Feedback confustion

[Liar]

First if all I'd like to thank you all for all those helpful and supportive public commetns and feedbacks. This is not a complaint. Quite the opposite - if anyone should complain it should be all of you, who I don't give back half as much as I get. Sorry.

No, this is a mere reflection over the comments I recieved on my poem "Three step rewind" today. nd how three poets that I admire and look up to managed to read my poem on quiite different ways.

Lately, more and more comments have been about how people don't understand what I'm trying to tell, which has le me to believe that I need to slim down and straighten up what I write sometimes.

I tend to take the points made by all of you quite seriously when I try to evolve my writing. But what am I supposed to think here? Am I giving away too many clues - or too few?

(since those are public comments, I hope you don't mind me quoting)

WickedEve:
"I love the story here. I think you may have given the reader a couple clues too many."

Tathagata:
"I couldn't quite follow the story...but I could follow the emotion."

jd4george:
"After that nice opening line...I felt a tad mislead. I found no three step rewind, unless it was the three month silliness at the end."

...just asking.

cheers!
#L

 

[Tathagata]

(since those are public comments, I hope you don't mind me quoting)

WickedEve:
"I love the story here. I think you may have given the reader a couple clues too many."

Tathagata:
"I couldn't quite follow the story...but I could follow the emotion."

jd4george:
"After that nice opening line...I felt a tad mislead. I found no three step rewind, unless it was the three month silliness at the end."

...just asking.

cheers!
#L

well clearly Eve is drunk...

 

[WickedEve]

Re: Re: Feedback confustion

well clearly Eve is drunk...

I don't even drink... just coffee and iced tea.
Liar, I'm dying to know exactly what your poem is about!

 

[Tathagata]

Re: Re: Re: Feedback confustion

I don't even drink... just coffee and iced tea.
Liar, I'm dying to know exactly what your poem is about!

then you have no excuse at all

 

[Liar]

Re: Re: Re: Feedback confustion

I don't even drink... just coffee and iced tea.
Liar, I'm dying to know exactly what your poem is about!

Allright.

Beda is a girl...woman...or somewhere in between, that I met this summer on a club in Copenhagen. She's like one of those chicks in indie rock songs, that have issues and are different than all the other girls in the flock.

This poem is about the first time I saw her on a flashing, swirling, strobing dancefloor where the DJ was pumping out modern housebeats at insane volume, and what she later told me about that moment. Specifically why she was dancing waltz with herself. Flyguy's take on the title pretty much sumes it up: "Waltzes are in 3/4 time-- the 3 step rewind refers to her desire to dance time in reverse. A closed-eye longing for simpler days, before her addiction to holler and hysteria blinds her to reason."

It's not my place to hand you the specifics of her story, but a bad experience in late May lead to a pretty fucked up summer spent on the bottom of drink glasses and on the non-burning end of too many joints, escalating in a failed suidcide attempt in late August. (Maybe I should add that she was heavily bipolar to begin with, which most probably added to the mess.)

When I saw her there, she was sobered up, taking her pills again and getting better, using the hypnosis of the dancefloor instead of chemicals to escape. This may sound like cliché balderash to some of you, but that music and that kind of place can have such an effect on people. It does on me, but I suspect those references are pretty alien for those who have not experienced the 125 bpm high.

Anyway, dat'z de story. Hope it made sense.

#L

 

[Tathagata]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Feedback confustion

Allright.

Beda is a girl...woman...or somewhere in between, that I met this summer on a club in Copenhagen. She's like one of those chicks in indie rock songs, that have issues and are different than all the other girls in the flock.

This poem is about the first time I saw her on a flashing, swirling, strobing dancefloor where the DJ was pumping out modern housebeats at insane volume, and what she later told me about that moment. Specifically why she was dancing waltz with herself. Flyguy's take on the title pretty much sumes it up: "Waltzes are in 3/4 time-- the 3 step rewind refers to her desire to dance time in reverse. A closed-eye longing for simpler days, before her addiction to holler and hysteria blinds her to reason."

It's not my place to hand you the specifics of her story, but a bad experience in late May lead to a pretty fucked up summer spent on the bottom of drink glasses and on the non-burning end of too many joints, escalating in a failed suidcide attempt in late August. (Maybe I should add that she was heavily bipolar to begin with, which most probably added to the mess.)

When I saw her there, she was sobered up, taking her pills again and getting better, using the hypnosis of the dancefloor instead of chemicals to escape. This may sound like cliché balderash to some of you, but that music and that kind of place can have such an effect on people. It does on me, but I suspect those references are pretty alien for those who have not experienced the 125 bpm high.

Anyway, dat'z de story. Hope it made sense.

#L

people have been dancing to heal, and change consciousness since before time.
Music is medicine


thanks for the explanation
: )

 

[WickedEve]

Oh, I was off a little in what I thought it was about.

 

[Tathagata]

Oh, I was off a little in what I thought it was about.

kissy kissy kissy face

 

[Liar]

Oh, I was off a little in what I thought it was about.

Don't worry. I still luv ya.

Tell me, what did you think?

 

[WickedEve]

I thought she had fallen and drowned because she wasn't paying attention.

 

[Remec]

I thought she had fallen and drowned because she wasn't paying attention.

<nod>
I was even further along than that. I skipped over and read it before looking at the explanation above and certainly saw points that matched what I'd pictured. But, I'd thought she had had an accident that left her paraplegic or worse and used the music, lights, and incense ("black cones") to escape back to before it had all happened and dance the way she couldn't any longer.

The bit in the last stanza I marked as perhaps she'd had the accident in May and had tried to kill herself in August, but failed...making her condition worse...

Is very powerful and intriguing even without knowing the details behind it though...

 

[WickedEve]

<nod>
I was even further along than that. I skipped over and read it before looking at the explanation above and certainly saw points that matched what I'd pictured. But, I'd thought she had had an accident that left her paraplegic or worse and used the music, lights, and incense ("black cones") to escape back to before it had all happened and dance the way she couldn't any longer.

The bit in the last stanza I marked as perhaps she'd had the accident in May and had tried to kill herself in August, but failed...making her condition worse...

Is very powerful and intriguing even without knowing the details behind it though...

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who read accident into this poem. No matter what it's about, I agree with remec, it's powerful and intriguing.

 

[jd4george]

The silly man in Maine chimes in with "The Anatomy of a Comment".

I said I had found no "three step rewind", because unlike flyguy, I hadn't caught that desire to dance time in reverse. With his astute perception, I feel less mislead. Titles, simply, are a bitch that way!

I went on to say something about the "three month silliness at the end". After the incredible sharp images throughout, I came to:

"and dreams of April
then maybe it was a movie
or a rumor of a girl
who stumbled in May
to drown in August".

Without hearing her story, it felt like a rather silly place to end in comparison to the awesome word usage that preceded it. Like Tath, I suspect it was the fact that I had a hard time following some of the story. So, that interplay of months seemed unncessary... or, perhaps as Eve said, "a couple of clues too many".

To whit, my comment of "less is more".

This has been an interesting thread, clearly pointing to the notion that every reader, despite background or inclination, is struck by different things. When I comment, I do so prompted by various things. Sometimes I am simply lauding praise. Other times, I am intentionally sparking dialogue. All times, I am simply spouting my own reaction. And each comment is delivered with the poet in mind, and whatever relationship (correspondence, familiarity, amount of their work I know, ad nauseam) in mind.

By the way, something that I did not mention in my comment, because is was simply a comment and not indepth feedback:

The three/four alliteration and wordplay throughout was outstanding!

I have read this poem some dozen times, and each time I discover more of that word interplay:

"backbeat break... black"
"four... four fashion flare"
"holler... heroin... hysteria high..."

to other words like:

"slip... slipped... tripped... trapped...".

Two last observations, and a closing comment. I still think you could trim just a tad, with my preference being the month thing. And I still stand by my comment of "tell me who Beda is again"... once again in keeping with the "four by four". Her name presently appears three times.

Finally: This is an awesome fucking poem, dude!

Had it not been, you would have received nothing more than "gee... this was nice".

Myke



PS: Thanks for including me in such company as Tath and Eve, though it make me question your sanity!