{"id":331,"date":"2011-05-29T14:15:30","date_gmt":"2011-05-29T18:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=331"},"modified":"2011-05-29T14:15:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-29T18:15:30","slug":"response-to-may-poem-critique-a-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.sherryquanlee.com\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"Response to May Poem Critique, a conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m looking for poems to critique for June!\u00a0 For detailed information, click on Get a Critique of\u00a0 Your Poem<\/em>
\n<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Valerie’s response to critique of her poem\u00a0 is in purple<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

****************************************************<\/p>\n

Valerie, I like how your poem questions whether the narrator is a \u201ccrazy girl\u201d while at the same time we recognize\u00a0 \u201ccrazy\u201d to be good, to be positive and not \u201ccrazy\u201d at all, but a word suggesting imaginative, creative, \u201cangelic,\u201d and \u201cdivine.\u201d\u00a0 The \u201ccrazy girl\u201d is to be honored by her mother; crazy is an honorable quality.<\/p>\n

Thanks, Sherry, for your critique of my poem.\u00a0 Always interesting to hear how someone else “hears” my words.\u00a0 I hadn’t thought about your insight about the word crazy.\u00a0 That works for me on one level.\u00a0 One another I want the “I” of the poem to feel that perhaps it is a bit crazy to think that she is God.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Other words\/images I like are \u201cambrosia,\u201d \u201ckaleidoscope,\u201d and \u201cangels.\u201d<\/p>\n

I also like how you refer to the song, Swing Low Sweet Chariot<\/em> and suggest you use actual words from the song, in italics, such as the verse:<\/p>\n

Sometimes I’m up, and sometimes I’m down, <\/em>
\n(Coming for to carry me home) <\/em>
\nBut still my soul feels heavenly bound.<\/em>
\n(Coming for to carry me home)<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

[see info http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Swing_Low,_Sweet_Chariot<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Perhaps use lines from the song intermittently throughout the poem.\u00a0 In the song we get the contradiction of swinging low, yet \u201cheavenly bound\u201d\/similar to how you use \u201cspiral towards the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

One problem I’d have with using the actual words of the song is that (at least for now), I am wedded to the form, and the song itself does not add anything new to what I am trying to do or say here.\u00a0 I make allusions to the song only in the sense of adding a kind of spiritual air to the poem, a visual kind of connection to flying because these “chariots” are in the sky.\u00a0 In this poem, I am consciously writing seven syllables each line, seven lines each stanza, and then seven stanzas.\u00a0 It’s a form created by Kate Rushin, called Seven Sevens I believe.\u00a0 So the lines of the song would not fit into this scheme.\u00a0 While I do understand that it is not always good to be so wedded to a form, that sometimes a poem can get lost or buried, for me, the rhythm is as important here as what is being said.\u00a0 And for me, the rhythm actually leads to the understanding that the “I” of the poem discovers in the last stanz<\/strong>a.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would like you to experiment with the title.\u00a0 Write down at least a dozen possible titles and see where that leads you.\u00a0 What title most draws the reader into the poem?\u00a0 Although your focus seems to be the \u201ccrazy girl\u201d \u2013is it really?\u00a0 Often what we think is the subject is only what gets us to the real subject.\u00a0 Could the title be Kaleidoscope or Reflection or The Angel in the Mirror or Ambrosia or\u2026..?\u00a0 I also like titles that flow into the poem. For instance:<\/p>\n

Perhaps I am that crazy<\/strong><\/p>\n

girl who dreams she can fly<\/p>\n

Actually that is how the poem started.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I’d started writing the poem like you’ve suggested, and perhaps in the beginning I was thinking along the lines of the “I” in that poem being the “crazy girl,” but the poem went somewhere else.\u00a0 And then again, I wanted to work within this particular form.\u00a0 My intended meaning changes if I were to start from the title you’ve suggested.\u00a0 “Crazy girl” is the “she” of the poem, not the “I’.\u00a0 The “I” is only contemplating what it would be like to BE like “crazy girl.”\u00a0 Thus the title I’ve chosen reflects the contemplation or rumination that the “I” of the poem is doing throughout.\u00a0 For me, the poem is more about the understanding of the “I” expanding or evolving more than anything else, so that is why the ending repeats.\u00a0 The last stanza has the “I” imagining herself a divine entity, kind of riffing off the “I am that I am!” reference from the Bible.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Other suggestions:\u00a0 1) delete the last verse.\u00a0 Although it brings us full circle, can it be said with more confidence and with imagery?<\/p>\n

For me, the entire poem leads up to the last verse, which is purposefully repetitive and circular.\u00a0 I am trying to mimic the way one might churn things over in their mind to come to a different conclusion or deeper understanding about a concept.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

2) can you delete \u201csmells\u201d after the word \u201cambrosia\u201d?<\/p>\n

Perhaps I will think about another word that would do what I want.\u00a0 I want the allusion to the ancient mythical Roman gods to make a connection to something treasured as divine, want to include paganism in a spiritual conversation.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

3) Can you choose between \u201cGod\/Creator\/Power\/Source\u201d-use one word that says what you want to say or open it up?<\/p>\n

I thought about it, a lot, but for me the concept I want is too large for one word.\u00a0 The word God alone is almost meaningless because of its (over)use in our society.\u00a0 God has infinite interpretations to so many, so I was trying to bring in the concept that however anyone might understand that larger God spirit\/power which is the source and creator of all that is the G\/P\/C\/S.\u00a0 \u00a0And besides I needed 7 syllables.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I do understand what you are saying, but for me the concept needs to be a bit overwhelming or perhaps what I’m looking for is a bit piecemeal to show a kind of encompassing or embracing of everything.\u00a0 And because the line follows the allusion to mythical gods, I wanted that connection too.\u00a0 My thought was to bring in the idea that whatever name God (in any language\/culture) is called, that God is still the same G\/P\/C\/S.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

*4) who are the \u201cMothers\u201d and \u201cFathers\u201d?\u00a0 Why plural?<\/p>\n

This may be a stretch, I agree, but in the context of what the “I” is contemplating in the poem, mothers and fathers are the ancestors of the crazy girl.\u00a0 And The “I’ understands that the “crazy girl” is not like her, does not exist in the framework of typical human relationships.\u00a0 She knows that the “crazy girl” might not have just one mother or father, that she could exist in another realm where she could have a whole community or legacy of support.\u00a0 Her “mothers” might include grands, aunts, sisters, and even foremothers, same as here fathers.\u00a0 Or the I in acknowledging that perhaps in “crazy girl’s” world, everyone has multiple parents.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

5) There is the \u201cI\u201d in the beginning of the poem, then later \u201cShe\u201d and \u201cthey\u201d\u2013are they the same person?\u00a0 Be clear with pronouns.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is confusing.\u00a0 I will work on making it clearer, but the “I” of the poem is not the “she” or the “they.”\u00a0 Each pronoun refers to a different “character” in the poem.\u00a0 The “I” is the contemplating spirit of the poem, the one who is wondering what it would be like to be “that crazy girl,” who is the “she” of the poem.\u00a0 The crazy girl (the she) is the one who has many mothers and fathers, and powers that the “I” would like to have.\u00a0 “They” are the children, or those who will come after the “I,” sort of the next generation,\u00a0 who the “I” (at the point in the poem where they show up where the “I” is beginning to recognize or have a better understanding of “the crazy girl” as an angel or some other spiritual being and comes from a community) wants both to be like and to leave something of value to.\u00a0 The children (they) bring in a kind of future spiritual union or bonding, of which the “I” is beginning to think she may be a part of.\u00a0 The “I” both wants to be like the “crazy girl and those innocents (the children) who will grow up following divine energy, who can actually see the angels and God.\u00a0 And then she (the “I” of the poem) recognizes that indeed she can see God herself “in her (own) mirrors,” which means that she, the “I\u2019\u201d connected to the “crazy girl,” and the children.\u00a0 Whew!\u00a0 Hope this is clear, makes sense.\u00a0 The poem is of one contemplating being a more evolved creature, maybe even God herself.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

*check out how Lucille Clifton wrote in the message from The Ones:\u00a0 place here \/ the name \/ you give \/ to god \/ is love \/ is light\/ is \/ here the name \/ you give \/ to \/ yes<\/em><\/p>\n

This was one of the places (I’m sure) that I got the concept of no single word big enough for the concept or understanding of what God is, as God is understood by the “I” in the middle of her contemplating.\u00a0 By the end, she has even expanded that already multi-layered expansive notion to include the divinity within herself.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

If I were to condense this poem, to show some of what I have suggested,\u00a0it would, on a first unedited draft, look something like this:<\/p>\n

Kaleidoscope of Angels Dancing in Mirrors<\/strong><\/p>\n

Perhaps I am that crazy<\/p>\n

girl who dreams<\/p>\n

she can fly<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

swing low sweet chariot<\/em><\/p>\n

kaleidoscope of angels<\/p>\n

dance wildly in my mirrors<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sometimes I’m up, and sometimes I’m down,<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I want to swallow the sun, taste<\/p>\n

ambrosia, hungry for peace<\/p>\n

shimmer and spread love<\/p>\n

like a rainbow<\/p>\n

But still my soul feels heavenly bound<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I spiral towards the sky, God\u2019s child<\/p>\n

honoring the mothers and the fathers<\/p>\n

the wise angels beckoning me<\/p>\n

to their garden<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Coming for to carry me home)<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a way, your edit certainly contains the essence of what I was trying to do with the poem, but I was looking to go a bit farther.\u00a0 The “I” is not waiting\/longing for any other being or entity to “carry” her home but is beginning to think that she could have\/already has the powers\/peace of “crazy girl” within, and her thinking ends with an understanding that allows her to claim (or at least begin to claim) that spirit\/soul and recognize it not just within herself, but as herself.\u00a0 There is an intended kind of double meaning too, that I was working with and that is that is it might seem crazy to think that anyone could claim that God\/Creator\/Power\/Source.\u00a0 The “I” is asking if she could the “I am that I am” voice that opens within her.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But this is your poem, Valerie, and yours is a lovely poem.\u00a0 It has depth and beauty.\u00a0 I only hope my suggestions will give you some ideas to make it even more beautiful.\u00a0 Have fun with it, experiment with words and format.\u00a0 And, feel free to comment on my comments!<\/p>\n

Sherry Quan Lee<\/strong><\/h3>\n

April 30, 2011<\/p>\n

This was fun!\u00a0 Maybe we can do this again sometimes.\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 I certainly have enjoyed reading what you thought, which absolutely helped me to better understand what I was reaching for in the poem.\u00a0 I’ll definitely get back to this piece in about 3 or 4 months.\u00a0 I need about that much space before I can see the poem again with “editor’s eyes.”\u00a0 Great help.\u00a0 Thank you!<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Valerie Jean<\/h3>\n

May 18, 2011<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m looking for poems to critique for June!\u00a0 For detailed information, click on Get a Critique of\u00a0 Your Poem   Valerie’s response to critique of her poem\u00a0 is in purple **************************************************** Valerie, I like how your poem questions whether the narrator is a \u201ccrazy girl\u201d while at the same time …<\/p>\n

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