This Poem was Submitted By: Mark Andrew Hislop On Date: 2006-01-27 12:23:00 . . . Click Here To Mail this Poem to a Friend!

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The bad place

You can’t even polish a window, now, without it becoming a mighty challenge to Dada or the Metaphysicals. It’s funny, a non-descript pane can plunge your world into the cilice grip of iambs that tighten till, by these succeeding measures, we pass out, your corpus post-figuring Christ, your rigor petrifying through the stanzas. A hyperlink’s ready to trip your burial. Your body was beautiful, pre- the absinthe, beautiful like a child of Santa and the Bunny and funny, until it became what lies beneath.

Copyright © January 2006 Mark Andrew Hislop

This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas H. Smihula On Date: 2006-02-07 07:08:52
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.60526
This one was really difficult for me yet for some reason I really liked it. Your first stanza in the first two lines brought a picture to this reader as did the fourth. Those three lines would have given me a complete picture. Your second stanza in lines two and three really had this reader focusing again yet although I like the fourth line very much I would have liked to see you mention reading the passage causing the petrifying. The third stanza with Santa, Bunny also caught this eye. The parts that made it difficult for me was Dada or the Metaphysicals, cilice grip of iambs, pre- the absinthe. Just some thoughts. Thanks again for sharing.

This Poem was Critiqued By: James C. Horak On Date: 2006-02-04 04:35:28
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.96429
I would call your concern here to be over something slightly more than writer's block, perhaps the concern of poet with Muse, Muse examined a little too closely, shied by the scrutiny? I think She is the same for all, mercurial when threatened to be confined by stare, granting clarity only on Her own capricious terms. Ever fleeting once that moment of sheer wonder is delivered, as if some beckoning by another is more formidable to Her than your devotion, your inexhaustible grattitude. Can we ever be certain She remains for us throughout this brief candle's dimming light? No, we cannot. One wonders what demon Milton paid, and at what price, to have his Muse attendent upon him so long. A splendid poem. Only, and I mean only, improved by your substitute of something other than "funny" following "Bunny". Imagery and the stark empathy you evoke with companion poets is what carries this splendidly delivered penetration into all our darkest fears of going to a dry well for water. Don't try to trade in any way its intensity on a late-in-the-day lunge at rhyme. To even think you might need it is a mistake, and a teeny bit tawdry. I'll pay the 3 dollars to have you change this. Then my esteem for it can show in my vote. JCH
This Poem was Critiqued By: Thomas Edward Wright On Date: 2006-01-29 18:38:45
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.68750
I'm sure there's much here for those willing to penetrate the veil. I was most impressed with "cilice," a cloth of a different color. I'm not sure at whom this is directed, but presume he/she will. Happy Australia Day.
This Poem was Critiqued By: Dellena Rovito On Date: 2006-01-29 16:52:34
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.33333
Mark, You are on the 'outside' what you aree on the inside! You are what you eat, think, do. If we eat only doughnuts, we are a doughnut. What lies beneath is what and who we are! And it's difficult to measure up to our own expectations. But it keeps one pretty busy trying to justify our existance. Growing up ain't easy. Good job/fun words.[cilice-absinthe] Dellena
This Poem was Critiqued By: Terry A On Date: 2006-01-27 17:17:16
Critiquer Rating During Critique: 9.85714
Now, having been forwarned of mindless appropation, I will try to make this a critique of mindful approbation. In short, I think the poem superb. When Paris attracted expatriots from all over...almost every artist worth something spent time there, trying to push out of the narrow fields of propriety that so dictated (almost inexplicitly) creative limits. Allowing experimentation with sex, drugs, and such things as absinthe. Now I'm sure those more astute among us might come close to guessing the figure you portray here, but the poem is so inclusive, so applicable, it does transcend biography. Absinthe (Hess and the Magic Theatre)was treated as a holy wine among artists, doorways to other dimensions; and artists, among all, strive to expand consciousness. But that's one of the points of your poem, "what lies beneath"; what dredges up from parts of the mind, left undisturbed until then, is absolutely individual to the person doing the experimentation. "rigor petrifying through the stanzas" is a little ambiguous, do you mean, caused to become solid, as when a poem is conceived and then written on paper, or as a deadening thing? A marvelous jump occurs in the poem with the word 'Hyperlink', a kind of electrical connection between life and death; also symbolizes the absinthe. The 'until it became what lies beneath'; which ends the poem on two levels, the body rotting in the ground, as absinthe rotted the spirit. Now, I hesitated on critiquing this poem, because it reads technically perfect, and I'm not sure why. Poetically, it has rhythm, the stanza breaks are masterfully done and that's not something I often perceive. And it succeeds because the imagery carries the ideas so completely. This critique is not complete, alas, it has the limits of my understanding craft in it. It is a great poem. Terry
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