Laudanum

Finally, more of Incan's poetry! Hurrah for opium?
I'm guessing the way everything seems to be somewhat over-dramatized ("O crepuscular angel, O my filthy licorice: Make my body/ the soft pincushion of your kiss.") is meant to create this tone of dark humor. I may be wrong, very wrong, but that's the way it seemed to me; a sarcastic confession/outburst of addiction.

I liked this a lot, but in a different way than I like your other work. This didn't have as many of the beautiful phrases or intriguing metaphors. It shows this bizarre, creepy enchantment with the drug and easily slips in the story of how it occurred.
Not much to critique; I suppose some people might say something about the lines being split up into two's the way they are, but I like the format as it is.

I am alone now. Pour me in your bottle of glow. Creak the floorboards
with your lovely dance. Take me to the bed once more.

I feel like there are too many periods here, making it choppy. I'd splice the "Pour" and "Creak" sentences, making "Pour me in your bottle of glow and creak the floorboards/with your lovely dance."

touched to our expectant tongues. O. But batwinged joy,

Is it just me, or is that "O" in a sentence all by itself? It looks weird, reads weird. I mean, I guess I could hear someone in a dramatic soliloquy just said "Oh!" in a long, all-by-itself-as-a-sentence-way, but...I'd prefer to see it lumped in with something. Perhaps "...touched to our expectant tongues--O!" or "O, but batwinged joy..."

I liked the way the images contrasted when you mentioned devils, angels, churches, and batwings...neat stuff. Falling off the church steeple seems like it should be immensely symbolic.

you sparkle me with slow lightning,
drag ravaged twilight behind my eyes.

Gorgeous lines - not the most important, but marvelous.

It made me think of Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, just the tone and the contrast of the images and there being two children. Ha! Ha! Bradbury. I'm sorry. I'm going to go shovel more snow out of my driveway now, although I'm still waiting to regain feeling in my face. *hates living in "the snowiest city this side of the Rockies!"*

Colleen

Collen--


"O" is for opium, no?

The title, "Laudanum," is meant to invoke a Victorian sense, which I tried to follow up on in the poem: with the archiac language, the septameter, slight skew-rhyme, etc.


Thanks for reading and responding,
Brad

I loved reading it. I can't give as many words as Collen did, though. I picked up the Victorian sense, and I've always loved things like that.

I'd go through and pick lines I liked the best, but that might be more than half the poem. So instead, I'll just say that I liked it.

The two line stanzas, the length of them, everything seems so perfect. Can you teach me to write like this ? You are wonderful. Keep it up! I liked the style of this more than of other poems I have read by you. Probably because of the Victorian feel to it.

Brad and Clau - Colleen is spelled with two e's. If you leave one out, it sounds like Collin, which is a boy's name, whereas I am happily female.

Yes, O is for opium...it is also for many other things like oasis and ooze and Olympics and onomatopoeia.

I mean, I knew it was a Victorian style and all, I just didn't know why. But it makes me delight in this poem anyway.

I can feel my face now!
Colleen

drag ravaged twilight behind my eyes. O sugar cube,
"Oh sugar cube" jumped out at me as strange and out of place. It sounds like, I don't know, something sappy someone would say to their girlfriend and doesn't seem to fit with the next line.

The last line seemed a little out of rhythm. Like too short, anti-climatic or something. Not the wording, just the syllables.

Other than that, I loved this. The middle section especially, falling off the steeple, was beautiful. Nice work.

And just out of curiosity, is 'Caleb' just a name, or does it have some kind of significance?

This was great. I really enjoyed reading this. I'm sorry to say this but I do believe this is the first bit of poetry I've ever read of yours. I knew I loved all of your other work but I never knew I'd love your poetry as well. And your titles.....kill me. I can't believe that one person knows all the words you do, there MUST be a second person in the Brad.

It's good, but not as good as some of your others. I felt you used too many images without spending enough time on the connections between them. I'd suggest emphasizing the connections a little more, so it flows better and has more wholistic value. I come away from the poem not with a feeling that something has been perfectly captured in words, but with the feeling I have when I read a run-on sentence so jam-packed full of adjectives you can't figure out what it's trying to say. This is too full of images, with not enough structure holding them together. I'd work on that. Otherwise, the images were great, the words were fantastic (though so many strange and elaborate words it gives it an almost amateurish feel - great poems do contain small, normal words as well as the big ones, and focus more on which fits best or is most accurate than how interesting the words are. It's almost like if you read it aloud you'd have to put emphasis on practically the whole poem, which would, of course, ruin the point of emphasis. It needs more vertical movement, as well as forward development.), and the topic was original. It's good, just keep working on it.