keepin' with the poem a day thang

[concretekiss]

I don't dock points for commas he said
which are subjective, marginal, you
could scatter a handful across the page
& it almost wouldn't matter where
they landed & I thought of Johnny Appleseed
slinging commas over his shoulder
willy-nilly, in the children’s books
with ragged pant-cuffs, lead by a ridiculous
chin, cradles hanging from breaking bows
beanstalks splitting the sky, shops of horrors
in his wake & how a goof who wore a saucepan
on his head got so glorified when freaks
like Johnny come dime a dozen at college
parties. Anyway commas, dandelion dust
of prose, sprigs stuck between words, sips
of water between mouthfuls I thought of
ellipses, or commas in drag, phallic hyphens
corrupt punctuation patrolling lexical
highways but commas, half of the hicks
in my home town, mousy girls next door
accountants, DMV workers or otherwise
forgettable English professors

Comments

[quiet-flame.livejournal.com]

& I thought of Johnny Appleseed
slinging commas over his shoulder
willy-nilly, in the children’s books
with ragged pant-cuffs, lead by a ridiculous
chin, cradles hanging from breaking bows
beanstalks splitting the sky, shops of horrors
in his wake & how a goof who wore a saucepan
on his head got so glorified when freaks
like Johnny come dime a dozen at college
parties.

Brilliant.

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

score!1

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

This is really, really good.

hey thank you!

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

what's messed up is i sort of got frustrated with writing it so painstakingly with the meticulous & the all encompassing Life Message, & just let it fall out.

[silentlanguages.livejournal.com]

i really really really enjoyed reading this.
yes,
please do keep up w/ the poem a day.

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

oooo i'm very afraid of what may come 28 days later! i'll only post the ones i'm ok with so's not to turn everyone completely off.
i'm glad you liked it! writing it was the most fun i've had all day, which is kind of sad?

nono pleeeeeease

[skittish411.livejournal.com]

post them aaaaalllllllllllllll. if you are worried about turning people off, then we all are doooomed. Let's all go down together!!

Re: nono pleeeeeease

[mojodragonfly.livejournal.com]

amen to that

Re: nono pleeeeeease

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

but they won't all be like this one & then you'll point & laugh at me!

Re: nono pleeeeeease

[ohiojake.livejournal.com]

i did not think holding back the crappy ones was allowed...i am writing mine right into the post box, one draft...god help me, i did not think they were supposed to be good

Re: nono pleeeeeease

[mojodragonfly.livejournal.com]

that's my thinking too

[liquid-siftings.livejournal.com]

Poem a day = yay!

This is a lot of fun. The Johnny Appleseed image in all its detail is truly inspired (I'm assuming you meant led, not lead, no?).

On some levels, this section is so strong that the end feels like it loses energy as it goes -- of course, that's part of the problem with commas -- they sustain the train of thought, don't let you take a full breath, and let the sentence wander where it will. They are passive and vague and don't necessarily demand that the reader interpret them a particular way.

But, overall, this is rich, rich, rich...

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

yes i meant "led" dern it. thanks.

[mojodragonfly.livejournal.com]

I'm going to go find your chapbook. This is like many of the poems in that book. They start out tight and small, an you follow the path willingly till they open out into a vista.

Oh you got the goods, senorita. We'll get poems out of this insane exercise. onward HO!

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

i wish i could think of myself the way you sometimes do. onward for JUSTICE!

[mojodragonfly.livejournal.com]

that's the trick isn't it? Being self-validated. Loving yourself and your work.

good work if you can get it...

Crit offered

[mehinda.livejournal.com]

I think the two strongest moments in this poem are when you use the Johnny Appleseed reference to describe throwing commas about in writing and at the end when you liken commas to "half the hicks in [your] home town..."

Opening with the statement from the professor, on second reading, confuses the focus of this poem a little bit. The poem is really about the speaker's attitude toward commas and in this case, I think the self of the speaker in this poem is much more interesting than the professor. Perhaps opening up with a clear delineation of the speaker's I and the quoted "I" of the professor? Something like "He didn't dock points for commas . . . " or something to that effect?

In two places you separate from the fanciful imagination of the speaker by inserting "I thought." Perhaps it would work more strongly if you glided right into those images. Again, the speaker is so strong that the I [verb] constructions are pretty much superfluous to the rest of the poem.

Re: Crit offered

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

mmmm i was thinking of perhaps italicizing the professor quote for clarity. i'ma take out the speaker "i"s & see how it reads soon.

good points & percpective, thank you!

Re: Crit offered

[flightviolation.livejournal.com]

ugh, typo...perspective.