wild fowls we raised
in this sordid country and this became
how they were named after each of our mothers:
the grey bird Mrs. Browning, and the greener one Mrs. Elliott,
with their long skirts and trunk waddle legs strong for rearing
*
my sisters and I wild in our dreams chased geese by the shallow ponds,
how we'd hop over their bodies, tumble down
their backs, tinkling tea cups in our dresses, collecting feathers in our tresses.
by then they've all molted, and our mothers too, molted.
we saw the shine gone from their eyes.
we'd inspire ourselves saying over and over how geese all mate for life.
we assumed these our heroines, our mothers who were not made for the glory of swans,
but the loud honks and the plain faced plump of a gaggle,
fluffed and poised were their curtsies, we assumed all girls should curtsy.
*
Except for
by the lavender
of dawn when a goose
rises to unfurl, rises to crane
herself up and all the strength of her brawn
and all the kick of her legs, wild the flap and circling arch
of dust-busting, powerful wings; she flies.
and we used to despair about it,
run wild in tears with hope in our hearts we'd sprout wings.
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hello!
So I was going to review this, but then I didn't, but then I ended up with it for the review exchange, so here I am.
This was a lovely poem full of beautiful images. I love the mood that surrounds every line, like regret hidden by fantasies of youth and reminiscing. I especially love how you describe the geese and their actions. The fourth stanza especially is really wonderful at describing their actions in detail. Basically, your words are spot-on.
It was hard to read this with the way it's punctuated though. It's still possible, but the reader is forced to go back and figure out what exactly you're trying to say, and how you're trying to say it. For example, in the fourth stanza, none of the ends of the lines are the ends of the phrases. That's different from how most of all the poem was, so I had a difficult time reading it. I also didn't like the "Except for" at the beginning of the stanza. I didn't see a use for it. I guess it's not really the punctuation that I'm worried about, just that with the lack of punctuation, the way to read this and when to pause and when not to pause has to be clear.
Now that I'm rereading it though, I think it's fine, because even the wording of the other stanzas made them unclear (such as the "how we'd hop..." when there's no reason at all for the "how," but I must assume you chose that to use stylistically).
Really all these un-clarities just made it more like a slightly hazy memory, which is what I think you might be trying to get at here.
My favorite part was the ending. It was so perfect, beautiful and well-timed.
Thank you for writing this poem, I very much enjoyed reading it.
~fortis
Oh gosh, Audy. I'm always so intimidated when I review one of your poems xD
So I read this poem aloud, and I loved the sounds this line made, especially the "waddle legs."Welp, I'm here with the Ultramarines and the May Poetry Exchange to review your poem!
Oh, Audy. This is so lovely. So so so lovely. I'll give you my impressions.
Looking at the whole format of the poem, it's very nice and symmetrical. We have two sections like the slopes of mountains, and a plateau like shape in the middle. If this was across the page, it would look like a rather flat topped hill.
This part seems very important to me, but I can't really put my finger on why, as if it was very important to the narrator, but to others, it might seem like an unneeded detail. It makes me want to know why this is so important to the narrator-- obviously the goose represents her mother, but why is it significant that the goose is male? Does her mother show masculine qualities? Or perhaps the narrator was left with her father after she named the goose after her mother? Ah, so many questions about this line, and I might even be barking up the wrong tree!
My body wants that comma to be more than a comma. A dash, perhaps, or a semi-colon, but I feel like it needs more powerful punctuation. Though obviously, this style relies on little punctuation, and commas seem to hold a lot more power than they do normally. It's just something to think about.
OHMG OHMG I LOVE THIS LINE because I read it as the goose rising into a crane, like the bird, you know. The use of enjambment is exquisite here. Gosh, I got shivers at this line (I got shivers about the whole stanza that it's in, too. Gorgeous, Audy.)
ARGH I can't describe how much I love this poem.
I hope that this was useful to you! Happy poeting!
Audy! I'm jumping right in because I can't resist a title as luscious as "goose country".
No no nope! Don't need that! You can take out the last line because it's just repeating what you said in the first AND it's a too-oft-repeated image.
I love, absolutely love, the last stanza because I can see in the strong words you've chose and the gestures you chose to write down, that image of the goose rearing up to go flying, each single flap of her wings. You've brought me in close and in slowly, more powerful than seeing the thing in real life, and that's a nice trick.
But...
I feel like this ending is weak. I think it's weak because it's clear from the line "we used to despair about it" what the girls are hoping for -- they want to go with the geese, they want to fly to, and I don't think the image of swallowing feathers or sprouting wings can be stronger than the take off to flight that came just before, so it comes off as trivial and repetitive. Is there some other kind of information you wanted to impart at the end as a substitute?
Could you cut it at "we used to despair about it"? Because it then focuses on the "used to" and suggests a change in time, opens up the poem to the future -- we see vague images of these girls grown up and maybe now understanding of the geese, maybe now the mothers themselves. On the other hand, that ended seems too abrupt as a single line. Maybe there's something more in your heart you wanted to add.
Going back to previous thoughts, I'm going to echo that this line:
was confusing, I think because you skipped the word "one" after "white" as in "white one with the orange bill", which is natural phrasing. You also skipped the "out" in "found out", so we just feel like we're missing words all over and get caught up in it.
I also didn't really feel like the words about curtsying fit with the "plain" image you were bringing up about the geese just lines earlier. Maybe there is a plainer word for curtsying and a plainer word for "lady" that can bring the description of that action and the seeing of that action more in line with the geese than with the graceful swans.
I hope these thoughts are helpful to you!
PM me or reply to the review with questions or comments.
Good luck and keep writing!
I've only read around three or so of your other poems, but they were all very experimental with form. Because of this, it seemed to me that keeping this poem in a slightly standard format was as much a deliberate artistic decision as it was, for example, to put typewriters, ribbons, and printwheels in the format it was. It made for a very subdued poem. I've got no idea if it was what you were going for, since it was quite subtle, but I felt that it was quietly desolate.
My favourite line, or at least the one which I found the most powerful, was:
I can definitely relate to the idea of hoping that your love is going to be the one that lasts forever, but it's certainly not a comforting thing to hope, since it reminds you that it might not be the case. It's especially powerful that all this in the past tense, suggesting that even this hope is gone now.
Looking for stuff to improve, I thought that it might well have been a deliberate decision, but in many lines, for example:
the rhythm/flow felt very clunky, and I had to come at the line a couple of times before I could make sense of it. As I said, I think it fits the tone of the piece, but it does make it hard to read at times, so I'd advise you to turn it down a little.
I don't have anything else to criticise to be honest; I liked this poem as much as I liked your others, and that's saying something! (and oh god was it nice to be able to copy/paste your writing for once.)