College Rule

To be perfectly honest with you, this was not one of my favorites of your collection. It seemed much simpler than many of your other poems, and I love the way you developed the idea--but, I kind of feel like it's incomplete? Nothing really comes to a close at the end (anymore than any other part in the poem, anyway).

I liked this a lot. The thing I liked the best was how you described things. This is the first one that I have read but I would like to read more if you are going to post them!

ah, boiling chips. You're making me miss chemistry.

and I'm in blue, of course.
Narrowly-spaced lines recall the caramel air
of Organic Chem, thick as hormones
heaving in a beaker. The flame-bathed
glass, the nervous liquids. The sounds of this sentence are nice, and so is the image but I'm not sure its necessary - or if it could be moved elsewhere. My finger finds
“Mark,” the Lab Aide who demonstrated
the importance of boiling chips: Fay Wray
in a bowl of gorilla juice. Without them,
he said, you’ll never simmer, just erupt
into action. great <3 I climbed
the walls back then, blood quaking
in my veins, filled notebooks with names,
boiling points, compatibility. No more all-night
cram sessions—today I google
“Cheryl Casper, LU, class
of 2010,” still trying to explain
the mess I made. I walked her
to class each day; the hard lessons,
the small cries of success. She turned
apple-red. seems kind of out-of-the-blue, this. It doesn't fit in as well with the even voice and rhythm of the rest of the poem, especially this middle part. Extend this? connect to something else? maybe cut it: depends on your intent. In an upstairs flat on a bed
her father built I let her down,
packed my notebooks and left
her on page seven, a stick-model
of sucrose. "she was apple-red" might go well here? I never learned
to love her. I'm all for abrupt shifts, but this took me by the wrong kind of surprise. On page nine
was “Melissa Who-wants-to-be-a-doctor,” on 16
“Karl,” in town for just one night. Each had flame
in their eyes, a tongue of fire. Between
attic piles labeled keep and toss I trace
their brittle names and feel the surface-tension tremble. This definately feels like an anti-climax of an ending. Could be related further back to chemistry, and the boiling chips; it's implied throughout, or I thought so, but having more of the idea that you're missing something that's keeping you from boiling over would make this more like an ending as well as keep the poem together.

Less helpful than I'd hoped -- hopeful of some use to you.

I'll admit, I was lost throughout the poem. It could be because I know next to nothing about chemistry (I blame my teachers and my ease of distraction), it could be because I'm not familiar with your writing style (I'm afraid to read Prosthesis ;P). Either way, I wasn't engaged, though I read it to the end, and I really wasn't thrilled with it.

Again, that could be just me.

I guess my biggest gripe is the abruptness of seemingly unimportant phrases (Isis covered them, I think).

Incan, your poetry is not what I'd generally call my style, but I've grown to love it as I love fine wine. I'm afraid I don't have much of a crit, except the things that Isis covered.

Depending on if you want your target audience to possibly include those who haven't taken Organic Chem, you might want to sift through and make it a little more understandable to us thick-heads (I'm no kind of scientist, beleive me). Or maybe the jargon's part of the beauty of it--your call, obviously.

I'd like to say your work ahs grown on me, simply in order to convince myself that I disliked it upon first reading. Unfortunately, this is the first piece of yours I've read, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Expand on your conclusion, there's something more to be said there. So say it.

Your imagery is impeccable. 'Nuff said.

I've seen plently of references to chemistry in poetry...the two seem to mesh rather well. Even so, you added something of a fresh face. Perhaps you could expand on that freshness more?

Regardless, Good piece. You could make it better. But good.

It had a very good flow to it, I couldn't tell where it was going and I liked that.