Double Dutch
[removed]
Posted Jun 12, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC · edited
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God I love the description of cantaloupe rind as red oak, and its comparison to a sunset. Perfection. Your imagery is powerful; I am absolutely transported to this setting and it captures that carefree feeling of childhood summers so well. I feel like a kid again, sitting sock footed, muggy summer, covered in mosquito bites, laughter and rhyme. Reminds me of "Summer Skin" by Death Cab For Cutie in the best way.
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There’s an old song I recently re-discovered; this reminded me of it in the best way.
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Thank you for sharing this song, it's now on my summer playlist.
Unknowingly copied your words while making a music reference in my comment.
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Damn I've never heard of that guy. Really great writing.
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I love your use of the line
Waiting my turn.
It has a wonderful ambiguity between the optimism of youth (the wanting to eventually escaping the mundanity of muggy summer evenings) and the undescribed life, after the "rains." Like, the meaning of that waiting, as a kid, seems optimistic, but now, with that left behind, the meaning of waiting shifts.
Not a great question (and I don't want this to sound loaded, I'm really just curious), is there a reason why there are no line breaks?
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Thanks for your comment!
As to why there's no line breaks, there's two related reasons. The first has to do with that sense of waiting that you already commented on. It had line breaks originally, but I felt like it was making the poem too kinetic. I felt like the prose gave more a sense of everything being sort of static.
Secondly, I liked that the prose structure let me be a little less heavy handed. In some of the early drafts I was ending lines with the ominous details like the drains and the dusk, and it just felt like I was pointing too much in a particular direction. It also over-empasized the rhymes, which further increased that sense of artificiality. I guess I wanted those things to be a little more hidden to match with the idea that we don't always see the signs of our childhood ending when we're kids, even if they're all around us.
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This is just beautiful. I think the prose form allows the images to roll into eachother in such a way that it reads perfectly like the recolleciton of a memory -- all those details filling your head in .5 of a second, and falling away just as quickly. I've read this aloud to myself a couple of times and the alliteration, consonance and assonance, really just feels good in my mouth. There's some tasty turns of phrase to get your tongue around, y'know.
Excellent work as always, Red :)
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Delighted to hear from you. Thanks for the comment.
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This is so cinematic, I love the way this whole scene is made with so many up close, intimate details. From bites on skin, to the asphalt - I almost feel like I have a pebble's eye view of it as I skid over to those storm drains with marbles and pennies. Then back to the speaker's skin, the sweat, the shoulder blades. Then feet in socks, so close up, one zoomed in shot to another. Even the horizon is squashed, muted, and somehow trapped in a small space - 'thin rope of horizon', scattering shadows under ankles - again, the feet, the close ups, we're at floor level this whole time.
There's this kind of pregnancy to the whole poem, it's brooding and foreboding just like the sticky heat before a thunderstorm - which I think must be what you were going for, because you do it so well. In some ways, I find myself almost wanting the rains to be a kind of relief, a clearing of the air - but that line, 'the last time I was mine' kind of alludes to the rains being a bad thing, somehow. I suppose in some ways this whole scene is quite a nostalgic one, so the idea that rain ruined everything is pretty effective, but I think there might be some opportunity in here to explore a kind of, coming of age of some sorts, with the rain and all.
Also, it could be quite nice to finally treat the reader to some drama from the sky, some scale, a wide zoomed out shot to finish on! Take us to the sky, past the telephone wires, show us that great big bruised world up there waiting to unleash hell on those kids playing their games.
I'm always excited to see something posted by you, Red, keep 'em coming!
Thanks for the thoughtful feedback.
I really like this suggestion! Part of why I picked this for the workshop is that it was feeling a little too inert and that the 'ominous' vibe wasn't coming through strong enough. I think a sense of scale could definitely help nudge it a little more toward the atmosphere or implication I want. Appreciate you.
You'll blow it out of the water, I'm sure.
P.s I'm about to post a poem which is quite heavily influenced by your piece, how to feminise a voice - I hope you won't mind that I've nicked some of your ideas 🙈
Not at all--I'd be a hypocrite if I was bothered by it. I think all poetry is part of a conversation the poet is having with the world... including all of the things that they've read or experienced that have left some sort of impression. Interpreting those experiences and adding to them with your own to produce something new is part of what makes this such an exciting art form. I've drawn endless inspiration from all sorts of different pieces to greater or lesser degrees... I'm just honored to be part of the conversation. And hey, I didn't realize it until after the fact, but I think the title of "How to Feminize a Voice" was probably a subconscious lift from "How to feed a horse," haha.
EDIT: words are hard
Phew! Good. I like it when poems speak to each other.