What really struck me in this poem is how it feels like stepping into someone’s creative workshop, where nothing has to make perfect sense to feel true. The images come at you sideways — wires, soup cans, rulers — and somehow they all fit together in this odd, playful logic. I love the way the poem treats the act of making as something messy and physical, almost like you have to throw yourself into it to understand anything. The invisible cake made me smile; it feels like a metaphor for checking on something you can’t quite name. And then the poem suddenly turns bold, telling you to crash a wedding or rub your body on the page, as if creativity demands a little recklessness. The final rhythm — foot, foot, knee, hand, hand — feels like choreography for a mind trying to find its balance. It’s strange, but in a way that feels strangely alive.
Gorgeous ekphrastic - clearly takes off from the image cited into sonics and story with humor and sensuality! Thanks, Reuben (and I am still working on the Revolution / reading)
I think I've finally worked out what's wrong with modern poetry journals/editors. They've all done these 'MFA' things. I haven't, of course. But I get the impression they 'teach' you (teach being the wrong word - 'condition' is probably better) to 'close analyse' poems (close reading). That's to say, you look at each line in isolation.
This is the problem. A true poem does not have isolated lines. It is a holistic thing.
If you take this into the writing of poetry then you end up with people who write 'isolated lines'. Each line on its own might 'seem nice' or 'seem meaningful', but ultimately it isn't. This deconstruction of poetry is a menace. People end up writing a piece of prose, then they arrange each carefully contrived clause into a single isolated line and call it poetry. It's a deceptive thing.
I will try and illustrate this off the cuff with two contrived poems. The first will be isolated lines each pretending to have a profound meaning (but ultimately it's pretentious), and then I'll write a proper poem in which the holistic is queen.
Prompt: so let's think about a mother collecting her child from school or something.
MFA version:
It's the sound of the car
the click in the parking
place I am always waiting
for my child, my
girl or boy they
my mind drifts up
into the sky where the clouds kiss
i will not say
it takes my breath away
in the pretence
i am sentenced to care
for them and i will
love them when they emerge
like a click in the parking place
i will shut the door on them
and we will all go home.
See what i mean? That's actually a shit poem.
Here's a proper poem version.
Every time i am here
i try to recall that click in the parking
when my own mother loved me
i recall that click when he door-slimmed shut on me
that safety that locked that locked in syndrome
i am sentenced to care, I know,
i am prone to the make believe of age
they don't know - my girl and my boy they
don't know i am no different
only sentenced to care
when they emerge and they smart-click those young heels
and so excited and so and so
as if no day is ever the same
and i will never shut the door on my self again,
the way i did when my own mother let me down
gently, when he died, gently, when he left,
with only a click in the parking place
where the shut in my childhood and the locked in drowns.
See, they are smiling.
They know nothing.
Let it always be so.
#
See, that's the difference. That second one is not only holistic but it has internal rhymes and internal references and various other poesy-tricks and all that jazz. I'm sure if i worked on it a bit I could turn it into something worth keeping. But it's enough as is to illustrate the point, I think.
Now go away, and write me an essay. I'll mark it over the weekend.
I really really like this almost-sonnet. The way it moves down the shape, and the way the narrowing of it fits the subject matter. The implications of the invisible cake. Invisible dreams? Invisible love? And the rhyme gives the end a feeling of certainty which is ironic in the context of the poem's uncertainty. And thanks for introducing me to a journal I hadn't heard of, or if I had heard of it, I'd forgotten about.
What really struck me in this poem is how it feels like stepping into someone’s creative workshop, where nothing has to make perfect sense to feel true. The images come at you sideways — wires, soup cans, rulers — and somehow they all fit together in this odd, playful logic. I love the way the poem treats the act of making as something messy and physical, almost like you have to throw yourself into it to understand anything. The invisible cake made me smile; it feels like a metaphor for checking on something you can’t quite name. And then the poem suddenly turns bold, telling you to crash a wedding or rub your body on the page, as if creativity demands a little recklessness. The final rhythm — foot, foot, knee, hand, hand — feels like choreography for a mind trying to find its balance. It’s strange, but in a way that feels strangely alive.
Great poem from a next-level poet.
-Seth
editor, petrichor
Gorgeous ekphrastic - clearly takes off from the image cited into sonics and story with humor and sensuality! Thanks, Reuben (and I am still working on the Revolution / reading)
I think I've finally worked out what's wrong with modern poetry journals/editors. They've all done these 'MFA' things. I haven't, of course. But I get the impression they 'teach' you (teach being the wrong word - 'condition' is probably better) to 'close analyse' poems (close reading). That's to say, you look at each line in isolation.
This is the problem. A true poem does not have isolated lines. It is a holistic thing.
If you take this into the writing of poetry then you end up with people who write 'isolated lines'. Each line on its own might 'seem nice' or 'seem meaningful', but ultimately it isn't. This deconstruction of poetry is a menace. People end up writing a piece of prose, then they arrange each carefully contrived clause into a single isolated line and call it poetry. It's a deceptive thing.
I will try and illustrate this off the cuff with two contrived poems. The first will be isolated lines each pretending to have a profound meaning (but ultimately it's pretentious), and then I'll write a proper poem in which the holistic is queen.
Prompt: so let's think about a mother collecting her child from school or something.
MFA version:
It's the sound of the car
the click in the parking
place I am always waiting
for my child, my
girl or boy they
my mind drifts up
into the sky where the clouds kiss
i will not say
it takes my breath away
in the pretence
i am sentenced to care
for them and i will
love them when they emerge
like a click in the parking place
i will shut the door on them
and we will all go home.
See what i mean? That's actually a shit poem.
Here's a proper poem version.
Every time i am here
i try to recall that click in the parking
when my own mother loved me
i recall that click when he door-slimmed shut on me
that safety that locked that locked in syndrome
i am sentenced to care, I know,
i am prone to the make believe of age
they don't know - my girl and my boy they
don't know i am no different
only sentenced to care
when they emerge and they smart-click those young heels
and so excited and so and so
as if no day is ever the same
and i will never shut the door on my self again,
the way i did when my own mother let me down
gently, when he died, gently, when he left,
with only a click in the parking place
where the shut in my childhood and the locked in drowns.
See, they are smiling.
They know nothing.
Let it always be so.
#
See, that's the difference. That second one is not only holistic but it has internal rhymes and internal references and various other poesy-tricks and all that jazz. I'm sure if i worked on it a bit I could turn it into something worth keeping. But it's enough as is to illustrate the point, I think.
Now go away, and write me an essay. I'll mark it over the weekend.
I really really like this almost-sonnet. The way it moves down the shape, and the way the narrowing of it fits the subject matter. The implications of the invisible cake. Invisible dreams? Invisible love? And the rhyme gives the end a feeling of certainty which is ironic in the context of the poem's uncertainty. And thanks for introducing me to a journal I hadn't heard of, or if I had heard of it, I'd forgotten about.