I started playing with point of view and this is my attempt at someone who isn't me. I tried to incorporate the repetition tool we learned and see how I could work with it.
Scrapbooking
I bought the baby three new outfits
but don't get excited, my mind is still
the same.
It's still packed with dynamite the doctors call a disorder.
It's still packed with enough hormones to supply an entire
school system of teens to complete puberty.
Still packed with the image of the day my father told
me my mother shot herself.
My shoes sandy from the playground.
The swing was my favorite, tick-tock,
like a pendulum I spent my recess rocking my feet.
Most days I played tether ball with another girl
who was older than me.
It's still packed with that one semester I wasted at
community college in Florida. Nights set to slow
frame rates skipping around - molding every beer
pong tournament, every pill, every kiss, grope, wink
and smack into unrecognizable fuzz the next day
waking up to clicking and squelching of metal detectors
at 10 A.M., late for class. Sea gulls cawing at the tide.
It's still packed with the time I warned you to be careful,
but you didn't listen.
Three things, immediately: you've been paying attention to Erika Meitner: "tick-tock," the anaphora in this piece is doing a lot of work for you, and "seagulls."
ReplyDeleteFinal thoughts: I like some of the enjambments in this draft, but I still think there are some missed opportunities that, to my mind, spring from more of a formatting issue than anything else. What I mean to say is: "molding every beer / pong," cool idea, "Still packed with the image of the day my father told / me my mother shot herself," a little flat. And I think I get what you're aiming at, some sort of disparity/surprise element, but ending on "told" just doesn't get the thing across. If anything, I'd say break the line on "day" or "me," but, to be totally intrusive for a moment, I'd really consider something more like: "my father told me my mother shot herself." It's direct, it's startling, and it disrupts the repetition you'd strung together previously. Really, it might not work for this piece, but look for places to break away from even the nonce form you've allowed yourself. Poetry's not all about rules, unless you read too much and torture yourself over it.
I like how much you play with alliteration. I'm pretty sure I'm an alliteration junkie so when you play up on those elements I'm always sure to enjoy myself. However, I feel like there could be an overkill in some lines? "dynamite the doctors call a disorder". Initially it seems like a nice line but for the mood I think you're trying to achieve here it seems a little heavy-handed. I could understand why you would want to include the idea of the disorder but honestly, I think the line is just as strong without it. I find the two lines following this really wordy as well.
ReplyDeleteI love the tick-tock of the playground swing. I can sort of see it and I think sandy shoes and ticking swings really work for you here. I like the images you provide. Also, I'm a set of three's girl and this is mostly personal preference so you can ignore this entirely if you like. But, you only have two images here. The speaker as a child on the playground. The speaker in college. I feel like I need another image. I'm not sure where the dead mother (God, that sounds horrible) fits on the timeline but perhaps...?
I feel like a line break could make that "smack" more powerful somehow. And I love the "unrecognizable fuzz". That just feels right. Way to work out that repetition. Hope this helps, can't think of anything else at the moment.
I admire your draft Spencer, because you used great repetition, “It’s still packed with”. The first thing that caught my attention is when you used the repetition in the first and second line in the second stanza and you did not use it again until, the first line in the third stanza, which caused me to stay interested in finding out what else it is still packed with. I really think you should keep the repetition in the places you placed it, because it starts where another part of your life seems to start. I also admire the images you give. One image in particular that I admire is, “Night set to slow frame rates skipping around…” using this image forces the readers to open up their imagination and see things in a different prospective, and that is creative. Although I admire the draft, I believe it can use some revision. In the third stanza, you wrote, “It's still packed with that one semester I wasted at/ community college in Florida.” Instead of saying community college you can name the college; it would give us a little more detail, because there are more than one community college in Florida.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good first attempt at trying a different POV. This has very concrete details like the end of stanza two “The swing was my favorite, tick-tock, Like a pendulum I spent my recess rocking my feet ” you can picture the little girl, head down, a loner that everyone whispers about. You have a lot of defined memories that contribute to this girls disorder like lines 7 and 8 “ still packed with the image of the day my father told me my mom shot herself.” I like how the mind repeatedly packed in this piece. The repetition keeps leading you back to the situation at hand and is not overdone at all. As far as bi-polar disorder “packed” is a good verb to use. This has a very good imagination. It’s like a life full of memories that contributed to the disorder and caused it for her. This piece acts as a ticking time-bomb. I’m not sure if that was intentional, but I like it. I like it because this piece sets you up to wait for something big to happen, but it never does. At the end you are left still wondering when she’s going to blow, and that also relates to the speaker especially in the last line “It’s still packed with the time I warned you to be careful, but you didn’t listen.” I do like that line, but I would like to know more. I would like to know what happened when the person ignored the warning. I would like to know more about her outer personality mixed with the causes and the way her brain thinks, but I think that if you added more outer personality traits then it would define the speaker and the disorder more clearly.
ReplyDeletePS please take the word thing off, I almost didn't see that it didn't post