Monday, March 12, 2007

Floating Hope

A lion sleeps in shadows
Beneath the fallen trees
The bleat and bells draw nearer
The flock asunder flees
As lion bursts beneath them
Its eyes with hate abound
His curse and cudgel falling
He buries in the ground

The Lord is seeking Abel
His brother, black with mud
“What hast thou done?” He asks him
“I hear thy brother’s blood.”
“And now thou art accursed”
So caught up in his snare
The cursed responded only
“Tis more than I can bear”

The mark of vengeance wearing
He passes out from God
The son of murder wanders
Into the land of Nod
And there he builds a city
Upon the hand of blood
Till sin with rising torrent
It washed away in flood

Above the raging waters
Went Noah in his boat
That Seth, who followed Abel
Could keep our hope afloat
For God is God of Justice
Where vengeance is may seem
He sends a man among us
Through which he can redeem

2 comments:

Jay said...

A recent criticism of my work that I thought to include here, and my feelings on such criticism.

I usually refrain from discussions of why poetry is not accepted at Utmost. In the case of "Law in Eden," the poem is a "generalized" poem about Eden of which we receive very many. (What?!) The purpose of the Genesis Project to to try to include ALL the book of Genesis. There is nothing at all wrong with your poem, really, except that I receive huge amounts of poems with similar subject material. I'm trying to balance the work a bit. Rejections are not meant to be personalized.


As for "Floating Hope" I think I expressed optimism about the poem. You say in your letter " the first section does not indicate that this is a human being," but indeed it does. (I mispoke. What I meant was something with any humanity.) And this is specifically why I felt the poem needed changing. The reader feels he is reading about a lion ...(because the reader is too stupid to apply brain power?) EXCEPT a lion does not carry a "curse or cudgel," (any more than a poetry critic has a brain?) and it is exactly at this point that my understanding dimmed. (Dimmed from pitch black to......?) A lion also does not kill from hate. (Someone kill me. Please.) Since Cain has not even been hinted at thus far, the reader assumes a "literal lion," not a metaphorical lion. (My brain is imploding. BOOM!! There it goes.)


This is why it is necessary to clue the reader in. The reader cannot be led all the way through the first stanza with no clue as to the fact that the image is a metaphor--accepting the images as presented--and then in the second stanza be told, "Oh, by the way, Cain is the lion." (Jay, please get a lobotomy so that I can understand you.)

I think you could repair this problem with nothing more than a good title. "Floating Hope" is not a good title for this poem.

Jay said...

How I actually responded to the critic:

Thank you for your time in reviewing my poetry. I tend to style my poems after the manner of older literature, where metaphor is used so that the reader fills in the imagery with personal feelings and experiences. For example, Michel Foucault's painting of a smoking pipe, entitled "This is not a pipe" uses non-affirmation in order to get the viewer to draw conclusions about the nature of the painting, the pipe, and even the very world which they take for granted as being this or that. So too does the metaphor of a lion require the reader to draw conclusions as I explained. Simile and metaphor are rife throughout some of the world's greatest poetry.

For example, Whitman's poem:

O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people are exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red!
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

From your analysis, the reader must assume that the poet is talking about a ship's captain, where really the Captain is a metaphor for the assasinated president Abraham Lincoln, though nowhere in the entire poem is this mentioned. His fearful trip is the Civil War, the prize won is slavery abolished, the celebrating people and steady keel are accolades for his perseverance and courage, and then the last stanzas are the reaction to his murder, laid out in a falling stairway to suggest the reader's descent into horror and shock. The poem requires the reader to see beyond the literal, and into the figurative, in order to understand and enjoy the brilliance of Whitman's poem.

Thank you, nevertheless, for your review of my work and your time and effort spent in responding. I believe that my poems are, after all, intended for another audience. I take no offense at your rejection, as I hope you take none at mine.

Thank you again, and good luck!