Source
r/OCPoetry•
Bosse-De-Nagge

Dissociative Lovesong

Feedback Received!

My feet had never felt so light

as they did the day i met you

at the top of penny street.

You were wearing that maroon

coat which looked good on you

even though it was a size too big.

You looked like a little girl

who didn't know what she was doing

and I fell in love straight away.

You always spoke like an optimist

but your eyes were pessimists -

deer-in-headlights, sprained ankle,

no-chance-in-the-woods, pained expression

on the face. Better to put it out

of its misery. Bringing down

of the shovel from the car-boot

into the skull, watching its eyes

as I do so. They were green.

A momentary lapse of concentration

and we're sat across from each other

with coffees in front of us.

You're talking and i'm processing,

not listening, collecting the data

so i can feign empathy later on.

Feigned, though the interest is real,

wanting to listen but not knowing how,

wanting to connect but unable to

express it. Unsure if that's a real

problem anyway. Unsure if i'm just

being neurotic.

There is no shape to anything,

your naked body beneath mine

is a sensation within a system

of similar sensations, nothing unique.

Exhibiting more serious signs of

losing touch with reality,

your curly hair makes me thinks of snakes

and for reasons I don't understand

i am aroused. I think about our daughter

(though she does not exist)

almost daily, and in my dreams she is

more like me than you. Which should

scare me but doesn't. You are not

good for me at all. The universe recedes

from around me and all ties are severed.

I am beside myself with you.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/60xovd/if_only_youd_ask/dfap3gq/

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/60zrmb/untitled/dfaoydv/?context=3

Posted Mar 23, 2017, 6:03 AM UTC

610
samxcr•

The subject matter is very relatable to most of us, and it's a nice break to read something more realistic rather than usual love poems that all end well and fantasise the whole thing.

The piece just reads more like a speech or presentation or monologue or rant or whatever, rather than a poem. There's no rhythm, beat, anything (that I can make out), and the line breaks seem to be put in just at random. This isn't always necessarily a bad thing, I'm just not sure how well it works for this piece. That is just my opinion however, maybe other people like that sort of style. Maybe just adding or removing syllables, or adding a rhyme scheme, or adding in some similar sounding words and it'll read a bit more naturally and "flowy". It's up to you though, that's just my personal preference.

That being said, your descriptions of situations and imagery come across very well, you use a lot of good words. Keep it up :)

1
ChickenFingerBasket•

I agree. While it is relate-able, it does not read as a poem. The line breaks are random and often jarring. I would work on that.

That said, I know how you feel...I think everyone has been here.

1
Bosse-De-NaggeOP•

I'm glad you said the line breaks are jarring because that's exactly what i wanted. They aren't random though. I tried to disconnect nouns from their descriptors to simulate a feeling of dissociation.

1
ChickenFingerBasket•

Oh, well...in that case, SUCCESS!!!

1
mitch44c•

I completely understood what you were trying to do while I read it. I think it is fantastic. It reads like a person thinks while in a dissociative state.

1
Bosse-De-NaggeOP•

I understand what you're saying but the line breaks are supposed to be jarring and disappointing and i definitely didn't put them in at random. There is no rhythm to anything when you feel dissociated.

1
rosegoes•

I agree with u/samxcr that this doesn't read as a poem. I think you need to think more about manipulating the music of the poem. The poem doesn't necessarily need to reproduce the more traditional ways of lineation (i.e. where you do enjambment and endstopping), but it needs to do something intentional and effective. Read it out loud a lot, making sure you pause where you've actually put pauses (punctuation, line breaks, etc.). Mess with it until it sounds right. It'll get there.

I also think the poem is too long. I liked the first three lines quite a lot! It gave this poem a vintage, mid-20th century feel that I wasn't expecting. But, for me, the poem quickly lost all of that surprise.

The speaker is extremely self-centered, basically doing nothing to address the subjectivity of the girl being written about. Which isn't to say that her subjectivity NEEDS to be addressed. But in the tradition of poetry, how many thousands of poems have been written in which women are basically mined for the poet's /////art/////? It gets to be boring after a while—at least, I think so.

If critiquing that was the intention of the poem, it didn't quite come through for me. If not: it's do-able to write a poem like this, definitely, but I think that it needs to be more interesting if it's going to succeed. There are a lot of different ways to make a poem interesting (amazing language, acute insights, etc etc). So just find whatever works for you.

For whatever reason (probably that 1950s feel), this poem reminded me of Philip Larkin's work. My personal favorite of his is "Talking in Bed". Another contemporary poet you might look at is Frank Bidart, who writes poems that are exceedingly concerned with the self, but has such extraordinary things to say that they're on another planet of good-ness.

1
Bosse-De-NaggeOP•

I think a lot of your criticism misses that this poem is supposed to be from the perspective of somebody with a dissociative disorder. It's not supposed to be enjoyable. If i made it 'music' it just wouldn't be right at all. It's supposed to be awkward and stilted with nothing properly connecting. I know how to write poems that sound musical, but this was not supposed to be one of them. It's supposed to be uncomfortable.

Thanks for the criticism though, maybe i do need to think more about the girl being spoken about.

3
rosegoes•

I did miss the fact that the poem is from the perspective of somebody with dissociative disorder (sorry, super dumb on my part, missed the title), but I actually wouldn't change any of my points.

Whether or not it's written from the perspective of somebody with dissociative disorder, the poem is still responsible for manipulating its aural/oral experience. That's what I meant when I said music. Which is, by the way different from being musical or enjoyable. Intention and effectiveness are not the same as pleasure, which is why I didn't suggest that. I don't believe that poems must inherently be enjoyable—I think great poetry can be awkward, uncomfortable, painful, etc. But, again, INTENTIONAL and EFFECTIVE. Awkwardness and stilted-ness are effects that need to be manipulated and controlled, i.e. orchestrated like music.

Sorry for missing the title—like I said, super dumb of me—but now that you've drawn my attention to it, I really think you ought to check out Frank Bidart.

Here's his poem, "Ellen West", written from the perspective of a woman with severe anorexia. I think this poem is extremely well-orchestrated (the first three lines are like woah out of this world), and in that orchestration does a beautiful job of not only conveying her unstable psychological state, but actually reproducing it on the page.

1
totheendsofthisearth•

Oh man, oh man, oh man

I feel like that one half of me is telling the story, the side the doesn't really get anything or anyone, the side that watches a car crash to see how people react rather than lend a hand, the side that picks "the wrong people" to pursue or love or study just to see what makes them tick, to have the chance to see the realities of how every person is flawed in their own unique way. It speaks to the side of me that detests my emotions, the weakness of fancy, and knows no guilt only curiosity and the systematic efforts of observation and advantage.

This part resonates, and I think reads with true rhythm:
  You're talking and i'm processing,
not listening, collecting the data
so i can feign empathy later on.
Feigned, though the interest is real,
wanting to listen but not knowing how,
wanting to connect but unable to
express it. Unsure if that's a real
problem anyway. Unsure if i'm just
being neurotic.

My only thought here is emphasizing the duality of the disconnection both of thought and interaction with
wanting to connect but unable to
express it. Unsure if that's real-
ly a problem anyway. Unsure if i am
just being neurotic.

1