04-20-2014, 11:04 AM
I'd actually repost this one there, after revision.
--this first comment is an aside. There tend not to be author's notes here, as they come across as timid. Here, directing us to the Van Gogh seems odd, only because it's arguably the second-most-famous painting after Mona Lisa. You'll notice the other commenters took it as the poem's subject matter. They were justly thrown off, I think, by the author's note
--Correcting a former poster, something I do all the time, is a bad practice. I shouldn't do it, and it feels merely distracting here. So! On to what would've otherwise been the whole response.
The Starry Night
--the title alludes to Van Gogh. I'm anticipating either a straightforward recital of that painting or else a metaphoric jumping off.
Mesmerised by the infinite spirals of humanity:
--mesmerization implies movement, most classically a pendulum, but the painting is static. Tf, the poem is a jumping off.
Marching forward
Yet remaining constant,
Or regressing.
--ah. So the poem describes the way in which seeming progress can be illusory.
The hallucination of Progress.
--yeah. To me, this is redundant, and I'd take greater issue of it were in Serious, but since it isn't . . .
MACRO. The thing about starry night is that it doesn't feature in the poem overtly. I think he title is a miscue, and that you'd be better served with a more straightforward ref to the actual important image, which is spiraling.
Title aside, the poem draws a fancy, likeable chalk line around the bare-assed futility of trying to progress spiritually as a species. I think he last line should be written upside-down and backwards at the bottom of the page, as the punch line that kinda spoils the intrigue, but the rest is solidly structured and moves forward quite competently. Good work.
--this first comment is an aside. There tend not to be author's notes here, as they come across as timid. Here, directing us to the Van Gogh seems odd, only because it's arguably the second-most-famous painting after Mona Lisa. You'll notice the other commenters took it as the poem's subject matter. They were justly thrown off, I think, by the author's note
--Correcting a former poster, something I do all the time, is a bad practice. I shouldn't do it, and it feels merely distracting here. So! On to what would've otherwise been the whole response.
The Starry Night
--the title alludes to Van Gogh. I'm anticipating either a straightforward recital of that painting or else a metaphoric jumping off.
Mesmerised by the infinite spirals of humanity:
--mesmerization implies movement, most classically a pendulum, but the painting is static. Tf, the poem is a jumping off.
Marching forward
Yet remaining constant,
Or regressing.
--ah. So the poem describes the way in which seeming progress can be illusory.
The hallucination of Progress.
--yeah. To me, this is redundant, and I'd take greater issue of it were in Serious, but since it isn't . . .
MACRO. The thing about starry night is that it doesn't feature in the poem overtly. I think he title is a miscue, and that you'd be better served with a more straightforward ref to the actual important image, which is spiraling.
Title aside, the poem draws a fancy, likeable chalk line around the bare-assed futility of trying to progress spiritually as a species. I think he last line should be written upside-down and backwards at the bottom of the page, as the punch line that kinda spoils the intrigue, but the rest is solidly structured and moves forward quite competently. Good work.