Draft 2: (10/25/2010)
Gather up boat tires, flattened license plates, and excised Irish Catholics before heading
to the muddy ditches of creek bottoms.
Wash the burnt religion and the tacky smell of rotting bean flesh from the leathered skin
with dirt sneaking under square nail beds.
Split wood shells and mossy pods, dank with the backwoods of McGaha cove, before easing
in the masked stillborn cemetery.
Read the sacred heart notes and call before coming because the coffee might be
stale and the cards might still be on the table from the last wake.
Handle the snake, though the reading glass smudges with cyanide, before going out through the
deadheaded mums, the intoxicated hay and sterilized corn husks.
Then, climb up, seeing the heavenly shoots, fall down into what you know too well to pick.
This work has an interesting How-to element with each stanza beginning with a different directive. It is a bit difficult to follow, however. Where is this speaker going? And if the speaker is picking bean trees, I may need a little more clarification on that task, as it is foreign to me.
ReplyDeleteIt seems as though one person is traveling in the direction of another. More explanation about the relationship between the two might be helpful in clearing up the How-to directives.
The first thing that catches my attention in this draft is the very creative cataloguing of items that the poem presents. For example, we have boat tires, flattened license plate, the tacky smell of rotting bean flesh, stale coffee, playing cards from last week, snakes, and intoxicated hay, just to name a few. I seriously like the way these items are meshed together in the draft.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I do agree with Darren that it is somewhat difficult to follow. How could we use these items in more specific ways to clarify things or the reader? Would it help the poem to ask questions such as...If we are going from one place to another, would it help to simply provide those places for the reader? If this is a "how to" poem about picking bean trees, would it help to incorporate more jargon specific to this activity? If the speaker is coming into a realization at the end ("fall down into what you know too well to pick") would it help to specify what this realization is?
When reading this draft, it almost feels as if the speaker knows something, some key detail about this subject, which we are not privy to as readers. Could adding details such as this help to balance the public vs. private meaning within the poem?
I'd like to echo a little of what Zac and Darren have said here. You do quite a nice job providing interesting language combinations while taking an interesting spin on the imperative command/reportage. I agree that future drafts would benefit from having more jargon and slang injected into them. How might the draft operate if you introduce snippets from pesticide labels, or directions for proper care of bean trees?
ReplyDeleteIn regards to the draft's definite sense of place...I agree that you need to cement us in a tangible space, which you could do quite easily in just the title. For instance. "How to Pick Bean Trees in San Fransisco, 1995" Though this is only off the top of my head, but you get the idea. You also might consider investing some space within the draft to establish a sense of place.