After Jane Hirshfield
In a coop where hens have laid,
the fluff feathers gather.
As the asphalt beneath a peach must collect its pink petals.
As a dandelion once white,
a woman once young,
grows past such softness but
does not forget.
They mustn't have known how to cling, those gentle, downy tufts and muffs,
scapulars and secondaries, wing bars, wing bows.
Skin illuminates in sunbeams,
floating dust motes, almost invisible.
Hair, though draggled up
in the drain, is otherwise thin
as thin; laid against floorboards,
unseen.
Water condenses and evaporates,
fingernails are clipped and tidied,
waste is flushed and turned to dirt.
Manifest feathers are other.
They rot, but in the hatch-dry hutch
of a well-coopered coop, they float
and tumble and tangle and mount, until
they're stuffed in bags and shoved
from sight, behind the heads
of sleeping farmers; or else
they're ground to dust and fed
as meal to hungry chickens.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,028 Literary Works • 672,774 Reviews
I love all the careful interesting word choice and cadence of this piece fortis! It's a little intimidating to review because there's a lot here and I feel like each line was very deliberately crafted but putting them altogether into one meaning is tough.
You've captured the same sort of twisting imagery style as Hirschfield's poem, and I love how you capture some aspects of the imagery construction, and format too.
Here's a few thoughts!
Great continuity between the comparison between hens / women, feathers / hair. It was interesting thinking about what this could be a larger metaphor for - I really enjoyed how the stanzas kind of build up in drama as we read the fate of the feathers. There's an aspect of commodification, of bodies being used / prettied for the consumption and enjoyment of others. Read this way the whole poem could be a critique or maybe just observation of how bodies are wasted or unvalued, or just a reflection on "spare parts" (finger clippings, hair, feathers, dead skin). The whole theme strangely reminds me of one my favorite art works I've ever seen - it's like a video/sculpture hybrid by Mika Rottenberg called "Cheese" and is this imaginative look on women farming their hair and it is a critique of bodily production? I think if that's even close to the theme you're going for there's a little bit of a missed opportunity that you didn't address eggs in the piece at all - as that's another "product" that it's a bit strange that we raise hens to produce.
Another theme that seems present in the piece is the loss of physical beauty and with that the loss of being seen with the reflection on the woman's lost "softness" and then the note about being "unseen" and later "behind the heads", "shoved from sight". I kind of wanted a clearer reference to the woman to return to the end of the poem to in order to kind of bring it full circle.
I think there were two parts that stood out as being difficult to discern -
these lines:
scapulars is such interesting language, that makes it ambiguous if you're talking about feathers or clothing in an interesting way - but I think that second line in particular is a bit inaccessible.
And then another line I had difficulty making heads or tails of was, "Manifest feathers are other." which I couldn't quite catch if that was a phrase / allusion reference to something I was missing or what?
I think it's nice that you have some sort of blend of almost archaic formal language like "mustn't" and just the whole phrasing of what you've got towards the beginning of the poem. The final two lines seem less artful and really stark / to the point in comparison but I think that was probably intentional.
You've also got some great maybe made up words like 'well-coopererd' and 'draggled' and I just love those, since in both places the meaning is clear, but it give the poem a more whimsical and interesting vibe despite also being very harsh in theme / content - the imagery and word choice remains light and dreamy.
You have some grate places of alliteration and sound devices throughout as well. I think this stanza especially in it's sounds is especially well-crafted
I didn't mind "unseen" being all by itself as it seemed like an important word to highlight, but I kind of felt like you could have done the long line again like in the lines with "they mustn't" just so it wasn't just a one time thing. When things are repeated they often seem more intentional, and it's easier for readers to pick out or look for a pattern rather than assuming a mistake. It looks like in Hirshfield's poem the lines got a bit more varied in different places as far as length.
That's about all I could find for critique! This was a really solid poem, and an interesting one to consider. You're always one of my favorite poets on the site fortis, and I consistently admire your poetry.
Let me know if you wanted feedback on something specific that I missed,
all the best,
alliyah
Thank you Alliyah! This is really helpful and made me think of some things I could do to revise this before my workshop
You're welcome!
Try making "Manifest feathers are other." And "They rot..." into one line, it would be more powerful.
Hello there, @fortis! It is I, Squire Vilnius, here to review your work!
My first impression of this work is that you've done an amazing job at creating a mental image of a chicken coop in my head. You've created a feathered, chicken-filled scene that's going to stick with me until I finally give in to exhaustion and sleep!
I see no grammatical errors in your work! Have an imaginary gold sticker star!
One thing I really like about this poem is that you've really constructed an awesome piece based around the structure of Hirshfield's After. However, I loved your poem and not hers, so... *shrugs* You're a great poet!
Overall, I really loved your chicken poem, and I'd love to review some of your other works this month!
Have a nice [*insert time of day here*]!!!