seven headed breakup poem

removed by the author.

Hi there!

Wow, this is great, really amazing. You did an excellent job with this! It flows real well and tells a great story. There's a ton of emotion and great imagery. Here's my favorite part, the opening:

Sunday night is staying up late watching movies
when I’m supposed to wake up early for work
to wade through a gluey Monday dawn, muscles
bristling from coffee and cold air. It’s 2AM and Dom’s on the line
I try to find the needle of his voice in haystacks of static.

There is great imagery in this stanza! I really love how you described the Monday morning. I also like that you didn't simply write that the phone conversation was full of static. You described it to us, using a saying we already knew and applying it to that situation.

Overall this is a great, great piece. Keep up the good work. Keep writing!

This is very good enjoyed reading it x

Alrighty perdido c:

Interesting, you've got such a particular style it's hard not to enjoy it. It's got some flaws due to my own taste but this is swell. I feel that while this is well constructed some bits and pieces serve only as extra weight. For example:

a luckless floating mansion

What's the point of luckless?

The punch in this poem is low and not quite strong enough to leave a lasting impression and weighing it down even more serves you no purpose. Now, I should probably explain why I think it doesn't have quite a shebang. It's lost in the constant addition of new knick knacks, yes we have the re-emerging imagery and idea but all those extra ideas. The Minotaur reference for example is so minute and while you've tucked it in, doesn't strike me as quite the right fit to really encompass the piece. You're using all these little bricks to construct this great building, but it doesn't matter to you if one is red and one is purple and the others are grey and green. It's patchwork. And skimming over your ofter work I haven't seen that quite so strongly.

Scatterbrain can be charming and even effective but after a point you lose your hook and your reader, no matter how interesting the poem is. However, a refreshing read.

Yours,

Kamas

luckless because its a reference to a science fiction novel by Larry Niven in which a couple of dudes are in a floating mansion trying to locate a woman who is genetically lucky. Sort of. And I don't mean that as like a DUH HOW COULD YOU MISS THAT. I mean that as... well this is why luckless. Anyway I understand what you mean and I covet the criticism. Thank you.

Like I promised. Another foray deeply anticipated; I am 100% certain I am much more excited than you. I hunger for art, especially art that makes me think and I connect with; but art that's even more? Art that teaches me about its own craft? Once in a blue moon it can seem.

But this time, I'm going to be honest.

perdido wrote:SEVEN HEADED BREAKUP POEM

Don't be so pretentious and blunt in your title. Seven headed? A hydra? A dragon? Ok, maybe a split personality breakup of sorts; one side is crazy the other is the victim, blah blah. This is from the title I'm saying this, but, do something tactile. We know it's a poem. What we don't know is something about this seven headed thing...make it more than just a breakup obituary. Expand like a meth addict trying to quit the habit; make it cold turkey that drives your veins to insanity, raging pure vitriol; holds you in a phoenix glare, threatening to cook you like an omelet, fresh to pop with the corn in the microwave; a warm, fluffy, squishy delight; butter on your face.

Sunday night is staying up late watching movies
when I’m supposed to wake up early for work
to wade through a gluey Monday dawn, muscles
bristling from coffee and cold air. It’s 2AM and Dom’s on the line
I try to find the needle of his voice in haystacks of static.

The only line here that engaged me was the last line a half starting from "It's 2AM...static.", and I'm shocked by this. It's because you're lazily sauntering through with this; don't list like I do, boringly stating the obvious. If you weekend morning, monday routines is so boring, make it one line. Epitomize the monotony with the perfect sensory image and poignant words, or expand on the useful images: movies, work, gluey & dawn, muscles coffee. Look at Yusef Komunyakaa's poem "Blackberries", pay attention to how well each word and movement in his poem pulls at you and makes you fall deeper into his world and descriptions. Feel the hair stand on end with the final lines as you read it aloud; I appreciate you turning the cliche phrase here and manipulating it to your advantage, which is why I think it'll work to introduce the poem. If you must start with your first few lines, cut it down or expand, but be aware your poem really starts for me at "It's 2AM..."

This is my bay of pigs, he says. Together we are lost
in an obsidian labyrinth with a wooden sword and a football helmet,
a Las Vegas of haze-walls and neon, a luckless floating mansion
where, trapped, we strap forgeries of bird wings to our backs
to find ourselves flightless and, frightened, we play dead
in the gaze of the Minotaur’s brake-light eyes.

Together who? We who? Also, think of your movements: "lost" is a brilliant ending of the line, it makes me want to read. BUT once you get describing on a role you almost force it down our throats without letting us breath and appreciate what you depict: "a Las Vegas of haze-walls and neon," sure but what's doing for the labyrinth? You just go deeper into the labyrinth metaphorically with more descriptions that lose their basis in the lowest image with no VISCERAL and emotional tug on me to care about this descent; why do I care they get trapped when I wondering how the Las Vegas ties to a floating mansion? How does the labyrinth give you wooden swords and a football helmet?

I think the first line is impossibly brilliant, I also think your lines scattered about are the right ideas, but not quite sorted though to click on all cylinders. If you had the right flow leading up "where, trapped,..." I would love this stanza, except, you get too abstract with your finish in the stanza; why must we meet the minotaur now? Why the sudden thematic juxtaposition to the first stanza? Don't tell me, it's camaraderie over a breakup that Dom is calling about, the woes of love, the anxieties of a break-up, the temptations to destroy one's self, the alluring call of f-cking whatever moves to forget about a failed committed romance; I don't care. This minotaur is me, the reader, now, because while you are a fantastically talented writer, you're trying much too hard when you should follow the brilliant cues you lay down before.

Hours of sleep whisk me to a New York
where Carmen becomes a seven headed dragon
and we are trapped in haunted Manhattan canyons
like the muscle striations in the irises of alchemists,
a rainy miasma of brick dust and dog barks, traffic sounds
and scissor snaps.

Dom and I watch as the dragon destroys our New York
we walk down rubble alleys to make shortcuts out of a maze
we will never escape.

And where's the grounding for the reader to appreciate the beginning stanza?

So let's make this quick, because honestly none of this, except for some punctuation and questionable line endings, is especially bad writing, it's rather well written; it's the stylistic choices that stop me from appreciating the grand scenery you must depict.

Is a dragon truly the representation of the romance? A poem to your friend? A fantasy journey seeing your city, your once prodigal home now exiled from you, you divorced from it, have you truly been severed at fat from cancerous tumor with little white pollen drop dotting the worn skin that drapes over the antiseptic, snow atop a desert hemorrhaging on reasons to live, hoping the all siv out into a sippy cup for a young child to enjoy in the lobby so that they may avoid the same mistakes, and you will sigh and say "their orange juice, orange juice like nostalgia, like when I was young, but these dragons now, dragons in my eyes?" wondering just how far you have fallen from social context.

Otherwise, I enjoy your mind. But you're at your best when you try to be simple.

And take this review as an assessment of my reaction in certain places. I enjoy having you around man, keep it up.