Rapunzel atop Babel

Thoughts, opinions, etc. Thanks!

note: LOL I'm sorry...I totally messed up my tale/symbols here...I meant Babel, as in tower of Babel. Sorry for the confusion. I'll put the attachment back up soon.
note2: retitled version uploaded.
edit: file removed.

written 3/12/11
reposted 4/16/11

Where it says, "And Repunzel spoke in the tounges of man", is that intentionally illegible? It would make sense given that sentence and the title, but I can't be sure. But the beginning part was alright, however I was not impressed, gripped, or anything. I can't really give you any suggestions as to how to make this better, or if maybe its something that doesn't speak to just me. Well, keep writing!
-Alex

While I continue to question to use of form and other various visual parlor tricks, I enjoyed your poem. Your focus here is obviously not on the language, as the aesthetics are lacking and the words themselves are, in themselves, boring--rather, your focus is on content and its visual manifestations. I would consider this more "art" than poem; something I might see hung on a wall than read in a journal.

I think the best word I have to describe this is "eerie", even apocalyptic. The twelve or so lines of gibberish you have following Rapunzel is a wall of buzzing, ancient sound -- reminiscent of the fall of Babel or maybe an alien invasion. The gibberish is a symbol of confusion and disconnect, and the perpetual, inherent struggle to communicate. You can imagine that, if translated, the nonsense might reveal a beautiful passage of poetry. Alas, it is humankind's calling to be signaling and burping their diverse tongues, unable to say what they need/want/wish.

Of course, this is a conversation between man and deity. Approaching the prison of Babylon (traditional human-ness tinged with the rot of sin) is a savior, whose task is to bring peace and help humankind transcend themselves to a higher state of heaven. Potentially, this poem can be read with specific religious affiliations in mind, namely Christianity. Perhaps the figure at the bottom of the tower is Christ, but I believe that your intention here is not so specific and narrow. The savior is any larger force -- perhaps cosmic, perhaps not -- that offers mankind peace, transcendence, release from "prison". However, due to man's innate inability and incapacity to communicate with any diefic figure, a disconnect occurs. But not only a disconnect of language, but a disconnect of intentions. The savior mentions peace and "God's favor" several times. Are you posing that man is inherently war-like and contentious, unable to contain peace, unable to comprehend it? Contrasted with the neat, orderly letters and sentences of the savior is the loud, dark, rutting blocks of text from Rapunzel -- an offensive and warrior-like sight. Something fearful in its denseness.

The one thing that was not so evident to me was the shape of the savior's dialogue and the decreasing size of the text. I wonder if your intention is the shape, or the mere decrease in size. Since I cannot divine any specific meaning from the latter, I'll consider the former. I see immediately the cartoonish shape of a atom bomb, but the image seems anachronistic and irrelevant. The savior brings the antithesis of war, and something rising, rather than descending. The other option I see is penile. The phallic shape of the text seems to imply dominance and authority over Rapunzel, the symbol for humanity. The penis looms over Rapunzel, something to seal and bring about a kind of union, but ominous as well in its driven orderliness. Rapunzel's response is incoherent and foreign, evidently weaker, which meshes nicely with concept of cultural rape -- an assimilation of sorts. This could be a statement about mankind's refusal to assimilate to the controlling, masculine cosmos...female, yet empowered with incongruity.

All in all, you provided an interesting read. However, I must stress again that I see this less as a poem as much as a piece of art. I think that form immediately strips a poem of its literature and relegates it to the visual. Keep that in mind as you continue to write.

Eli

Wow, this is not just poetry it's art. Wow, again... ( lousy review)

I'm not going to pick at this because you're Mustard and you know what you're doing as far as syntax and whatever else have you. What piques my curiosity, though, is the fact that you have given us another gimmicky poem relying more on snappy formatting than your words. Really, I imagine you publishing an anthology one day entitled All of Them Gimmicks (seventy-three points if you name the movie) because that's all you've given us as far as your 'serious' poetry goes.

Really, Dijon, I want to see something meaty from you that doesn't intentionally violate grammar and syntax, and doesn't rely on snazzy word-document formatting to pack a punch.

Other than that, put a comma after "I, your savior".

Other than that other than that, *cough*, I'm not quite sure your wildfire of Pentecostal chickenscratch is very effective at the end. You don't set up for it, and it doesn't leave an imprint.

-Bloomers