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Hi, any criticism would be gratefully recieved

I do not live in Paris
though i am certain i would feel much better
if i did,
and that i would feel more alive
if i carried with me the weight
of all the useless poets and their
fraudulent private lives.
Long ago i finished drinking wine
and instead poured the bottle over my
bedsheets and between your legs
so that i might make of you a vision.

I do not live in Paris
but for this i do not hold you responsible.
These walls are just as stagnant
regardless of their
lack of antiquity.

Hi Raugust ~

Your specific request is appreciated... at least by me. Until some legit critiques appear, I want to say how effective I feel this particular image is:

Long ago i finished drinking wine
and instead poured the bottle over my
bedsheets and between your legs
so that i might make of you a vision.

~ Lizzy

thanks lizzy; this is the first poem i managed to write after a protracted period of writer's block, and so that is greatly appreciated, i think i have surmounted it now, but as a long time visitor and short time member, i have usually been impressed by how intelligent and sophisticated the critiques offered on this board are.
Thanks again

raugust7 wrote:Hi, any criticism would be gratefully recieved

I do not live in Paris
though i am certain i would feel much better
if i did,
and that i would feel more alive
if i carried with me the weight
of all the useless poets and their
fraudulent private lives.
Long ago i finished drinking wine
and instead poured the bottle over my
bedsheets and between your legs
so that i might make of you a vision.

I do not live in Paris
but for this i do not hold you responsible.
These walls are just as stagnant
regardless of their
lack of antiquity.

Hi raugust, thanks for posting. Is the use of the lower case i meant to symbolise the burden that you seek? Aesthetically, I find it distracting.

I don't really connect your desire for the Paris weight with the interesting use of the wine. Perhaps they belong in different stanzas. The first is a general statement of your position and the second a description of a particular action. They don't run smoothly together. I also feel that the wine "incident" is far too isolated within the piece to have any meaning. If the idea came to you (or if it really happened) why not take the time to develop it and describe it. You have given just a tiny fleeting glimpse of a story.

You could improve on "pouring the bottle"- we don't. we pour the contents and there is easy potential for better flowing imagery. Why the use of my bedsheets but your legs. I don't see any need to make the distinction and just the bedsheets works better.

The least successful line for me ends your first stanza. "so that i might make of you a vision" is a really awkward construction. I detect the possibility thet you thought it sounded "poetic".

Overall, this has a "Cohenesque" feel, so if you aimed for that, well done. but it would repay you to revise this piece.

I Do Not Live in Paris

I do not live in Paris,
though I am certain
I would feel much better if i did.

And I would feel more alive
if I carried with me the weight
of all the useless poets and their
fraudulent private lives.

I do not live in Paris,
but for this I do not hold you responsible.
These walls are just as stagnant
regardless of their lack of antiquity.

Long ago I finished drinking wine.
Instead, I poured the bottle over my
bedsheets and between your legs -
so that I might make of you a vision.


I usually do this kind of thing, that is, do a re-write where I feel punctuation and structure needs a helping hand. I re-arranged your verses. Took out a word or two here and there which I thought redundant, and voila!!!

Sorry for my presumption, but it's what I do around here...

I like the last verse..

Jimmy

Hi, thanks mickey_one for the insightful comments; the lower case i is simply that I have a new word processing program, which does not automatically convert them into higher case as my previous one did, and so I tend to forget.
The merging of the two 'incidents,' you referred to in your post is a deliberate ploy- it was intended to demonstrate the fragemntary life I have been living recently and as such I wanted it to be transitory and, perhaps, illusory.
As for the line "make of you a vision," I did not include it to sound 'poetic,' as you put it, I can see your point, but to me there is something quite solemn and
biblical about the line, which again, was deliberate, but perhaps not conveyed in the poem.
Thank you very much though, I will certainly look at it again; I must confess that I originally thought it had something quite Ginsbergian about it, but I take the Leonard comparison as a compliment.

Ta for the rewrite, but my poems are generally crafted quite carefully in regards to stanzas, often I only use one, I have some ideas about single continous breath, and I try to insert a rhtyhm into my lines that I think of as though it were a monologue. But thanks very much for the interest.

raugust7 wrote:Hi, thanks mickey_one for the insightful comments; the lower case i is simply that I have a new word processing program, which does not automatically convert them into higher case as my previous one did, and so I tend to forget.
As for the line "make of you a vision," I did not include it to sound 'poetic,' as you put it, I can see your point, but to me there is something quite solemn and
biblical about the line, which again, was deliberate, but perhaps not conveyed in the poem.

you're very welcome.

it's very funny about the i. I love it when someone searches for a meaning (my theory that you were squashed down by the weight into lower case!)to discover it's a mechanical blip.

The line "make of you a vision"- you are so right. It reminds me of a particular Debbie Freeman Sabbath song which we sing on Friday nights but I can't quite retrieve it yet to tell you.

a breath of an idea, the complete statment in one stanza. i appreciate that.
i agree that the occurrence of "antiquity" and "vision" could be reversed. so that the poem ends with a vision.

something about the way "stangant walls" and lack of antiquity idea is presented implies that Paris would be stagnant too. is this the intent?

the wine works.

i tend to focus on the images rather than the structure or grammar in poetry, but i suppose those are part of making a complete poem. as well as what makes it work,hard work!
s

i tend to focus on the images

I do this, too, Seawall; even though I know it's only one of the components, for me it's a very strong one.


~ Lizzy

hi seawall, thanks for the comments; i did indeed want Paris to appear stagnant. This poem is about failure and escape, or to be more prescice obviation. Hence Paris, the object of the desire is revealed to be stagnant, as is the longing to escape there. The poem, as i have said before is quite delicately structured in this regard- it is not meant to end in vision; this would imply some measure of immiseration, which would be inimical to the idea of failure.
I also agree with you on the image front; images are always, in my eyes, that which elevates a poem, irrespective of the meticulous structure and diligence in ensuring everything adheres to metre. I would much rather read Allen Ginsberg than John Fuller for instance- though i of course, do like John Fuller

I take this poem very much though I miss undoubtably some things in English.
But I have lived in Paris before London and think there is very much here in this poem that can be true for me.