Hold the line, another call is coming

note: I've wanted to write a response to Yeats' The Second Coming for a long, long time.

Spoiler

Sorry if you prefer no uploads, I simply can't show you this in its original form in a post. I am working on trying to tone down the "academicy" nature of my poetry and merge it with more emotion, imagery, etc. Perhaps later submissions will accomplish this better.

edit: removed
edit2: reattached for requested review
edit3: removed again

written 3/27/11
reposted 4/16/11

this is beautiful. period, the end. wow. (:

So, I'm not going to reference the poem you're responding to in my critique, just because I don't feel I'm educated enough to at this point, and also because I feel like it should hold well together even without the reference.

First of all, I think the use of the we voice is very effective, but it's inconsistent from I, to we, then back to I. I think it would be more powerful and make the descent seem more permanent (as in, it's not a wave up and down, just a spiral down) if it began with we as well (we found the falcon), and then just slowly degraded into the I voice when it gets down into that beautiful intimacy. Don't you think it would work better to have all the students speak as one: Yeats, we did this, we did this, but then to have the individual voice find itself personally tangled up in the message and break away, saying, yes, I did this with the others, but I want to kiss you, I forgot to use shampoo?

Staying with this pattern, the ending stanza can make sense but should be fixed up a little. I like that the voice reaches back out and tries to bring Yeats out to the world the voice knows, but I it's jarring and maybe a little inappropriate for the tone to jump way out to the twin towers without staying somehow in the poetic tradition. You have the references to other poets, and that works in this poem to bring Yeats wider. If you wanted to keep that event, as I'm sure it would be important to the voice to share, perhaps it has shaped his consciousness, then find a way to frame it through maybe another reference, a quote or at least frame it poetically with less concrete, scientific words.

So that's the first thing. The next thing is about this:

but still flying dutifully away from the centre
on a million year journey it must see through, abruptly
ended.

Perhaps I'm missing something (oh, that's always an excuse, so if I miss anything, feel free to ignore what I say out of ignorance), but I don't understand how this makes sense. He is STILL flying, on this journey, but the journey is abruptly ended. If it is ended, how can he still fly? I mean, aside from the fact that with the way it's phrased right now, it seems like the cenre could be what abruptly ended, too, I'm just not sure what you're trying to communicate in this part.

Next,

we made seashells from it beaks
we said its feathers were dreams of Man and Beast
we said it was the age of a lost art
and coming Apocalypse
and criticized poetry to death.

The first line here is very hands on, very exploratory and active, while the rest is just talking and so seems lackluster in comparison. (Also, its beak instead of it beaks?) I like that the last line comes where it is in terms of rhythm, but it feels like something more hands-on would fit better as a transition to the third stanza, which is full of sensations and actions. So you might want to consider reorganizing this section or maybe making all parts more active. What else can you do with the feathers, the dreams of Man and Beast? Also, what are you referring to as the age of a lost art? The falcon? The present time? It might serve you well to clarify a few things in this section unless, of course unless it was your intention to make them this way. But, for example, putting “the age of the” in front of coming to keep up the parallel phrasing there: it was the age of lost art and it was the age of the coming Apocalypse helps to remind us where we are. In the same way, you might want to slip “we” right in there in front of “criticized”. We criticized poetry to death.

Moving to the next stanza, it's clear that we need something to lead us to the ability to write in such a way, so it needs to be more than just criticizing poetry. I don't understand how faggots are phallic imagery, only by so many steps implied, but I do like the way you weave in between all of the scenes in this third stanza. The only thing that I think is out of place would be the town festival. It seems too wide to include in this, the most personal of stanzas. Grandmother is stretching it, but grandmothers mean so much to us personally. Does a town festival really mean so much to this voice that he wants to share it with Yeats? From the next lines about skin and curves and lips, I don't think so.

The last stanza is rather weak in the transition, but closes with a lot of strength, so I feel like you found the perfect length to move in the voice, but you need to, as I said earlier, clean up that mention of the twin towers. Think about what your purpose was in inserting it and whether it's appropriate. For me, it takes me out completely and makes it almost a struggle to get back in and finish to the end.

So, that's what I have for you. I really enjoyed the intimacy that you brought both in the sense of the collective voice and when that voice branched off into a one-on-one conversation. If there's deeper meaning here that would have emerged after studying The Second Coming, then you should call on someone else.

Thanks, MMM. If you have any questions or if something in this ramble didn't make sense, feel free to PM me.

Hiya, Mr. Mustard. Rosea here, as requested, and at your service~

First off...

Hold the line, another call is coming

The title is intriguing. Try to capitalize the first letters, it would work better.

To the soul it may concern
sincerely,
from an Atheist in Bethlehem -

Quite an unexpected beginning! Took me by surprise. Way to bring the reader in. Kudos to you.

Yeats?
I found the falcon
advertised-shown in your lost notice
(di$$ected & Ex/tra(p)pol[ate]d)
it's been dead for nearly a century now,
but still flying dutifully away from the centre
on a million year journey it must see through, abruptly
ended.

For one moment there I thought that my computer was acting kooky again because of the special characters included in that certain line. Dissected and... extrapopulated? Is that what you meant in that? Forgive me, but I don't think I can follow... I liked the imagery here, but the last two lines doesn't quite make sense to me. Maybe some clarification in your use of words would help.

Yeats
we made seashells from its beaks
we said it's feathers were dreams of Man and Beast
we said it was the age of a lost art
and coming Apocalypse
and criticized poetry to death.

One thing that's very noticeable in your poem is your use of the word "Yeats" repeatedly throughout. I have no idea what this is, actually... I kept thinking that maybe you meant yeast because it's, I don't know... something that can be used to signify fermentation or, well, simply, an additive used to brew ideas (or something to that effect), figuratively speaking... When I looked it up, I came up with an Irish poet William Yeats. Does he play a significant role in the message of your poem? I think I get the gist of it (to me, reading from the first point to here, you are trying to portray something about a lost purpose, the endurance of it through time, the under-appreciation [if there was such a word] of a craft, which is poetry, and harsh criticism bringing it to death), but it's not really something which readers of a lower understanding would be able to relate to. But it does invoke some strong emotion, which is good. The structure is well played. The word use is fair... just some technical errors here and there. I've fixed it up for you above.

Yeats
we now write like the sun cupping your lip
and I want to kiss you, let you know it's

gay as in ok, be happy, faggots are smoked
as cigars, not phallic imagery that Freud

I can't help but to be felt let down by the last two lines. "Gay as in ok"? No. You lost your cadence. What do you mean by writing like the sun cupping your lip? How does the sun cup one's lips, exactly?

wrote on the distance from Andromeda
to your blue eyes, a geyser I fell in

and I forgot to use a shampoo last night
in the bath, I must smell like grandma's

I liked the imagery in the first two lines, but I think you lost me again in the last two.

dead falcon, we buried at the town festival
it worked so hard, but died so young

Ah. This gives me some justification that my interpretation earlier was right. Is it?

and fingers curving to trailing your skin
back to your lips, I'm lost, Yeats

"And fingers curving to trail your skin" might work better here.

we write lost, as if with meaning
without, the gyre
unbound
unwound
falling with twin towers
TERROR ALERT [all encapsulating] RED
where is Beckett and the absurd
and I'm thinking a man named Siken is popular today
is this the - is your gyre found Yeats?
Yeats?

Before I start with my overall impression, let me get this straight. This poem is kind of like an ode to this poet Yeats and the title is as such because as Yeats continue to lose his popularity (because of some moral indignity which I think is vaguely mentioned in this poem) other poets are rising in his stead. I do not know much about the falcon imagery, but yes, pertaining to the previous interpretations that I made, it's about freedom, or a lost purpose, and fighting for it. The sort.

That aside, I don't think I am the right reviewer to be analyzing this poem. I'm sorry to say that I'm not too well versed about your subject matter, and, like I said, it might be a poem which is hard to relate to when it comes to those readers who are of "average" intelligence. Not meaning to offend anyone or anything, but... well, I hope you get the point.

All in all, the poem has some impact, and the format and use of special characters is a new twist and is kind of refreshing to read, but it's one that doesn't really work for me, as it just increases my confusion as to what exactly is happening in the poem. The structure I do not mind much, but the content is a bit... well, confusing. I've read a lot of poems which are dedicated to certain illustrious people, and in just reading those, I can really tell who those people are, the ones the poems are being dedicated to. But in this one, I'm not sure I understood just who Yeats was and what he did in life through your passages.

That's all I can say, I guess. I hope some of this helps. Have a nice one~