Can You See The Lettering?

Can you see the lettering
clotting up the mist?
It’s neither here nor there,
but it exists in the nether regions
of the theory of beginning and ending
in equal parts to living and dying.
Without the disease of mind
that puckers the edges of your eyes
you can’t remember what sight is,
let alone the pictures it presents.
But it’s okay, the mist is shifting,
losing the fade against the air
and there are no words to be read
but the slow dystrophy of light.

This is a bit strange. I had to look up some of the worlds since they're a bit obscure to me. Well, on with the critique. Your flow is a bit off in some lines, like

It’s neither here nor there,

but it exists in the nether regions

of the theory of beginning and ending

in equal parts to living and dying.

Just seems off to me. I know that there's something hidden beneath these words, but I can't seem to get it. No explanation is needed here, but there's a sort of haunting quality to this. Another small nitpick: your capitalization. On some lines, you don't capitalize the first letter. In a poem, you should capitalize each line. Well, that's everything I spotted. You could touch this up, but it's okay, overall.

Well, it seems I really only have one critique, to be honest. Just work on making your metaphors more concrete? There is a lot of sensuality and imagery, but I don't think they just work out yet. It's not conrete, funny enough, the fact that its not concrete is one of the reasons it feels so full of emotion. The real problem is the emotions not clear. The reader is basically guideless and that makes them feel insecure. I think its very profound because the first line is a question "Can you feel the lettering?" and the ironic thing is that the reader can definitely "feel" something, but they just don't know what it is. So yes, we feel the lettering, but we don't understand the words.

All in all, no real MUST DO critiques. As a poem it's good, but it's impression on the reader is...unsettling.

Yatta!

Unsettling, yes that's the first impression I got.

That, to me, is a good thing.

Poetry should evoke strong reactive emotions- be they positive or negative.

The creepy factor comes from the ambiguity, which is deftly manipulated to just tell enough to get the reader's mind working.

Remember, dear, that the readily visible world is only a fraction of reality. You seem to be hinting at this very well with this poem, though you also seem to be timid when approaching the understanding of it.

So my colleagues say unsettling, they say vague. Because poems, they are meant to be concrete things, they're meant to have an opaque enjoyable exterior, followed by some easily discernible emotional allegory that allows the consumer to feel smart without having to work for it. In short, contemporary verse must resemble sudoku or crossword puzzles, the answers must already be there for you, unless you're like me and you like to colour in the boxes when their choices of words are STUPID AND DO NOT RELATE TO THE DEFINITION, AND CLEARLY THEY JUST LOOKED IN THE THESAURUS FOR SOME VAGUE FELLOW OF THE WORD AND... sorry, so sorry, I'm back. But in otherwords this is the poetry that would be satisfying in the current literary climate:

APPLE
Round, red, sweet and shiney
I wish I could show you your star inside
without cutting you in half
But instead you have become
an annorexic.

But, you know, not as good. There was a point somewhere in there, ah yes. This poem is about being impalpable, this poem is a chimera, and Leroux, if you've ever noticed, has a touch of the post modernist about her, that she questions words themselves, and thus creates sandcastles, shifting, impossible, because there can be no certainty in words, and to acknowledge immutable truth would ring false. The title is a question, for god's sake. Having said that.

"Can you see the lettering
clotting up the mist?"
If you had used "words" instead of "lettering", this would be an arcane and pretentious poem, but instead, you allude to the physical presence of words while acting through their metaphysical form. Of course it would never have been as pretentious a poem as that interpretation just then, but never the less, fine work. Clotting backs it up, good vivid verb clotting, you can get your fingers into it. Not as much as congealing, but then the sound and rhythm would lose out. Congealings just a fun word for parties.
"It is neither here nor there,
it exists in the nether regions"
Common expression, again its postmodern, lettering, it's already been printed, and lost, and printed again, same with nether regions, preformed phrases against new ideas, knitted corrugated iron it is. Meanwhile, am I the only one who smirked at 'nether regions' because I'm two? Yes? Good.
"of the theory of beginning and ending,
in equal parts to living and dying"
I appreciate your symmetry of couplets, I wasn't fussed with this couplet in particular, but the symmetry may carry it. It makes me a little Biblical "I am the Alpha, and the Omega", and of two headed snakes, and pallendromes, sneaky sneaky pallendromes. But I'm so obvious with my allusions and literary devices, so clunky, you are the one with the lovely lingual legerdomain.
"Without the disease of mind
that puckers the edges of your eyes
you can’t remember what sight is,
let alone the pictures it presents. "
I'm so blonde, it took me to here, splitting the damn thing up, couplet couplet, this is a quatrain...THIS IS A SONNET, oh my god the blondeness, it burns. Not the point. But sonnet, you're good to the form. A less Dickensian conceptually driven Gwen Harwood. Disease of mind, I'd play with the phrase, but it's alright. "Puckers", oh that is the most delicious descriptor ever, "puckers", genius shins. "What sight is" is clunky, hmm... you have forgotten sight, no, not right, but theres something there that jars, be rougher with the abstract, pictures it presents I'm not mad about either, but I get the parting of the vision and the vision and the vision, it's very clever and impossible, and god knows you may be the only one to pull it when you can.
"But it’s okay, the mist is shifting,
losing the fade against the air
and there are no words to be read
but the slow dystrophy of light."
Shifting. Happy. Losing the fade, even more so. Mirage upon mirage. dystrophy of light. Lovely.
Five thumbs up, who's your Dada?

i actually disagree with most of my fellows who are saying that it should be more concrete. i know, i've said that poems have certain standards before. but i think that a poem doesn't necessarily have to have an obvious meaning right off the bat. i mean, this MAY cross the line a little bit, but after a bit of musing over it, i arrived at a conclusion on what the poem means to ME. it may have a completely different meaning to someone else, or even yourself. i find myself STRONGLY disagreeing with Kit (whose line-by-line criticism is valid and should be highly respected. i laughed at the "who's your Dada comment, as well ). a poem should NOT be instant gratification. you SHOULD have to work to understand poems, because THAT is what makes them so satisfying. this "instant gratification" poetry is a huge problem today. all these preteen kids get this idea in their head that they can just spew words onto a page, split it up into lines, include a painfully obvious metaphor or two, and then call it a poem! it's really just awful. a poem should not just have a concrete meaning, it should have a subjective meaning. but i won't go into my theories about modern poetics. if you want to hear more, then PM me, or something like that. anyway, great poem. it was, as the rest of them say, unsettling. please, keep writing.

Zalarus, you're not disagreeing with me, I was saying it shouldn't be more concrete, I was lamenting the current literate climate that poetry has become concrete and formulaic, and praising this poem for not conforming to that. Satire, child, satire. I remember we used to have writing workshops at school with kids writers, and they used to say things to the effect of "make a movie in your head", and sure maybe that works if your trying to get them to give you the what and where, but much of fiction these days is visually saturated and doesn't use the medium, doesn't use words, they use images, Leroux's one of the few artists who understands words.
(My Dada is Hannah Hoch)

o internet! i do find it difficult to recognize satire when it's typed out, and not spoken aloud. but the fault is purely mine. i didn't read your words carefully enough. but you're theory on words is spot on. it's the entire premise of the modernist (and on the smaller scale, Dadaist) movement, something that i wish we could revive. if we could take a step back to modernism, then the artistic world would actually have life again. but that's beyond the realm of possibility i'm afraid, at least for the time being. anyway, i misunderstood, and i completely agree with you, now that i have given your words closer examination.

I don’t like to write reviews where I’m not actually critiquing the poem; it makes me feel guilty. But where your poem is concerned, Pen, I just had to say that reading a poem that has clarity, not to mention correct punctuation, is such a breath of fresh air; where I don’t have to wonder, “Are these supposed to be two different sentences? Which of these words go together in a phrase?” I can’t tell you how often it happens that I can only address the so-called “grammar nitpicks” rather than the content because I don’t know what the content is. Reading this was easy; and that’s not to say it was obvious, or that it wasn’t meaningful and impacting. But for once I could just read it through, without stopping, completely confused, going back, and trying to decipher what they just said.

Thank you. I am now recharged. *stars*

Penguin dear! June here!

I never noticed this poem before, but I'm glad I found it just now.


This poem reminded me of the poem "Who Has Seen The Wind" by Christina Rossetti-- I'm not sure exactly why, either. Maybe it's just because you begin with a question. It's one of my all time favorite poems, so I really enjoyed this.

Moving on!

Very much like Adna, I have nothing to say here And it makes me somewhat feel somewhat guilty if I have nothing constructive to say.

I enjoyed the lack of punctuation here; some parts were punctuated, but you used enjambment in this poem-- at first it was kind of distractive, but as I read it again, I enjoyed it more.

Well done, (as always xD) Penguin!

<3 Keep it up!

June