This Poem was Submitted By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-01-23 10:07:31 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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Allure

Unanswered torment, evoked by so slight a thing,    In one merciless gaze of candor peering Obtrused by smoke mercilessly disdaining. The head of a Goddess, playfully cocked. No talisman beckons, nor garlic string reckons  Guarding my lot when I am not Astute upon context enough to discover Winsome ways are not always innocent.
Copyright © January 2006 James C. Horak

This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas H. Smihula On Date: 2006-02-07 07:20:42
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.60526
I like the wording yet would have liked to see more of why you are allured into her domain not knowing if you will ever escape. You brought this reader into this poem yet I am still left there without the depth you are willing to go. Just a thought.

This Poem was Critiqued By: Gerard Andrew Geiger On Date: 2006-01-26 13:21:33
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
Dear James; Congratulations! You are alive and vulnerable! This Goddess, this silent Siren has engaged and whetted your animal essence with not just a look, but the look. Will you run? Will you do emotional battle without armor? What good is innocence....when you could have an equal, or heaven forbid, a better. Loved this piece...the game is old as daisies, but you have written it fresh as a seventeen year old. Thanks for the treat, Gerard
This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-01-25 11:32:31
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.42857
JCH Now this, as if liking meant anything more than liking, I like. It is in a poem like this that what appears to me to be your fine touch with metre is apparent. This is essentially two quatrains of tetrameter, with the variations being in S1L1 (pentameter, but one can sort-of scud over '-voked' and get tetrameter) and S1L4 (dimeter, which can be read as tetrameter but with something of a wrench). But what does that say? Nothing. But it simply acknowledges the pulse and flow of a fine poem. While 'obstrused' is something of a neologism, if it can be thought of as a hybdrid of "abstruse' and 'obscure' it is not only an emblem of how much trouble one can go to to hide something, but by calling attention to itself is calls attention to the line and the stanza: what is being hidden, by what smoke? It's not impossible to imagine the Muse with a Gauloise angling down from her mouth with an "Oh, really" look on her face: She is Not Fooled. Oh, I could go on, I suppose. And I will. Winsome ways may not be innocent, and the winsome ways of this poem are not, either. They are, however, waiting cock-headedly for the same moment of self-recognition to occur in the reprobates to whom they speak. MAH
This Poem was Critiqued By: Mark Steven Scheffer On Date: 2006-01-23 16:11:08
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 10.00000
JCH, Can I buy this line: "The head of a Goddess, playfully cocked"? Holy shit, but that's good. Exceptional. Damn, it works on three levels (at least): the head tilt; the trigger ready to fire; and, then, my favorite . . . The first stanza is a pretty good description of what is in, or at, play. I don't think "obtruse" is a word - did you mean "obtruded." Which would be an interesting construction: the candor being obtruded through a disdainful blast of cigarette smoke. Interesting. The second stanza I try to justify and lift up by saying you are trying to formally reproduce the failure to discover, as we follow the syntax and attempt to discover what you're getting at. Well, it CAN be poetically justified that way. So I'll leave it alone. A good offering from the school of wit. Lots of intricate goings on here: internal rhymes, words referring to each other by sound and other device (e.g, your (coinage, perhaps, for this purpose? but it would work with "obtruded" - without the sense of being "used" (smile)), like "Obtrused" and "Astute,"etc. MSS
This Poem was Critiqued By: Brandon Gene Petit On Date: 2006-01-23 13:04:23
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.20000
I would love to see this expanded into a larger poem, but the choice is up to you. Perhaps it is just fine like it is...either way I like it a lot. Simply put it has some well crafted, creative lines and descriptions that really stand out. This is especially evident with the line "...The head of a Goddess, playfully cocked..." Really sharp. You definitely have a gift. - B.G. Petit
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