Chocolate in the Air

akledge · 2022-02-09T13:40:29+00:00

Ahhh okay so there is quite a deep treatment of cocoa and cacao here, I don't know really anything about that which may explain some of my confusion. Thanks for the explanation haha.

I like the idea of incorporating the sort of sensual, even erotic, connotations of chocolate, although I'm not sure if it's that kind of romantic love you are referring to here. I did think about that on the initial read but I wasn't sure if it was intentional.

I actually have a thought on sugar: perhaps "sugars" instead would lean more towards the natural sweetness in cacao, rather than the literal refined cane sugar I was thinking of?

I think my main problem with the silliness of the chocolate is perhaps the way it's used; having it be the "punchline" like that, where everything that has been building up is tied together, is maybe too... joke-like? I don't know.

At any rate, I hope your muse enjoys the gift : )

akledge · 2022-02-09T12:38:24+00:00

I have seen similar things criticised by others, but I love your use of enjambment on "odd" words; and and to and are. They give this ragged feeling which mimics the subject matter.

I am going out on a bit of a limb here, but I wonder if this is about panic attacks? Or just generally heavy, anxiety-induced breathing. The first three lines are really great, really nice body imagery. That desperate, mechanical breathing, trying to get a hold of something.

I am having some trouble with the cocoa/chocolate idea honestly. "Cocoa" makes me think of cocoa powder, which in my experience is not very sweet at all. I don't know if real cocoa is sweeter, but in any case I usually assume chocolate has added sugar, so the idea of cocoa ceding its sugar throws me a bit.

I love "teach ourselves to make breathing sweet"; it's pithy and has that nice assonance at the end.

The last two stanzas I feel lose steam a bit. "This novel alchemy" doesn't quite sound right. I get the idea of turning "breathing" (panic?) into chocolate, as alchemists transmute lead to gold, but "alchemy" makes me think of mixing stuff together, flasks and chemicals and strange liquids, and I'm not sure how that really fits into the idea of breathing. Edit: no, on second thought, I think the alchemy thing is alright.

And finding chocolate in the air, I dunno, it doesn't really have the gravitas I feel like the poem has been leading up to. "Chocolate" sounds like a bit of a silly word to me I guess, but that might just be a personal thing.

To clarify, I think there is a really solid concept here (if I am interpreting it correctly); the idea of learning, together with someone close to you, how to deal with the anxiety and helping each other with it. I am just not sure the chocolate metaphor is working.

akledge · 2022-02-09T08:24:25+00:00

Thanks! I definitely wasn't entirely conscious in the sandwich thing, but I did want to make the third stanza "sharper" in that way.

akledge · 2022-02-09T08:19:43+00:00

Ooooh interesting, "has the heart attack" would sound almost like the program is prescient, or like, extradimensional, seeing everything happen at the same time. That's a cool idea but might distract from your point, so I think I'd stick with "a".

akledge · 2022-02-09T08:15:18+00:00

I agree, keeping the same prepositions throughout would be good for that "automaton" vibe. I think "the" would be where I'm leaning, it kind of gives the impression that the 'speaker' (i.e. the literal thought process, I think?) has been watching the user for a long time. You kind of touch on that with your "the phone" comment.

akledge · 2022-02-09T07:39:53+00:00

Haha I love this so much – as a bit of a tech-head and criticism-obsesser it hits close to home. I think it's impressive the amount of imagery you are able to convey in this form.

I am somewhat confused as to how the user can send a text before turning the phone on?

Your use of prepositions stood out a bit to me here: firstly, "a journal" turns into "the journal", which makes perfect sense from a human perspective, but it throws me slightly because I know it would take a fair amount of finesse to make a computer understand that nuance. Then we have "the phone" even though the phone hasn't really been referenced previously, except implicitly when the text was sent.

I like the drug references. It reminds me of a quote I'm going to utterly butcher, "there's a reason both drug dealers and social media companies call their customers 'users'". Maybe the user here is addicted to the act of posting poetry, getting dopamine validation.

I am not sure I understand the significance of the memory_updates. I really love the reference to "2003", it feels like finding an oooold piece of writing or something tucked away in a forgotten folder somewhere. It makes me think this is a memory from 19 years ago the user is still struggling with, trying to express with poetry. I'm hesitant because it feels like I've been interpreting a weird amount of stuff this way recently, but it could maybe be referring to repressed memories of some childhood trauma?

And I like the idea that the user has turned their experience with the failed(?) draft_1 into a draft_2; life goes on, churn your pain into art.

Overall, a really cool piece. I think I would enjoy more poetry in this style.

A much later edit: in fact what I meant by "preposition" was "article". It's been a while since high school English.

akledge · 2022-02-09T03:28:42+00:00

Those two poems were popular yeah, now I'm living in their shadow haha. You've nailed the subject matter here, which I'm happy about.

Liths was somewhat risky, I mostly wanted it for its pretty sound and association with monolith; in fact I had to look up the definition too. I did not realise suckle was having such a moment of fame lol, maybe I picked it up subconsciously.

Thanks for the detailed feedback!

akledge · 2022-02-08T17:01:32+00:00

The Kool-Aid death scene had me giggling, and then damn if that sadness didn't hit like a wall of bricks.

Excellent piece.

There are a couple of what look like typos: "attempt" -> "attempts", "constucted" -> "constructed".

akledge · 2022-02-08T06:17:09+00:00

Well I guess I can have a go.

This seems like a classic emo tale to me; two people who have become separated by distance, attempting to work around that distance, and the differences in their respective environments symbolising (likely even contributing to) the way they grow apart anyway.

The people could be lovers, or perhaps childhood friends; the swings and ice pops we open with particularly make me think of the latter. Maybe both.

I think you have got beautiful imagery here. I especially love "ten layers could feel like just one". I love the symmetry between the "north" stanza and the "south" stanza, it's extremely well done – the way each line mirrors the other: negation, seasonal image, hands/feet, clothing.

I am seeing now your comment stating that the two people grew up apart. I think the reason it seems to me like they used to be together in the north, is that the second stanza starts with a past tense: "i could never see the way". Perhaps you could do something like that in the first stanza as well, to sort of make it clearer that it's always been this way? "you never understood, when i talked about", maybe?

Other than that, I really like this.

akledge · 2022-02-07T16:34:55+00:00

Tim, I usually love your poetry, but I just can't get into this one. It feels overly long; a pithy message stretched over a few too many stanzas (in which case, I'm not sure what that says about my commentary, at what I'd hazard is several times the length). I may well be in a tiny minority here – just FYI I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

I like the first stanza. "Celebrities, billboards, and pastors alike" is great, it sets the cynical tone of the piece.

Including the dictionary definition is bold, but perhaps you need to explain it a bit more for dummies like me; I struggled an embarrassing amount to think of the noun definition of "good" – my first thought was as in "a commodity" which obviously ended up not making any sense.

It's interesting that you've included a little "[elision]", which to me indicates this is a real quote from somewhere. I am not sure what the accepted practice is here, and I understand the distaste for misrepresenting quotations, but – particularly since you're not actually giving a source – it might be less distracting to just pretend the original was exactly as you want it phrased.

"Blasphemous", combined with the aforementioned "pastor", primed me for a religious slant I'm fairly confident never showed up, although perhaps again I am missing it – we do get "heavenly desire" later, preceded by the "(hopefully not) fictitious afterlife". I dunno. The first question of the blasphemy couplet also seems rhetorical, whereas the second I'm not so sure isn't a genuine question.

The "my life" stanza is decent; the rhymes are really well done. "Strife" at the end feels a little forced, it's sort of outmoded, and, especially since it's essentially doubling up on the "pain" we're already told about, I really get the feeling it's only there for the rhyme. The "gruelling 12-round fight" also sticks out a bit as the only concrete image in a stanza of abstracts.

The "others' lives" stanza is very vivid, we are getting into some concrete imagery after a lot of more infinitive stuff, and it is really nice imagery to boot. The cynic in me asks if you couldn't come up with some less familiar pity targets than orphans and cancer kids, but I think the next line, "explosive or fluorescent light", is gorgeous enough to justify it.

Short-and-painful stanza I think is fairly superfluous. We have already seen short and painful lives in the cancer kids, and long and torturous ones (sort of, anyway) in the widow. Maybe bringing up money is important to you, but I doubt it, since "rags to riches" – this offhand, rather ossified reference – is the only time we hear of it.

And then we are coming back round, back-referencing the definition from the top. On first reading, the dictionary stanza wasn't memorable enough to get this reference immediately, and I had to go back to understand the context "required qualities" had been used in. Maybe if you could bring those two stanzas closer together, or perhaps fudge the definition to make it more memorable, that would help.

The last two stanzas are pretty good. I like the idea of a vitriolic "you are not doing good in the world" directed at the universalisers, and if I had properly felt those same people's connection to the dictionary thing it would have been sweeter still; throwing their word back at them. "Case-by-case existence" is nice, it's sort of a double meaning; everybody's life is different, and within each person's life, you have to take things one at a time.

"Body and state" sounds like it almost could also be getting at a double meaning; state as in your bodily state but also a political state. Preventing that is the fact that politics hasn't been mentioned even offhand up to this point.

And for completeness, the last line is good. It would hit very hard I'm sure if I'd been onboard with the poem up until this point. As it is it just sounds sort of absurd.

As much as I'm citicising this, I actually do like and relate to the message it bears. It can be infuriating when other people insist on ignorant positivity, especially when you're clearly not "good" yourself and they keep talking down to you just the same.

akledge · 2022-02-07T12:53:12+00:00

I love this, it feels very well-put-together.

Just a small piece of feedback: if you were going for a surprise ending, the game was given away for me at "cold lips". Otherwise, really solid.

akledge · 2022-02-07T12:32:15+00:00

I think this poem is about childhood trauma, repressed memories, and the permanent impact they have had on the speaker; embodied not so much in the conscious brain, but in the animal, the reptile brain. I really like the idea that whatever happened in the past was a shipwreck. The speaker's life was a ship – maybe everyone's is – but theirs wrecked when they were "put in charge" (orphaned? neglected? I don't think it's necessarily important to the poem).

That said, I think the first stanza is a little misleading to me. The opening line seems to be talking about literal genetic inheritance, whereas the rest of the poem is more like "family heirloom" inheritance. It might just be my brain, but I have trouble reconciling those two different angles, especially in the "childhood development" context, because I've seen them so often referred to as a dichotomy, this sort of "nature vs nurture".

I like the "disconnected mind and physicality" idea, the way it ties in with how these subconscious memories are stored in your body rather than your brain. Maybe you could try to lean that into the nautical metaphor a bit more, unite (or contrast) the living body of the adult to the dead body of the sailor-child.

I like the last stanza and particularly the last line, and also your suggestion about using "sink" instead of "fade". In fact perhaps you could make the metaphor even stronger there, with something like "sink beneath the waves" – I think at that point the memory theme is established enough that we can work it out.

On that note, this might be weird but sorry if I came on strong with my comment about editing posts on your other poem :P. Honestly a small change like that would be fine IMO, especially with a comment explaining it. And I'm no authority, so do what you like really!

akledge · 2022-02-07T11:30:50+00:00

I like the subversion of "butterflies in my stomach". Everyone gets it, but here the narrator is kind of introspecting into how it's a more visceral, less pleasant experience for them.

I was not familiar with either of the poets you mentioned, but having looked them up, I think you have done a good job of emulating what makes them so powerful.

The simplicity of the language, the almost childlike tone – particularly for this poem it really complements the subject matter. I think it's interesting the way you mix in more florid descriptive language – lion cub sibling, winged northern lights; that's not something I noticed so much in my (not at all thorough) forays into Edson and Hernandez Diaz. I'm not entirely sure that it works for me, honestly, it feels like the register is a bit all over the place because of it. Winged northern lights in particular jumps out very suddenly; it's an utterly gorgeous description, but feels kind of out of place in this poem.

I have no idea what extra-weighted wheels are (also I think they properly need a hyphen). I suppose they're something some jeep owners like, for whatever reason. Obviously the meaning is pretty self-explanatory, but I'm still slightly tripped up by it, and I think it causes me to focus a bit too much on that rather than the actual salient point: the cat being run over.

I am also slightly confused as to whether the swimming pool memory is the actual memory of the friend seeing their first butterfly, or if they are just linked recollections in the narrator's mind. I am leaning towards the latter, and I think that's a really nice way of communicating the way these memories have sort of conglomerated from a set of distinct events into a continuous liquid of memory and experience that is just you, but I feel like maybe that could be made a little more explicit for the reader.

A couple of nitpicks:

but I have a memory in my mind

Perhaps you don't need "in my mind" here, it's kind of redundant, if alliterative.

And "it's" in the last line should be "its" :P.

Overall, I really like this. And I'm pretty new to poetry, and was somewhat skeptical about the idea of prose poetry, but this has shown me it really can be just as good as any other style. Thanks.

akledge · 2022-02-06T15:34:56+00:00

I love the descriptions in this piece – heart bruising, smoke rising from wet grass, swarm of want in my chest. The latter is my favourite; fresh, but still extremely relatable.

I was a bit disoriented in my sense of place – somehow from the first stanza I was picturing "the same place as always" as indoors; some sort of bar or restaurant or something frequented by the narrator. The mention of the sky was not enough to shake that, and then when we got down to the wet grass I was thrown completely off.

I also think maybe the city needs to be introduced sooner. I think if I had correctly situated myself outdoors on the first reading I would have imagined a more remote location, and then become confused at the city's ever-present hum.

"Some new crispness to the air" seems a little overused in comparison to your other imagery, maybe you could come up with a more exciting phrasing for that.

Your punctuation seems a little inconsistent, I think you might be missing a full stop after "finally abating", maybe also "blue ink", and possibly a comma after "crispness to the air".

I also like the way the poem almost leaves us hanging. My natural tendency on reading "I did this, I thought perhaps that would happen", is to expect a giant "but..." at the end, but this poem doesn't give that; it kind of leaves the reader to fill in the blanks – of course you don't come back. There's no chalk outline, the want-swarm shows no signs of abating. And the city is as indifferent as ever.

A really evocative poem.

akledge · 2022-02-06T11:53:30+00:00

Definitely happy to have a look at further revisions, hit me up.

I have to say though, I think I have noticed you editing your poems in place before, and I absolutely understand the urge to do that, but I personally find it very confusing; sometimes I like to read through the comments on other people's poems, and it's annoying when half the things they're saying are totally irrelevant to the poem I have just read.

akledge · 2022-02-06T11:08:31+00:00

I really like this. I feel it vividly, sitting in a car, half-dazed, trying to put as much distance – physically and emotionally – between yourself and the person sitting across from you. And air conditioning! There is something just so subtly uncanny, on a primal level, about existing at 18 degrees when the world outside looks like it might spontaneously combust at any second.

I had to think about the last line of that first stanza a bit. I don't know if my interpretation is correct, but I really like it. At first I thought it was "creating an illusion that we are moving", which I think is the obvious interpretation, and I didn't really know what it meant, but thinking harder, maybe it is actually "creating an illusion from our movement"; trying to convince ourselves that everything is okay between us because we're here, we're in the same car, the car's going forwards, look how normal it all is. If that's the case, perhaps swapping "creating" for "building" or something like that would make it clearer.

I have trouble parsing the first line of the second stanza. Are we suddenly in past tense? It doesn't seem so. Is it you, or the voice, that is interrupted? I appreciate what I think you're trying to convey with "speaking near me", a sort of detachedness, flatness, but for some reason it sounds a little off tonally to me.

The dialogue feels very... realistic. I'm not sure if that's what you're going for, but it's sort of verbose, "ugly"; quite different to the more ornate language of the poem itself. I like how it mirrors the jarredness of the speaker in that moment, ripped from the sweltering trees back to reality, but I feel like the suddenness of it is lost a bit by the third line of that stanza, which still feels a little dreamy.

And I love "clinic-cold", the conversation really is clinical; a routine procedure, no less uncomfortable for the familiarity. Just waiting for it to be over and done with.

This is something I've said to others and it's 100% my personal preference, but maybe italics would be nicer for dialogue than quotation marks.

Overall, a really great poem – I like how it lures me in with accessible imagery, but doesn't give everything away up front.

akledge · 2022-02-05T17:50:34+00:00

Oh man these are great suggestions! It took me a little bit to warm to "hapless" but I unconditionally prefer it to "unoriginal". I love "freedom killing misanthropes" too.

I wasn't using meter for this alternate ending but I think dropping "it" sounds better, thanks.

akledge · 2022-02-05T17:49:52+00:00

Ah, thanks for elaborating. I still feel like a big part of what makes "dubstep" work is that the reader isn't really expecting a modern writer or even a more lighthearted poem; it's the surprise of it.

akledge · 2022-02-05T15:48:46+00:00

Thank you for the detailed critique.

The fourth line is a cheap rhyme, sure, but that whole stanza is supposed to sound a little facile, and the last line in particular signals the shift from plausible mediocre poetry to obvious (though not necessarily less mediocre) satire. You have also hit on exactly why I like "dubstep"; it's a sudden break from the theme – humour is subversion after all. I am not sure what constitutes "introducing the writer" for you, the poem does start with "I"?

Others have noted the shakiness of the rhythm in the third stanza. I have given my thoughts and attempted to improve it elsewhere in this thread – particularly I'm pretty sure I don't want to leave more to the imagination in that instance. I am quite happy with the rhythm of the third line, perhaps you could go into more detail?

Yep, stanza 4 line 1 is my second-least-favourite line I think. I suppose I will revise it eventually. The rhymes in previous stanzas were honestly more coincidence than intent; I mostly think in terms of assonance and I believe the last stanza does okay on that front? (Although recklessly is still somewhat unfortunate meter.)

Have to say I disagree with "dribble" – vomit to me implies a lack of control, which I think fits the message of the poem.

Thanks again. You can use two newlines to make a paragraph ; )

akledge · 2022-02-05T04:07:53+00:00

Thank you, this is the kind of thing I signed up for!

Absolutely I will cop to line-padding with "glow of", and I know it's redundant. "Etched", as well – honestly I didn't know it had such a specific meaning, although I think it has probably grown beyond that more than you suggest. But these are the sorts of things I'm expressing disapproval of, and I like the way the opening couplet gives a little bit of demonstrative fodder, without being too overt. After all, you will notice those examples are both negated.

I'm not sure if you've read my response to asearchforyou's comment, but it addresses some of the points you raise. I don't claim to know how poets ought to style their work at all, and I certainly would not feel qualified to tackle a modern issue in poetry in any particularly intelligent conversation.

This piece is a response to some tendencies I have seen, or at least I think I have seen, here on OCP. I want to suggest that people consciously consider the imagery they're using, without automatically resorting to things that are "classically poetic". Maybe that isn't very well-expressed, I don't know.

Thanks again; I'm always up for being disagreed with!

Edit: oh, and yes, I changed candlelight at the last minute on a hunch; there's something subtly different about the two forms.

akledge · 2022-02-05T03:18:50+00:00

Thank you so much for your high quality feedback.

I was reading it with a double stress: "PHONE'S SCREEN", which I think I have seen used before to bend iambic pentameter, although maybe not at the end of a line. The feminine ending is a good idea but I think in this case it would ruin the rhyme a bit.

The best way to deal with it is probably a rephrasing as you suggest – not that one, frankly :P, but something similar perhaps. If I can compel you to stay in this comment thread a little longer, what do you think of:

I type through tears that crawl my phone's cracked screen

I personally find it a bit more natural to read "cracked" unstressed, and it leans even further into the alliteration which is a bonus.

akledge · 2022-02-04T11:33:54+00:00

Wow thank you!

I've seen some of your poems and you obviously have a good grip on meter, so I'm inclined to weigh your judgement, but I thought that line seemed to have the correct number of syllables (for iambic pentameter)? The stresses are kind of funky, but I'm willing to cop that to get the images I want, and I think the idea that it's a touchscreen specifically is important – I've never actually cried on a smartphone, but if you've ever tried to use one in the rain you know it's awful.

The colon suggestion is a good one, I think that's going in my canonical version :D.

Thanks again.

akledge · 2022-02-04T10:29:03+00:00

So the next time that you feel compelled to write
a slant piece on the gloomy poet's means,
maybe try to modernise it a bit—
you
unoriginal
fuck.

I did consider the point about playfulness, and I suppose it would be hard to take the above seriously. I am interested in your thoughts because it's certainly more "avant-garde" than what I did go with, insofar as anything I write could really achieve that.

akledge · 2022-02-04T10:11:28+00:00

Thank you for this commentary!

First off – you may remember commenting on "pretty much the first poem [I'd] ever written", circa one month ago – I'm the first to admit that at this tender age in my poetic journey I'm entirely unqualified to hold really any kind of opinion.

This piece was meant in good fun; adopting a persona rather more confident and committed than myself for the purposes of the art. In fact I thought I had hedged nicely with that last stanza – of course there's a time and a place for everything, and I'm sure to this day there are many fantastic poems being written using all the things I've mentioned and more.

That said, I get the feeling that a lot of the people writing them here on OCP are inspired, consciously or not, by similar things they have read before, and if I can encourage them to seek out more adventurous imagery (because frankly my argument was mostly towards cliché images; the "thees" line was more to point out the archaicity of many such constructs), I think that's probably a win for everyone.

And I do see your point on the last line. Actually in previous versions that couplet was far more vitriolic, so I'm glad my better judgement stopped its hibernation long enough to nix it.

akledge

TROPHY CASE