oh yeah, i got a bunch of poetry i'm piling together rn. its 50 pages so far, not counting Table of Contents and other boilerplate. but i'm getting nervous about it being consistent


Are you gonna write a chapbook/book of poetry based on your Southern experiences and influences? I've read a couple others of yours that'd fit right alongside this great poem. Every month or two I have to pester you to force you to write more. 

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Can we talk about stanza 5 here? I am seriously floored by how clever and thoughtful that stanza is. This poem is very carefully put together and it works so damn well to recreate a tone, a world, a lifestyle, a religious outlook. I relate so hard to this. 

well goddamn dogtim, you got me crying reading about my own poem.

Here's my experience of reading the poem:
> 
> these motherfuckers are all hopped up  
> on Yaupon Holly and cigarettes.  

We get the scene: there's those guys, and there's us. I had to look up yaupon holly -- weird southern vomit tea? anyways sounds like a fancy-kid drug. 
> 
> let’s go someplace cold and riverrun  
> and drink shitty beer. melt all we are  

the 'we' want to further separate ourselves from the other motherfuckers and drink something less fancy. going someplace cold means that wherever we are now is warm. Why does this speaker want to be cold and drinking shitty beer? 'melt all we are' says to me that the...I dunno, fancy shit the motherfuckers are doing are preventing some spiritual communion. So the warmth and the motherfucking yaupon and cigarettes prevent the melting. riverrun's the first word of Finnegan's Wake, it makes me think you've put a lot of weird secrets, puns, and codes into this otherwise conversational piece. 
> 
> into the woods looming over us,  
>

Like do you want a name to the speaker? I'm sorry, but i am unsure what you mean.

Great piece. Accurate title, I can definitely see everything you wanted the reader to. The brevity of the stanzas combined with the unique ways they're broken apart gives the piece a really interesting flow. The main problem for me is that it's rather unclear who the speaker is and the ambiguity doesn't seem to add to the piece. The first stanza implies that an outside observer is giving their thought, but the rest of the piece implies that the speaker is part of the bonfire. It's a minor issue, but understanding who the speaker is (or isn't) and add an entire dimension to the poem. All in all, this was a great read and I hope this critique helps.

the 'we' here is intended to draw on the 'You and I' of Eliot's Prufrock. changing it to 'we motherfuckers' would change the intent to leave the bonfire.

I get you worries about generalizing the south. It's a huge part of the reason i chose the title i did.

I love the imagery and sensory textures of this poem. The fire works brilliantly in its evocation of sight, sound, smell, and warmth. To add onto the previous comment, there's some discordance between the speaker's perspective in the first stanza – "these motherfuckers" – and after it – "let's go someplace cold...melt all we are". It seems that's solved easily just by changing it to "we motherfuckers" which is also a much more interesting phrase in my opinion, and would be a hell of a way to kick off the poem. Most of the lines are very clear; the only one that sticks out as confusing is "that giant before he cleaned himself up" since the usage of the referential "that" doesn't offer what giant is actually being referred to. 

Being from the South, I'm of the opinion that any time someone invokes "we" in reference to the South, that it has to be specified which "we" it is – otherwise, you risk creating & running into generalizations and abstractions of the South, as well as excluding t

as opposed to tonal *inconsistency*, would you be comfortable calling it a tonal *shift*? because the change is intentional, two voltas are placed in the poem (L2/3 & L12/13) that i'd hoped worked for the poem.

as far as the Confederate Flag and The Slate Arrowhead, both items are omnipresent in craft fairs and big flea markets in the Deep South (Alabama, Georgia) and I think they reflect Southerners obsession with the past and their cultural roots (i've got a racist cousin who claims that the only good thing Obama ever did was change Mt. Mckinley's name back to Denali)

does that help? does it change any potential issues for you?

I really enjoyed this piece! The not-so-fragrant fire and the "cheap, lenticular picture of the aurora" are great, novel images. This is one of my favorite poems I've seen on this sub recently. 

I'm a little confused by the title, coupled with the inconsistency of the tone, however (I saw a couple other posters have already mentioned the latter). The first half of the poem *does* read like a caricature to me, with the stereotypical images of "motherfuckers" smoking and drinking cheap beer by a bonfire in the backwoods. The second half, though, with those pretty images and the slight air of melancholy, does not. It breathes some life into the flat characters, which moves us away from the "caricature" and the humor I was expecting from the opening. 

I'm also a bit confused by the juxtaposition of the Confederate flag and slate arrowheads. I get that they're there to evoke a sense of Southern history, and maybe its more extreme moments (the very beginning and its most infamous era), whi

yeah, i'm trying to set up an escape, that still embraces the (symbolic) surroundings i guess. something to allow a sort choice the addressed.

this is sort of meant as a sonnet with a haiku substituting the final couplet (WCW was all i wanted to hear)

why the first stanza? i don't see the purpose. why not start with "Let's go..." (and try avoid comparisons to Prufrock) - is Yaupon Holly a yuppie/hipster thing you're trying escape? this is probably a lack of knowledge on my part

final lines give me WCW vibes.

In my head I just delete "and riverrun" and it works fine.

Apparently I cannot even process narrative and did not think that the first stanza (or any of it) was supposed to be actual dialogue (in my head it's all monologue). It reads better knowing that's what it's doing. I think there is still a question left because the first stanza excludes everyone but the speaker and hearer but the rest is written as far as I can see in a spirit of inclusion (at least based on materials and situation, the cheap beer, the bonfire) so it is not clear what the separation is supposed to be based on narratively and what it is contributing to the poem.

what should riverrun be replaced with? i honestly didn't have an interest in the word as a joyce-wank, but really just wanted an adjective that meant what it means.

also, the awkwardness of the first stanza just doesn't make sense to me (not trying to be difficult)

its just meant to pulled one of 'the people at the bonfire' away and wander off with the narrator

Most of what I would recommend is minor word-choicy / phrasing stuff and arguable ("and riverrun" is the one thing that positively must go). A couple of points reach a little excessive, e.g. "melt all we are" and "remind you / of how poor you are", and redundant given what has been accomplished with good-old-fashioned details. I'm going to second /u/GnozL that the first stanza is awkward, especially because "these motherfuckers" is 3rd person when most of the rest is 1st person plural (and it seems important that the narrator is included in the group).

Caricature of a Southern Fire