anything at all, an exploration of that idea. I think it's interesting that you can see some Billy Collins in this, because I've barely read Collins at all--this poem in particular is a synthesis of my ordinary prose style, some Wordsworth that's gotten stuck in my head, and this poem that isn't really Capital-G Great but has really resonated with me.

I'd have to agree with you that the first stanza and the quasi-epigraph at the start aren't quite as strong as the rest--the imagery in the rest is certainly more sincere, original, and packs a heavier Poetic Punch. However, I still think those beginning-pieces have a place here. You mentioned that the Eternal City line is the point at which the transition from particular to universal occurs; I think this transition is probably the most important part of the poem, and that the first stanza and the epigraph are necessary to set it up.

The first stanza, by directly referencing Sheen, the film, the external nature of the city, and by being tonally cliche, emphasizes that the subject matter of the poem comes from a film whose own subjects are inherently drawn from tropes. It is, in a way, poking fun at the idea of a universal--if our transcendent "truths" come from reused material, how much value can a universal really have? The fact that the city is "blissfully aware" of this supposed universality suggests that a certain smugness accompanies this presumed possession of transcendent truth, which perhaps is not deserved since the value of a universal is questionable.

The "dream" here also eludes Charlie Sheen; it "recedes" away from him because, in the first stanza, we are still confined to the earthly universes of film and city, where the achievement of a universal is doubtful. This idea is subtly recapitulated in the very last line; it is important that the city we are lost in be called "New York" because the value of the universal is still dependent on the particulars from whence it originates. Further, the first two lines are a reminder that this poem is exactly what it is--just a poem, written about a film, by a person who happened to see this film. The universal is inextricably immured in the particular, however much we'd like to escape it; however much we'd like to "lose ourselves".

I didn't have all this thought out before I read your critique though--all I had was a vague idea of what went where. Right now I'm wavering between two minds; that I either had these ideas subconsciously as I wrote this poem or that I just produced them here in an effort to defend the value of two lines and a stanza which are objectively poetically worse than the rest of this piece. Certainly these pieces of the poem detract from the more lyrical and rhapsodic ones which appear later--but do they do so in a way that effectively communicates the values of the particular over the universal?

At this point, I'm not sure, and this is partially because, like you, I don't like them as much as the rest of this poem. Perhaps this is because we both prefer universals over particulars, or perhaps it's just because they lack the basic punch that later lines have. But can lines which stress cliche and banality ever match those which stress universality and transcendence, or are they bound to certain tiers on the poetic hierarchy because of their content? Perhaps this is true only for people like me, for whom universality is a strong conviction and particularity is a nagging necessity--maybe someone entirely ambivalent on this might have been able to give both of these equal poetic weight.

Or, maybe the first lines here just happen to be worse because I wrote them before I was able to get into a good enough groove, and their aesthetic inferiority is the direct result of the inferiority of the effort that went into them. If I knew I wanted a poem that was nicer to read and provided a stronger argument for universality, I'd almost certainly delete them. If I knew I wanted a more balanced discourse, and that I could alter this poem in such a way that both sides would get equal weight, I would certainly do that as well.

But maybe there is value in the off-balance version I've presented here, regardless of how it came about--the particulars being introduced in the beginning of the poem, and in a toned-down manner, may produce in the reader similar feelings that I had while writing this poem: that is, a nagging sense of unease and obligation to the particulars, as if the immersive "Eternal City" owed fealty to the mundane materials from which it sprang. If this is the case, and these lines do illicit some feeling like this, then these lines certainly have a strong poetic value. If you manage to get through this ridiculous comment, please let me know your best approximation of how you felt when you first read them--I've worked myself up into being extremely curious about all this.

I'm sorry for replying to your very thoughtful and well-put critique with a hideous wall of text; I'm really glad you liked this poem as well as you did, and thank you so much for your thoughts. I tend to really cling to things once I get going on them, and usually I end up digging myself into a very deep hole. Now it's 2 AM again. Whoops.