This is from a contraction exercise I did. I'm not sure how I feel about it. This is the third draft of this poem. It needs something. I'm just not sure what. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks. ~ Laura
Moroccan Fantasy
The caravan of shoeless travelers waiting
for flights are no longer our concern.
We drift away on Royal Air Maroc
leaving our families to hire a doppelganger or two.
Dreaming of gazelle’s horns and green mint tea,
dancing to the beat of a street vendor’s drums,
choosing our accents carefully,
whirling with the dervishes and
spinning scribbled warnings
until all the creases of our origami lives come undone.
We split the eye of an oasis into peripheral blue with
a wave of your eyebrows and my elephant wink.
The Straits of Gibraltar appear on the horizon of a finger tip.
“Huckleberry,” I say, “we’re after the same rainbow’s end!”
The draft seems to be pretty compact at this point. I think now is the time to start expanding on it and allow more clarity in the work. The biggest question I have is who the "we" is in the work and what how is the "we" connected to what is going on. Also, I really like the catalog in the middle of the draft starting with "Dreaming of gazelle's horns." Perhaps this particular section could be worked on a bit to clarify how each item connects to the "we" within the piece. In particular, what does it mean to spin scribbled warnings “until all the all the creases of our origami lives are undone”? The ending also seems to be cut a bit short, an ending that could either open a way into expanding or tying everything together in an unexpected way. Some specific suggestions that may be of use:
ReplyDelete1) Describe the shoeless travelers in more detail. Are they all shoeless? Perhaps mix things up a bit by noticing a particular traveler that seems out of place which could add to the specificity.
2) What does it mean when the draft says to “hire a doppelganger or two”? How is the family involved in the “we” and their choice to go to Morocco? If the family has no real place in the piece then cut them out.
3) Change the “ing” suffix in your catalog perhaps? Start with, “We dream of gazelle’s horns and green mint tea…” The syntax of the catalog seems a little confusing as well. Is the subject dreaming of all the items listed or do they dream of the gazelle horns and green tea, and then act on what the rest of the catalog says?
4) One suggestion for the ending might be that one would wake up from the dream of Morocco and perhaps still believe or remember still being in the dream, but only if we are to take the title in a more literal sense. Perhaps juggle between reality and the idealized vision of Morocco?
I really like this draft and how it is kind of flighty, skipping from one image to another. When reading the draft, however, I really felt myself wanting more. This seems to me like a draft that could be expanded into a much larger piece. What you might consider doing with it is turning it into kind of a dreamy travel log.
ReplyDeleteYou could reveal to the reader who "we" are by describing the kinds of things they might do. You could tell a lot about them just by describing what kind of activities they might participate in. Are they a couple? Is it a group of friends traveling together? Is it a dream? I think that has the most potential for expansion in this draft: telling the reader who 'we' are and why they are in Morocco.
The title "Moroccan Fantasy" sounds very big to me. Does that make sense? It does not seem like the title of such a compact poem. In keeping with the style of the poem (it moves very quickly to me) you could try to add in more and more kind of long sentences like,
Dreaming of gazelle’s horns and green mint tea,
dancing to the beat of a street vendor’s drums,
choosing our accents carefully,
whirling with the dervishes and
spinning scribbled warnings
until all the creases of our origami lives come undone.
I really like this section of the draft and I think it is a perfect frame to base an expansion on, if that is what you want to do with this draft. It includes physical images of Morocco, and is still revealing about the nature of the speaker(s) relationship.