opie's strip malls

opie's strip malls

from the freeway,
i can see pumpjacks swing down like railroad hammers --
shadows of john henry, who would probably
be old and stooped by now, his lower lip sagging
with bluegrass and the gravity of his railroad song,
and the morning rattles with stars, like drops of rain
on the roof of a parked car. he is asleep beside me
on the bus – we will stop in the next town. the wind
will be warm, even in the early morning darkness,
like your side of the bed, when you have left
to milk the cows.

we step from the bus, our foreignness rattling
our approach through the town, like the spurs of a gunslinger,
causing faces to turn, unscrew, the heads of
porch-men, with the bent flutter of a royal flush
caught in their dirt-worked hands. except, this is only the outskirts
of town, where everything still rusts, and Gs are missing,
as are the index fingers of every self-respecting
wheat farmer who got it caught in a reel mower
back when they were fifteen.

in town, there is the midwestern palace
on every street block –
a strip mall with failing lights, a liquor store,
the drowsy crumple of an automatic door and
the insomnia of fluorescence. a subway
stacked beside a plaid pantry stacked beside
a barber shop that boasts five dollar cuts. it is a sight that makes me feel
even more like a traveler, because there is no sense
of home here. everyone is a stranger, and alone
in the morning, which is worse than in the night.

i find solace in the by-road we walk now,
in the way the dust still rises, in the way the locust
punctuates the polysyndeton of the cicada, in the
fallen arch of the fence, in the pout of barbed wire,
in the way the ruts speak of tractors, and
the flies in the air buzz that somewhere down the road

there is a pasture, and manure,
and cows.

Why the picture? The words speak for themselves; you have no need to explain your source of inspiration. And nor do you need the image to back up the poetry - after all, the latter is about making us imagine, is it not?

I find it interesting that the first thing I compared the poem to was, in fact, a debate speech. You have an argument - the 'head,' if you will - you present it cleanly, in obviously separated stanzas. All i's dotted and t's crossed. It's neat and dainty - the first stanza about the entrance, the second about locals' reaction to the farmers, the third recounting every strange sight, the last saying what the farmboy enjoys about life back home. It's so neatly boxed that I feel like going in there and muddling everything up. Suffice to say, for me, the way the ideas were rounded off, truncated almost, had little impact. It was exactly that - a debate speech, analysed, explored, dissected, separated, summarised. Dry. Devoid of the emotion I know it should contain.

from the freeway,
i can see pumpjacks swing down like railroad hammers --
shadows of john henry, who would probably
be old and stooped by now, his lower lip sagging

Where's the hook? Alright, it's not flashbang - it's a farmboy's recount. Homely, almost, in the beginning with the three-word line. But 'i can see'? What about 'show don't tell'? (By the way, the word 'sagging' did sort of make me grin ).

with bluegrass and the gravity of his railroad song,
and the morning rattles with stars, like drops of rain
on the roof of a parked car. he is asleep beside me
on the bus – we will stop in the next town. the wind
will be warm, even in the early morning darkness,
like your side of the bed, when you have left
to milk the cows.

It's interesting how simple the poem and its vocabulary actually are - sort of uncharacteristic of you, really. I liked 'bluegrass,' and 'gravity of his railroad song.' My favourite would be the line 'morning rattles with stars, like drops of rain.' Reminds me of a Kooser poem - Applesauce, I think. Similar sort of feeling. But less warmth.

we step from the bus, our foreignness rattling

Did you want to use the word 'rattling' so soon after the last time?

causing faces to turn, unscrew, the heads of
porch-men, with the bent flutter of a royal flush

Fine. They get to town and everyone stares at them. Indeed, the 'unscrew' adds a dash of originality to it, but beyond that...I just don't get this real sense of what the character's feeling. I mean, I know what I'd be feeling in that situation, but that's because I can empathise, not because you created that emotion in the poem. While the first stanza is laid back, accepting, this one takes the characters into foreign territory. Where is their feeling of awkwardness? Of unease? Of having an inferiority complex, or of wonder? Where is the feeling, period?

There's always this balancing act. Head and heart - overintellectualised, defined, assembled poems lack the randomness, the spontaneity and abstraction that can help bring out emotion. Emotion is abstract; likewise the words. I guess I'm saying you've tipped over the line in the opposite direction to the usual one. This could do with a bit of jumbling.

in town, there is the midwestern palace
on every street block –
a strip mall with failing lights, a liquor store,
the drowsy crumple of an automatic door and
the insomnia of fluorescence. a subway
stacked beside a plaid pantry stacked beside
a barber shop that boasts five dollar cuts. it is a sight that makes me feel
even more like a traveler, because there is no sense
of home here. everyone is a stranger, and alone
in the morning, which is worse than in the night.

Another intellectualised, summarised lists of the sights and sounds of town. You go on to say: 'a sight that makes me feel even more like a traveler.' I wish that line had the impact, the crushing nostalgia that I want from it. Perhaps it is the very fact that you stated the feeling so exactly that made it lose the impact. Perhaps it was the awkwardness of the 'and alon / in the morning, which is worse than in the night' part that made it crumble. Perhaps it was the 'because there is no sense of home here' that removed all sense of...sense. In all honesty, the stark simplicity of the the line should have this wondrous effect, like some of the lines in Demeter to Persephone, but I have this impression that I already know what's going to happen, what they're going to say they feel long before they've said it. That kind of makes it come across bland.

Maybe I'm just not in the mood to feel right now.

i find solace in the by-road we walk now,
in the way the dust still rises, in the way the locust
punctuates the polysyndeton of the cicada, in the
fallen arch of the fence, in the pout of barbed wire,
in the way the ruts speak of tractors, and
the flies in the air buzz that somewhere down the road

there is a pasture, and manure,
and cows.

I almost expected the ending - well, the last major stanza, anyway. 'Locust punctuates the polysyndeton of the cicada...pout of barbed wire...ruts speak of tractors' were great. Not amazing, but delightful nevertheless.

Only in the separatedness, in the loneliness of the last couple of lines did I get any sort of feeling at all. In a way, it was humorous, but it would be better classed as teary-eyed humour, a sort of smiling sadness at the glorious simplcity of the character's wants. In the things you left unsaid in those two lines, I glimpsed the emotion.


By the way, why is this not in the UV Catastrophe thread? (Love that title.)

Hey Nav, thanks for the critique!

Just wanted to address a few of your points. First of all, the reason this is called "opie's" strip malls is because of a urban photographer named Catherine Opie who did a piece on strip malls. I saw that picture I posted at the beginning of the thread in the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. That's one of Opie's photographs you're looking at. I didn't post the photo to help anyone out, or explain anything. Sometimes people put pictures next to their poetry to enhance it. Also, because this piece was, to a degree, ekphrastic, I decided to post the source inspiration, and I really don't see that taking away from the rest of the poem.

To be sure, this poem was an experimentation on my part. I wanted to explore using simpler vocabulary, and more direct terms. I've been reading a lot of poetry I usually don't, out of old poetry journals and reviews. One thing I've noticed is their oft-times simplicity and directness. It's not necessarily a trait I love, but it was a trait I wanted to try and hybridize with my usual style here. Hence the simple directness of S3.

What about 'show don't tell'?

What about it? I guess maybe I have a different definition of showing versus telling, but I don't see how "I can see" designates everything that follows as telling...

I see what you're saying though. And I agree. It's too neat. It's too prose-y, organized, simple. There isn't any "flashbang" as you stated. I love writing poetry, because it has such a fast turn-around rate. I can write, love, be taught, and start over, evolving almost every day. My main problem is that I love scenic description too much. And the problem with scenic description is that it usually requires a story. And the problem with stories is that sometimes it is difficult to make them into poems that people will care about.

This isn't in the UV Catastrophe because it is different, and I wanted more opinions of it than I normally get in my mass thread.

Thanks,

-Kylan