A September Siken Thread

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Hey Navi,

Think I'll do those in parts, because otherwise this is going to turn into a huge wall of text :P

Wearing Red, I think, is my favorite out of those three. I think it's the structure, the whirl of repetition--not unlike 'une valse à mille temps', actually, though the tone is very much different: not as harsh or frantic, but more longing and regretful. You know what I notice though? Is that the physicality is still here (or was there first, I suppose, since this one was written before the other) : in the red, which is a very vivid color and its associations with blood, lust, etc, but also, and I only thought of this now, in your word choice in describing this 'you': mainly the "barking laugh" and the repeated use of "jaw", which strike me as very animal traits. Even how he "leapt up and / closed [her] in" is very physical, and it's a very interesting contrast to the tone/thoughts of the narrator, who is much more sentimental and fragile than this.

At the same time, that contrast is reinforced by the fact that she is looking for that physical contact, even if it's as a vector for the emotions she is looking for:

You say
four words but I want three and I want to tell you
you need to come down and live on the first floor
but you are sleeping. You say two words.

The three words I assume are the typical "I love you", or something along those lines, but she goes searching for them instead of waiting for it: she came for him herself (which is an interesting veer from the more common idea of the man being the one to make the first move), wore red , drank/spilled the wine (and how the dress is "getting washed", "[is] dirty", but whether it is from the wine or the mere fact that it's red left indistinct), was the one to reach for his shoulder and touched his jaw, to borrow your words, and I love that you can fit that characterization in, because it threads so well with her apologizing later on:

I won’t drink red wine, promise. Only if I come up here.
I’m sorry it’s dirty too, but I can clean it, wash it four
times.

She takes responsability, and the blame for what goes wrong: it adds to the fragility, and the desperation of this. It's almost pathetic, in a way, but it's also very easy to empathize with, at least for me. Also, the fact that the words, the thoughts, are "spilling": it's clumsy, it's uncontrolled, and it's not intended. Liquid, as well, and red thoughts, that should be cleaned up; it's very apologetic, very uncomfortable.

Add in that the reach for contact either fails--

I missed your shoulder,
got your jaw instead.

or is foiled

You are here on the fourth floor, eyes closed. You are
here on the fourth sofa, arms folded, legs spread.

by sleep (in spite of the fact that this is a very physical pose, at least in the "legs spread": from a feminine perspective it's both sexual and, with the eyes closed/sleep, vulnerable, while the folded arms allow for no contact, no reaching out for--). There's an unspoken distance here, in how she is in essence watching him sleep with all that desire, that hope, and is just babbling to him when he cannot listen; as though he could hear her, like it's a plea that she's not really expecting to work and that indeed ends up with her granting that

You can keep sleeping if you want.

In related news, I like the distance/closeness play in the first/fourth floor and the

The dress wasn’t red when we started. It was white,
it was the fourth shade of white.

in the fact that again, it's so close but so far at the same time, depending on how you look at it. And the white turning to red, the original purity of intention/feelings/love turning into a more vivid turn to lust--or pain, maybe. A bit of both, I think.

And the

I won’t drink red wine, promise. Only if I come up here.

. Yes.

Nitpicks:

I missed your shoulder, I missed it fading away
I got your jaw instead and you want an answer from
me that I won’t give you, that I see fading on
the fourth sofa on the fourth floor.

This sentence is a bit sluggish. I think it's a tad too long, and it doesn't come off as desperate/frantic as it could be: it dies off instead, which would be a tone more appropriate further down the poem than up where it is, where we're still in the dancing/leaping/disco feel.

You laughed, I don’t know why it sounded
like barking but it did.

This repetition is a bit clumsy, and flow's just weird. Same for this part:

You want me to
keep it on but I can’t because it’s fading like your
shoulder.

That's... pretty much it, really :P I'll get to the other two asap.

So, Curtains.

I'm not sure what to think of the flow in this one. I know I don't like it quite as much as that of the two others, though I struggle to identify the why of it. I'm thinking it's in part how you're making very short, very concise sentences to be almost immediately followed by long rambling ones. In some cases, it works great:

You know I don’t like it when the curtains are closed.
I slip on someone’s driveway. I strike out.
It’s not exactly the sky that’s the problem, though.

The "I strike out" here is nice, in that it fits the action described: it jumps out, separated from the larger phrases. In some other places though, they catch a bit, like here:

My throat is wet. Like your tea, like the
sky scraped all over our faces. You don’t like the sky.
I get up. I get up and I take one huge breath
and I start running again. Windows flash past me.

where the "I get up" is kind of unnecessary and repetitive (and it's not the repetition by itself that bothers me, but more that here it's not needed; I don't think it has the effect you want it to have, so I think it could be worked out better.) Strangely enough, the more I read this the choppier I find it, while it's the inverse that usually happens. Go figure.

But. Enough of my obsessive rambling about flow and on to what I can make of the themes and the story.

Black and white, dry and wet: those are the main oppositions here that you pointed out to me I can see , along with the light, which isn't as explicitly stated but is there nonetheless, what with the moon, the stars--the curtains. (also, he's reading. You need light to read)

Of course, we can extend that to order/chaos, or, more precisely, domesticity vs adventure ("you don't like the sky", "I am running in the rain") mixed in an age/youth conflict, since the I reads as a relatively young/impulsive person, while the you is older, more careful (but you know this already). So let me try to find stuff we haven't gone over yet...

I like how while the dirt/clean-light/dark line is pretty clear, the dry/wet isn't so much, because she "can't get dirty in the rain", because the tea, which is wet, is inside, where she doesn't want to be: it helps blur the intentions and spurs on that compromise that is reached at the end, shows early on that things aren't as clear cut as she would like them to be.

How the sky is a "black ceiling". How he likes the clouds, even as he doesn't like the sky. Compromise again? Like opening the curtains at the end, when the moon's not quite out yet. How when it does come out, she sees the light/dark contrast. How the curtains are grey: separating light from darkness not by being part of one or the other, but staunchly in the middle, and so another form of that compromise. How if this

Curtains closed like your mind

is true, then his mind is not as closed as she thinks they are. Also the inside/outside thing, which fits nicely along the whole conflict as well. A bit of an identity piece, really, personal experience-inspiration set aside: how growing up happens. Acceptance too, I suppose.

And finally for this lovely dirt. This one I didn't get a chance to discuss with you yet, so we'll see how off I am, huh?

This one has very much Siken's Dirty Valentine feel to it, especially in that part:

You have already
eaten my heart, darling, you have already
chewed it to pulp and spat it out again
onto the pavement and crushed it underfoot
like white glass upon the concrete.

and I'll refrain from babbling about all the interesting parallels you've got running with it, starting from the title and into how here you're focusing on the other side of the coin, your "fingernails are stuffed to the core / with mud and god-knows-what" against his "in the shower for over an hour [with] these shins, these soapy flanks." or "when it is blooming dark and sonorous" instead of "We know how the light works, / we know where the sound is coming from."

This piece reads like a condensation of the other two, at least as far as recurrent imagery and themes go: we've got the physicality from Wearing Red, with the dirt, the sex, the kissing, the ground--and we've got the dirt from Curtains very much omnipresent here. It's gone through a little shift in significance though, from something to be sought out or kept away to something that is grounding and present, an integral (bordering on being excessively) part of this narrator's life: it's safety, of a sort. Almost honesty.

The feelings there are very raw, aren't they? From the

I say to you that there
is only one answer, love, and that is
a lonely yes.

to the

I take them,
thrust them into the brownness and you
swallow your pride.

It's violent ("the way you look, soil / smeared over your bloody cheeks in /winter, white and ravenous"), but the whole roots imagery you've got going infers it that fragile sense of connection that could snap any instant: "supple and anorexic" indeed. And even while there's all this dirtiness, this violence--because we're talking fucking here, not making love, though the difference grows strangely small at instants--there's still this odd caring to it. I'm thinking mainly about this line:

too much of the blackness you’re
not supposed to see.

Which is yet another throwback to Curtains, but it doesn't have the same tone here, does it? I'm torn between interpreting it as jealousy or protectiveness, or maybe even just a statement of fact.

I looked up Daphne bholua: scented flowers and poisonous berries, is it? Interesting that they should ideally be kept away from the full sun. So is that what you're planting? Death disguised as life as beauty, in the dirt but still beautiful? (macrocarpas are toxic to animals, my friend Google also tells me). So is it death, then, that is the main focus here? I keep re-reading, and it would kind of make sense. "The sunset will never make it." (a beautiful line, by the way)

It’s not a blue ceiling up there.
It never was. It’s
ugly and grey and mocking us.

the way the earth wants
desperately to light up with the turn
of our bodies

And the whole "you wanted to--", the "I did": now I read them as favors granted to the dying, or the getting there. (and the "bed-ridden", on the third line, which I cannot believe I did not catch earlier) And that "lonely yes". And "the open earth, lapped wide and breathless / like a whore." Sex coping with death, sex as death? La petite mort? That last connection before it's too late?

I don’t
care that there’s no infinity, just this
here and now and
yes.

Because this reads a lot like consolation to me. It's not dirty vs clean now, is it, it's dirty against pure. It's something fleeting, but real, against an uncertain eternity, which you still prepare to hold into that flower, because it's rooted, because it's real, because it'll be there, on hopes, after (s)he's gone?

I think?

Jagged, I can't even begin to tell you how amazing you are.

....

Nice first line.

.....

Good stuff, but I think "Your wet clothes flapping..." was where it got excellent. I don't like "empty chair". I want something more interesting there. I'm needy like that. And empty doesn't sound right.

........

This is so perfectly Sikenoid I'm not sure I can critique it.

...............

I like the Biblical parallels. I'm not sure I like the repetition of 'for all the world to see'; it's enough to have the referred to the earlier line, I think, and it wasn't so good that I wanted to see it again fully written out.

......

Hm. No. You need to convince me of this girl and everything she is, and what you have here feels almost perfunctory. A beautiful white? Sharp and angled? There needs to be music in this description. Sexy sexy music. Put it there.

...........

The whirl of blood in her cheek exploded? She blushed, you mean? I think there must be a more elegant way to do that. Maybe just the blood in her cheek. Or talk more about color: color bursting outwards, since the blood itself hopefully doesn't explode. I'm too much of a literalist, but, well.

.............

This is a good list, but I think you should eliminate 'the soft crease of your cheek' and 'the length of your neck lying over my chest' from it. They're not amazing enough to warrant the disturbance of a nice trio.

...........

Again, Siken, flaring out. And I find it good.

.........

Change 'rough' to something else, it's too, um, rough for all the smooth hard surfaces in this. But this is great too, mostly because of the last line.

..........

Infinity? Really? Either connect that to the other things more gracefully or cut it out. I can see some thematic relevance, but-- thematic relevance is not enough to justify its presence as is. I'm also confused by 'the sharp stake of your head'-- does this new Eve have such a pointy skull?

.........

Bleeeeh, obsidian. If you're only using that to describe color, just use black; if you're also using that to describe the facets etc, then use it, and go farther. But it might slow you down, and this isn't a slow poem. I recommend black.

........

Yessssssss. No revisions.

..............

Everything after 'winter' is-- I don't know. A bit boring. I feel like I've probably read it before, multiple times. And I demand variety.

.......

--continuing from that demand for variety, I don't like this repetition, either; I absolutely think you need a pause here, but silence just ain't doin' it for me. Find some other way to have the necessary break.

.........

A fairly strong ending.

And that is my LINE BY LINE COMMENTARY on your po-em.

So I'll start from the top.

Wearing Red

No line by line's from me today, I think. Jagged has been very helpful in that regard. I just want to give you general impressions. I think, out of all four, this is my favorite. I judge a piece by how many personal connections I can make to it, or at least how much it inspires me. I found lovely symmetry here. Your repetition is well-done. Repetition is difficult to pull off gracefully, because it is the percussion section of a poem. You managed to get a good cadence going here. Something lyrical and spinning, like mille temps, as Jagged pointed out. But here, there is is more coherency. You have something very simple and very impacting to tell us. You tell it to us without any sugar. You talk about red and white. I go biblical with that. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. I also think of wedding dresses. How the first wedding is the purest shade of white. The anteceding weddings are progressively less white. You talk about "the fourth shade of white". So, I put this into context with the other poems. What are you trying to say? There are obvious symbols of purity and dirtiness. Is that what love is? These are poems about a relationship between two people. Is love a trading of purity? A muddying of individuality. Like mixing colors, when you mix two people -- with all their previous sins -- what is the result? Are you saying love is dirty? The rhythm of the poem reminded me of this short film that I think you might enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO7YIGsUErs

Curtains

Probably my least favorite of the four, but I'll give you props for your endless capability for change and experimentation. I see glimmers of Navita -- the frankness of your images -- but I also read into it something completely foreign. Siken, I imagine, of whose work I've read very little. I'm trying to pinpoint what I don't like about this piece. It is difficult, because, theoretically, it's fairly seamless. That's something I noticed about these poems. While none of them blew me out of the water, I found it hard to question any of them for their technical and conceptual perfection. I think this is lacking what I liked so much about Wearing Red. It didn't inspire me. It wasn't what good art is -- an exchange of ideas and inspiration. In this poem, there were no images I cared for, and the images that were present were not grounded in reality. They were conversational, intangible and a little bland.

Again, though, motifs of purity. And this I appreciated. The narrator wants "to be clean" but this is not possible because he/she is soaking in the rain. If I follow the same line of interpretation, this is a portrait of the same relationship in a time of distress. We dirty each other with "love". There are consequences to our falls from purity. We have to live with the stains of other people on ourselves?

This lovely dirt

This is probably my second favorite piece. You hook me with the first line and continue to stimulate me with well-fitting images. There's something bluntly charming about this piece. And I guess that's another thing I've noticed about this set of experimented poems -- they're blunt. They're not pretending anything. Like one of their main motifs, these pieces are a little dirty. You have some great lines here -- your closing line is one of my favorite. One line I did not care for -- for one because of the weak image, and for another because it feels out of place -- is when you talk about the roots, etc. like "ballerina legs". I'd take that out. It really doesn't add much to the piece.

Eventides

I want to like this one as much as Wearing Red and This Lovely Dirt, but, for reasons difficult to finger, I can't. If this is a series of poems, similar to Siken's Crush -- You Are Jeff, this piece concludes the cycle well. One image I didn't care for, just because sometimes these abstractions don't jive with me was the bit between the apples and diamonds. It seems in this poem in particular, you try too hard to let the reader know that you've buried clues and symbols and ambiguous images for them to find and mull over.

On the other hand, on my umpteenth read-through (and listening to Blue Lips by Regina Spektor). There is something simply true about this piece. Not true as truth in that sense of the word. But true in that you have real, unadulterated emotion lying here. And despite your layerings and symbolic machinations, it is, basically, simple. Maybe that's why I'm so torn with this set of poems. They are so two-faced. Written in a complex fashion, but basically simple in virtue and intent. Something about passages like this:

If there’s no such thing as a happy ending, then tell me
why memory is always so beautiful.
It’s a world of glass; we break it, then pick up
the pieces we want; sometimes we bleed.
We were making love with the blood running down your arm.

Where it is almost cheesy and bare-faced with how moralistic it sounds. And yet, if you look at it hard enough, you realize that the intent of passages like this aren't being written to make you feel false emotion. Or to give you understanding neatly and summarily. You can tell that the narrator truly believes this sentiment. And somehow, we as readers can't stop ourselves from believing it as well.

So. You have here a set of poems that are not simple for me to enjoy. For a myriad reasons that I've explained, and also some that I've been unable to explain. Maybe it all boils down to the fact that this is not what I'm used to. It's very modern, and requires the reader to feel familiar emotions through unfamiliar text.

Regardless, a good experimentation. Maybe I'll have to come back to it.

-Kylan

Hey,

I love when there are poems!

Wearing Red:

I love the rhythm and your use of language. The repetition is hypnotic. The first stanza is great.

I'd look at "I watch words fade into your ear. You have
a barking laugh." Maybe "in" instead of "into"? "barking laugh" was a bit sharp. Maybe try for smoother sounding words.

The third stanza is great.

The next two aren't as strong but there's nothing really wrong with them.

I really liked;
"I’m not going to wear red anymore. I’m sorry,
it’s getting washed. It’s dirty. You want me to
keep it on but I can’t because it’s fading like your
shoulder. Your eyes are closed. You laugh."
The tone is great and it flows nicely.

The last two stanzas are great. Again, nothing wrong with the ones in between, but do you really need them?

Curtains

This is really great. I'd change "And it’s as much inside you as this water outside
is seeping into my skin. I don’t want to be wet.
I want to be black."
as it's a bit weak. Try a stronger tone, stronger images.

Other than that I can't see anything I'd change. I love;
"You’re opening the curtains but you don’t want to.
I’m whirling around outside and the clouds
suddenly part like your curtains and I see it. The moon.
And your face is in it. The sky is blacker now.
There, I saw it. I see you.
I think I’ll come inside now."
Great ending.


This lovely dirt

(or reversed)

Beautiful.

"ugly and grey and mocking us" is a little dull. I think;
"This is a planet
of stardust, forgotten and filthy;
we make amends, I say to you that there
is only one answer, love, and that is
a lonely yes. We have nothing
without it."
is a bit weak.

Other than that, I loved every line, every image. Flows well and the tone is great.

Hope this helps, and, as always, p.m me if you have any questions.

Jas

Naviiiii.

So, I know I already gave you some thoughts on Wearing Red, which was my favorite. I liked the whirlwind repetition and how subtly (yet effectively) you transitioned the mood from drunk and whimsical to more apologetic and practical, which went along perfectly with the fourth floor/first floor thing even if that was supposed to just be about subtraction. xD My only suggestion was to make the "shoulder/jaw" parallels mean something, since right now they're not really explained, just thrown around a lot.

I think I mentioned some points about Curtains in our chat PMs, but I might not have. Either way, I still enjoyed it, but not quite as much. It felt like you took a scene, threw it in a blender, and clicked "high". That's probably partially from the Siken style you've been experimenting with, where there's really no timeline and nothing happens chronologically, but I feel like it's not coherent enough to be significant or meaningful. I hate telling the really good poets on here to clarify things or make them a little bit less abstract, because I'm sure you guys are thinking, "Well, she just doesn't get the deep underlying meanings here" (which is probably true. ) but I really do think that poetry is at its best when there's a nice, cohesive balance in the amount of sense it makes paired with the beauty of the language and imagery.

Like, "maybe the moon is made of mud". Cool. I like that idea-- but that doesn't explain in the least why the pavement scrunches up or the narrator can't get dirty in the rain. There's not enough significance between the colors in the end either-- "black ceiling", "gray curtains", "black tea", "white rain"-- it all seems arbitrary. I mean, I understand the contrasts that you've established all throughout the poem: black/white, dry/wet, etc. But they still seem to be tossed in there instead of strategically placed to describe their relationship.

Anyway, I love the idea and opposing images you've used. But it's almost like a little girl just spinning around in the grass with her hands out-- if she doesn't pause for a breath or pause to get her bearings, she might spin straight into the street and be hit by a car. Or she'll just fall over. Fail of an analogy, but you get my drift! If there's not enough substance and backbone (a concrete theme) the pretty imagery and circling phrases will collapse in on themselves in a senseless heap.

Despite the critical tone of this review, you're an awesome poet and I do this only because I love you so very much. PM me for anything!

~Evi

I'm going to properly discuss Eventides at some point, I swear. This here'll just be a placeholder to wait until I'm not quite as dead, mkay?

Evi is braver than I am. Originally, I had tried to be the first or second comment on here and say one thing of substance (which has flown out of my head by now), but then it turned into me enumerating the ways I didn't understand the moon of mud and why it affects the pavement and the speaker can't get dirty or can't get clean. Then Evi goes right out and says it and calls herself out with "They're probably thinking 'well she just doesn't get it.'"

Anyway! All that to say, it confused me terribly and I don't think I got anything from that particular one, but maybe it's just because I am a Bear of Very Little Brain.

stop tapping at the glass like that – you’re
making my head explode like stars, like
the shy streak of light through your eyes, welling
like the bottle I hurled at the wall.

This part throws me off the mood a bit. I assume the mood is nostalgic, tender. And then he's hurling the bottle at the wall and there's a flash of violence without cause or effect. If it's a playful hurl, I'd like to know, otherwise I assume it's an angry/frustrated/shut-up-stop-tapping-on-the-glass-before-I-do-something-I-regret hurl...which might fit in with why she has left, but what fury caused the bottle hurling in the first place?

I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was barely
past full moon, skinny and slack-jawed.

The connection between being past full moon and skinniness and slack jaws has me totally lost.

Anyway. The rest of it is lovely. It makes me want to dance at night.