*This draft evolved from a long forgotten calisthenics we did at the beginning of the semester. I wanted to write something new. I was becoming frustrated with the other drafts I have been working on. And, yes, the title is supposed to be spelled that way. I was experimenting with another language. I thought it was interesting that the title sounds like our word "love" but in a few Eastern European languages it means "hunt."*
Lov
I sprawl myself across the roof’s slope
stare at the Saturn,
the one I was told to monitor.
“Oi, you need to hurry the fuck up you know!”
and so I did, and so I sit, and so I watch, and so I wait.
Thinking of my family’s dogs and their Turkish names,
and, the guns that spoke Korean,
and how the Samurai were honored in silent bows.
Knives, in my family, were like vodka. Best served expensive and chilled.
I’d like to think I’m not that simple
but I’ve always been wary, constantly, of my superiors.
Including my parents. They are to be trusted
the least. Particularly, my mother.
With an insatiable appetite and scraping cough,
she could dismantle a palace
with a Thomas Mann handshake.
The road below me drizzles as some tourists
pull fruit from their pockets,
meager rations for the already tipsy.
They stumble and slide, unprotected
indexes and thumbs galvanizing skins
and I find I can see the seeds
clinging to the white spaces of their texts.
Nabokov and my father would be proud.
I really like the clarity and freshness of the language in this piece. Opening with "sprawl" matches the expansive nature of the work. I do wonder where the speaker is, however. How is he/she on top of a roof and watching a car. And who is talking to him/her, and why are they telling the speaker to hurry?
ReplyDeleteThe piece then moves to memories of family. Very specific nouns are appealing but I wonder why is the family so into knives? And are we in Russia, Turkey, Korea? Letting us in on location might help us understand the speaker as a tourist, foreigner. It also might give context for the thoughts of family back home. You open the door to these memories but it seems to shut just as quickly when you bring us back to the speaker observing the road.
Laura,
ReplyDeleteI really like the experimentation aspect of this draft. Your images are complex, and just strange enough, to make things fun to read, yet grounded in a sense of reality. Could it help this reading though if you were to eliminate or rearrange some of the descriptors?
One example that sticks out to me is in line 11: "but I’ve always been wary, constantly, of my superiors." To me, the "constantly" feels like it interrupts the reading too much. Would it make this line more ominous if it simply read: "but I’ve always been wary of my superiors."
This occurs again in line 13 with the use of "Particularly." This portion, in its entirety, reads: They are to be trusted/ the least. Particularly, my mother./ With an insatiable appetite and scraping cough,/ she could dismantle a palace." Would it help to experiment with the syntax here? What if the line read: "They are to be trusted/ the least. My mother. With her insatiable appetite/ and that scraping cough,
which could dismantle a palace."?
Obviously I am just playing with these great images you already have. No matter what direction you take things, I think you have a very interesting piece here.
**As a side note, I also like the play on words in the title...but does it ask a bit too much from the reader?...Again, I like it, but I wouldn't have caught that immediately if it wasn't provided for me.
It's interesting how this draft seems to be searching for a kind of triggering subject from the first few lines as the speaker comments on Saturn, Korean guns, and samurai. It begs the question as to the purpose of the beginning and whether it is needed in this draft when I find the poem to really start building up when the speaker reflects on his or her family. A way to expand the draft might be to specify the relationship between the speaker and the family, which seems to be a bit of an abrasive relationship from what I can see in the text itself. What of the mother? Why is she to be trusted the least? Why does the speaker have such a mistrust towards his or her superiors? These are the kinds of questions that can help generate more language and context to the draft in further revisions.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Zac about the title, and wonder if working the explanation about the similarities between the two words in the two different languages into the lines of the poem itself would help when revising. You would probably need a different title if you went in that direction, and you could probably find one that could add some layers or work into the architecture.
ReplyDelete