burning at the trims&edges

Pomp!

This is very cool, it's very meta. Almost the way that a director or playwright would form a world where they talk about stageright, it was raining, stageleft, here the smoke is goingto come out. I can pretty much follow through, but the motorway line from the 1944, that just trips me. Is 1944 a highway? A year in time? Ehhh. Your form here easier to digest and deconstruct than the content, so as a reader, I rely on the form to be my road map. This is an old road map that is folded up and scratched and burned though, so pieces are missing.

My experience of this poem? At the end I'm like, whuuuuut this is a SETUP! because the narrator cannot be the arsonist, it's obvious because the narrator is only interested in one thing: buying the iron clouds...and then I wondered whether iron clouds were combustible or not :c We settled on yes, they must be combustible because iron metal is easy to get really hot, really fast, and then clouds are sort of dusty and chalky soo...and then I'm sad because I guess the narrator really is the arsonist.

I dunno if my little adventure or interpretation is what you intended or not, but it was a fun bit of experimentation and I think you got a lot of interesting gems out of this ~

~ as always, Audy

Hi! My name is Dianne and I’m going to review your poem today. First of all, I would like to acknowledge how amazing your opening line is! I am totally in love with it! The creativity of this piece is phenomenal and I applaud the imagery you use.

I do have a question about why you chose to make your line breaks where they are. I feel as though the first stanza has random breaks, when I think you could really work with the lines and enjambment a little differently than how it is now.

Part of poetry is creating the abstract using the concrete and I think you do an amazing job of this throughout most of the poem, but this was lost towards the last stanza. Whatever meaning you created up to this point goes too abstract in the last stanza because you reiterate the same idea, that the liars are underneath the trees, but then it goes off into unknown territory.

Also, I love the last couple of lines and I love the sentiment of the whole piece, but the end feels unfinished.

Keep writing,
Dianne

Hey Pomp~

First, I'm slightly confused regarding what the poem is about. So I guess this poem could be one of three things: a truly wonderfully written compilation of enigmas, a wonderfully written poem which I'm just struggling to understand, or a kind of confusing jumble of words that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Or a combination, but for now I'm gonna say 2. Let's get started.

I see no spelling or grammar errors, but poetry is flexible. I'm probably missing something, but I'll bypass the nitpicks for now. I'll take this stanza by stanza:

"iron clouds for sale; if interested please contact
the liars underneath the burning trees.
but first, you will require
an address, or perhaps
a description of the wherefores and wherehows:

follow the roots."

Okay, so after much consideration, I've interpreted (or possibly misinterpreted) that the whole thing seems to be about some kind of shady deal that's made between two parties. You describe "iron clouds" in the first stanza, indicating that the thing being sold is the smoke or fumes proceeding the fire. The party on the receiving end of the deal seems to have gotten the short end of the stick; they're expected to "follow the roots" and systematically follow a set of directions to the answer or end-product of the partnership. The buyer wants the details of the fine print, but the seller possibly doesn't want their identity revealed, or doesn't want the buyer to become aware of the scam.

"the air is starched, thick
with smoke, and the sound
of trees like crackling July fireworks—
add to the orchestra: crickets, cackling
bursts of wind and the disquiet
of an aftermath."

I don't know if "starched" is the right word there. Maybe opaque, or dense; "starched" makes me think of whiteness or stiffness, and I don't think that's what you're going for. I think you use some wonderful imagery to kind of set the scene here. Instead of "July", maybe "Fourth of July"? But that isn't really a big deal. The use of "disquiet" was great as an alternative to "anxiety". Definitely keep that.

"a police officer holds onto his hat.
(the wind is blowing.)
a lad in a leather jacket frowns.
(the trees are crackling.)
and twenty miles over, a man and a woman
snore peacefully."

The narrator begins noticing the peaceful and undisturbed occupations of the people around him. He/she is developing an acute sense of sight and hearing. But at the same time, the sounds and sights of his/her own intentions preoccupy him. The trees are burning and he has that eyes-darting-around-thing going on, becoming self-conscious. I enjoyed how you used parenthesis to enhance the fact that there are two different things occupying the narrator's mind.

Then you have that little blippy thing in parenthesis that looks like the directions that the narrator is supposed to be following. It is obviously distracting the narrator, and I can picture him/her looking at a piece of paper, distressed, walking down the street. "(reader, follow the motorway leading on from 1944. Turn right-left-left and stop with the sun, where) The reference to the year indicates that the narrator is being led to an example of something that's been happening within a certain time period, possibly an event that's escalating? This is where the figurative thinking comes in. This deal symbolizes some kind of big event.

"the liars underneath the trees
refuse to accept the facts:
it is not dawn yet, there is no preamble,
and the woods are burning
at the trims-&-edges.
'I swear I forgot
my box of matchsticks at home.'"

So this poem is about global warming. The burning trees are the result of deforestation. The liars are the people who refuse to accept that it's happening, swearing that they aren't causing it (hence 'I swear I forgot my box of matchsticks at home.') People are proceeding with their lives, assuming that everything is wonderful in their peaceful, little bubble, but really they are just ignorant to the simultaneous gradual destruction of their lives as they know them. Wow. Man, this poetry is not crap. I don't know what you were talking about. It took me a really long review to figure it out, but poetry is meant to make people think.

The dashes and the and symbol in the "trims-&-edges" seem unnecessary, but it doesn't take away from the overall vibe of your work. Otherwise, a job well done. Sorry you had to read this long and dreadful review.

*recovers from shock*

Yours,
Savvy