Eye of the Storm (Pantaloons meets Navi whilst liking Siken)

and so
the day has broken white and breathless:
a crushed shell of cloud cupping the horizon like
an eyelid, and
you hold out your hand, and it is there
again, and change and changing water lights gasp,
recede

burn like cracked ribs. today
the gods have woken and poured their souls into the ground
and so white their souls, white sheet, white without, within, white wind, white in rain,
white in word and hue and stardom beyond and below, looking glass,
seeing eye, figures hurling and unwhirling in shapes along the roadside--
there is something to how things fall apart, how centers
lose their grip -

and never is the crow so lovely as when it lands and
opens, its legs pulled apart from
its wings and its head rising like
the place where the pen has broken.

look at the blank disc above, veiled, and he
will look back without blinding
though you may have to turn
and close your eyes
to read what he writes, in flaring points of light
on your soft retina
stars cutting through the fabric of the world and
also of your jacket
to spell your name: to call you out, out
to the edge

like lifelines and white lies and death lies here
and it is cold and still, god without heart, lake
of white and bone hail fallen into our open hands
like darkness, like light, like blindness strung
past the skyline-- and if you were a blind man, what would it mean
to know the world by the points where it touched your skin--
would it mean flight, continual?--
-- lifting his foot and in lifting, leaving
all proof of the earth.

and the earth moves slowly, unproven, under the open sky that rolls,
like a vast panel of light, shiver of air, shiver of water, gale without breath,
page without whiteness, bird without body, flightless and windless, the heavens tumble
and we are very, very cold just here.




A/N: COWRITING, BBY. IT'S WHERE IT'S AT.

EDIT (by Navita): formatting was shot, so attached is the properly formatted version. Since we worked on this a bit.

Hey there! I'm going to attempt to review this.

First off, great piece. I love the imagery you both used, the word choice, pretty much everything. I wish I could write poetry like that. :] I couldn't download the attachment so I couldn't see how it was supposed to be formatted, but I don't think I lost too much. I can't really find anything to correct, I'm more of a prose person myself, but I really liked this. Good job guys!

~Sporks

Hey, Helpful and Navi! It’s great to see a collaboration of two of the site’s strongest poets. And I love the idea of the formatting making the poem itself look like a hurricane (if that was the intent?). Not sure if I’ve critiqued you before, Helpful, but Navita can inform you of my poetic rambling and partiality to instant gratification. I’ll go stanza-by-stanza, which will look messy, but bear with me!

The first thing I feel compelled to say is that I don’t understand the reasoning behind starting the poem with “and so”, two words that literally mean nothing. I’m sure you can explain it away perfectly, but no matter what effect you were hoping it would give, it seems superfluous. Did you want to build dramatic effect, establish a feel of continuing something that’s been building for a while? If so, well, still.

I’ve got to say, the personification in the first stanza, and the second too, is wonderful. I absolutely love the second stanza, especially the first half. Third stanza was less meaningful. Where does this crow come from, what does it symbolize? Perhaps the “crow’s eye” phrase or something like that? Either way, even though I liked the part about “where the pen has broken”, it didn’t fit with the rest of the poem.

Fourth stanza: cut “on your soft retina”. It’s too obvious for the whole “eye/seeing/eye of the storm” theme you’ve got going, which is obvious enough with some other things you mention. Also, it’s sort of a weird balance act between sensory and visual imagery.


Fifth stanza was where you incorporated most of the Siken, right, Navi? All that tying together of the “white” and “blindness” and more of the “light”. It was well done, although it seemed to take a step away from the rest of the poem, instead of tying back together with the beginning for a more “full circle” effect. And “page without whiteness” confused me, since all we’ve seen in the poem is this out-of-breath, blinding whiteness…so why is it suddenly gone?

All in all, I really loved this. You two together balance imagery, meaning, theme, and even the more aesthetic aspects marvelously. My only overall point, however, is that I felt that one part of the metaphor of “eye of the storm” was missing. You captured that suspended calm so well, where the middle of the hurricane is a brief moment of peace, but it’s a false peace, and I don’t feel like you really touched on that. When you’re in the eye of the storm, it’s fake comfort—you’re moments away from the actual fury and damage, which I never felt pressing on the edges of the poem. There really weren’t high enough stakes here for a storm poem, if that makes any sense! xD Not that you necessarily needed conflict—just a sense of danger, foreboding. Acknowledging that the empty calm can’t last. It’s almost too serene. There is a whirlwind just outside of the scope of these words; we should be able to see even a little bit of that.

Anyway, beautifully done, and I hope to see you work together again! Feel free to PM me for discussions, arguments, or questions.

~Evi

Hi there, Pants/Navita!

As I told to Navita, I've got rusty in reviewing, and also in poetry, since I haven't read/written any since the summer. But I hope I can still help in some way.

I don't like it when poems start with "and". In a way, I do realise that it's often meant to give an impression of continuity, to show that the poem is a part of the moment and doesn't have a blunt beginning or ending. But to me, the "and" makes it sound vague, like it's just thrown out there to avoid starting the poem from where it really starts. All in all, I guess you could say that I don't like futile words anywhere. I would also say that the "and" wasn't the only word of that kind in the poem.

I like the crow part. And I like this:

and if you were a blind man, what would it mean
to know the world by the points where it touched your skin

but I don't like this:

would it mean flight, continual?

If you have a good idea, image, whatever, leave it there, don't try to expand it in hopes of making it better, because it really just makes it worse.

Some of the line breaks (I managed to download the document, and I'm glad I did, because it really feels a lot different to read something the way it's meant to be read) I didn't really get. Some of them just made me ask, "Why?" I'm sure that the line breaks are the way the are because of some deeper meaning. But then again, at parts it felt like they were the way they were just because it looks cool. This probably is not the case -- obviously, I'm channeling my ignorance to cynicism, so I'll just say that you can do whatever you want, as long as it's genuine.

Overall, I can't say I understood a whole lot of it, which is completely my own fault. However, this was nice to read. And I'm glad that you wrote a poem together! I've heard of writing novels and short stories together, but this was my first collaborative poem. Good job!


Demeter
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