A Dark Room Facing East

[Stan]

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets.
In the heat,
Office chair legs smear faint ash 
shadows to the stem-base, 
which smelts a pitch gash 
from the covers.
Blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering.







orig.:



A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets.
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows 
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers.
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering.

[matsunosuperfan]

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets.
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows 
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers.
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering.

Pretty good imagist sketch IMO. Good use of verbs and nouns to motivate interest: "shuttering a thin shaft," "smear faint ash shadows," "smelts a pitch gash," "blades gather under their wings" 

The language is consistently trying to do something novel and provocative, which is appreciated. 

As usual I will make what is now my common complaint about static syntax, in particular the "poemy declarative." Plural nouns verb direct objects with modifiers. Even if taken as a deliberate choice, I'm not fully satisfied with this structural monotony. It distracts me from the poem's content. 

I think maybe I don't know enough about developing photos, but I have a bit more trouble than I'd like making the compelling gestures and turns of phrase cohere into intelligible narrative. I would not complain about that either, except that the ending gesture makes me feel the poem wants me to leave having received an intelligible narrative, maybe even something like a parable. And I'm not getting that signal so clearly through the static, so in terms of sensibility, I feel let down. 

It's also possible the poem is not yet ambitious enough in its treatment of this subject and occasion. It does feel largely mimetic to me until the abrupt leap to Something More Significant at the end.

[wasellajam]

Hi, Stan. After time and multiples reads I'm pretty much where I started with this. It strikes me as an ekphrastic poem, the N an observer rather than a participant. Some notes:

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets. Dark room vs darkroom, the word play is lovely here: skylight, flashes, shuttering, sheets
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows 
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers. These three lines are overkill for me, how many ways can we say shades of dark. And I can't get "rod-base".
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks: Interesting image and phrasing, made me work a bit for it.
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering. Ah, a human. "strain he was mothering" leaves the poem open-ended. It sets my mind wandering, a good thing,

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed the read.

[Stan]

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets.
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows 
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers.
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering.

Pretty good imagist sketch IMO. Good use of verbs and nouns to motivate interest: "shuttering a thin shaft," "smear faint ash shadows," "smelts a pitch gash," "blades gather under their wings" 

The language is consistently trying to do something novel and provocative, which is appreciated. 

As usual I will make what is now my common complaint about static syntax, in particular the "poemy declarative." Plural nouns verb direct objects with modifiers. Even if taken as a deliberate choice, I'm not fully satisfied with this structural monotony. It distracts me from the poem's content. 

I think maybe I don't know enough about developing photos, but I have a bit more trouble than I'd like making the compelling gestures and turns of phrase cohere into intelligible narrative. I would not complain about that either, except that the ending gesture makes me feel the poem wants me to leave having received an intelligible narrative, maybe even something like a parable. And I'm not getting that signal so clearly through the static, so in terms of sensibility, I feel let down. 

It's also possible the poem is not yet ambitious enough in its treatment of this subject and occasion. It does feel largely mimetic to me until the abrupt leap to Something More Significant at the end.

Hi, thanks for your comments.
Static syntax is a really good shout. I’m agnostic about it and ‘poemy declarative’ in a poem of this length, but definitely succumb to it in my previous poem.
Yeah it might need more intelligible narrative. I had something parabolic in mind, but it’s probably asking too much.

---

Hi, Stan. After time and multiples reads I'm pretty much where I started with this. It strikes me as an ekphrastic poem, the N an observer rather than a participant. Some notes:

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets. Dark room vs darkroom, the word play is lovely here: skylight, flashes, shuttering, sheets
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows 
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers. These three lines are overkill for me, how many ways can we say shades of dark. And I can't get "rod-base".
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks: Interesting image and phrasing, made me work a bit for it.
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering. Ah, a human. "strain he was mothering" leaves the poem open-ended. It sets my mind wandering, a good thing,

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed the read.

thanks for reading, Ella!
I’ve tried to adjust it a bit for sense

[matsunosuperfan]

Rereading the latest draft, it strikes me that the descriptive language is perhaps fine enough - I just don't care about it at all until the turn at the very end. 

I think we probably need an invitation to stakes pretty immediately after the first run of imagery, maybe in place of what is now "In the heat" or at least by "office chair legs."

The poem opens with 4 lines of still life, if the next thing you show me is an office chair you're really counting on my being invested just Because.

[RiverNotch]

Minor note, but capitalization is inconsistent: should be "office", "the man's".

The imagery overall is evocative, very nice....but as someone who only barely experienced film cameras, it evoked the wrong images in me, at first. My misreading is the visual starts from above, peering down to the scene from a skylight, the camera slowly panning or zooming in to some hot and dirty office---maybe the office of some P. I.?---with a ceiling fan and everything. "Dark Room", I took as a room that was shot in black and white: "35 mm" at first didn't help me one bit xD

Still, I mean, it's a fascinating and evocative picture, even when misread. "the strain he was mothering", to me, also reads kinda comic, since I tend to associate strains on faces as someone letting out a real difficult shit. But the comedy, again, works: the whole picture works, taken straight and right or kooky and wrong, and it should leave most readers satisfied.

[purplie]

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft - I'm first struck by the unusual 'sh' alliteration
on 35 mm sheets.
In the heat,
Office chair legs smear faint ash  - ... which then keeps going, blending with 'ch' and 'sm', I would not call it a tongue twister, but I imagine a lot of people reading it out loud are going to mess up some words
shadows to the stem-base, 
which smelts a pitch gash  - here you've lost me, but i suspect it's just my ignorance
from the covers.
Blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks:
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering. - mothering a strain, the best image. I expected the alliteration to converge here, but it didn't.

I'm not pointing out defects, just trying to understand what you're doing there.