I loved the rhythm created by the repetition like "rotate, rotate, rotate," "catch me, catch me, catch me." It was kind of singsongy but it seemed to fit, especially if you consider nostalgia for childhood! Although it did get lost a little in the second stanza, which had ideas I thought were touched on more poetically elsewhere in the poem. Anyway, I liked the rhythm as it tied into this metaphor of nostalgia as spinning: fun at first, kind of nice for a while, but the things in front of you get blurry pretty quick and if you do it too long it doesn't feel so good anymore.
Oh, I felt the reverse about the repetition. I felt like the repetition was taking away from the clarity in the poem because it forced the conversation to be in the sing-songy voice. I'm not really a fan of sing-songy though, unless it is about children, but you read Baby Pictures, I don't go sing-songy with that either.
I feel like the clarity in the poem was somewhat lacking because how I interpreted it was that the poem was talking about how we can harm one another by things spinning out of control. Originally everything just has a little wobble, but if it keeps spinning, eventually, it will fly off and break. If we keep affecting people in a negative way, eventually we'll get in a spiral, we'll act upon each other and make people upset by being upset at them and so forth.
In rotate -- I interpreted the repetition as invoking a feeling of being trapped in a cycle (like when you're spinning in a circle and the same thing keeps happening over and over again) which goes perfect with the nostalgia bit, it's like these old memories and feelings keep surfacing and so in a way they control the narrator. We move, but we don't go forward; we spin or we fall. And in the end even though the narrator takes a stance with agency "I won't kill you" it still seems to be coming out of a place that is trapped. It's not even that they don't really want to help, it's that they can't (2nd to last, and 4th to last lines) so even though they're getting out of this cycle of memories, and past, they're still caught.
you should know i am a time traveler & there is no season as achingly temporary as now
Yeah, it definitely did sound to me like even though at the end the narrator seemed to be trying to escape the cycle, it ended on a note that sounds hopeless and very much like you really can't escape.
This has been a great Poetry Exchange guys. You make me want to run one monthly! Good luck in NaNo for those of you who plan to participate, and if you want to see another exchange, host one, or ask me to and I'll put one together. Here is everything you might want to know about How to Run a Poetry Exchange
