03-10-2017, 02:52 AM
Lot going on here--the sounds are great throughout and the tone is superbly conversational.
The first two stanzas are the best. They are the most musical, and they are easy to follow, which befits the beginning of a conversational poem. Henry is the clearest character in this poem, and I can feel the speaker's offhand affection for him.
The rest of this poem is good, but less striking than the beginning (even though the subject matter gets more serious and the anecdote reaches its crux). This is mainly because the 'narrative' of the anecdote introduces more, less developed characters and the pacing becomes less fluid. I had to reread the stanza in order to understand who Robert and Marvin were, and once I did I still didn't fully understand their relationship to the dramatic ending of the poem (which feels like the purpose of the anecdote).
In a way, the tangled-loose-ends conclusion of the poem suits the conversational 'stream of consciousness' style of the speaker, but it fails to wrap the poem up in a satisfying way. The end doesn't feel like the most important part of this story to the speaker. Again, I don't know that that is a bad thing, and it is interesting that the ending treats the violence with a newspaper's nonchalance. The issue, though, is that the speaker becomes less realistic as the story progresses: why did he throw in all these details (note that I don't question why he threw in the stuff about Henry: it is clear that he thinks fondly of the between-meeting lunch routine) about Marvin the Prawn and the bets getting mixed up? Was Sydney murdered by Robert, or someone else related to his gambling? I feel that if that were the case the speaker would have gone into more detail about Robert's reaction to things at the track, or at least might have told the story differently. The joke at the end isn't funny enough to be the point of the poem (but I do like the idea of resolving a tragedy with a joke).
After writing all that, I must say I find the idea of this poem being an indirect account of the transfer of power in chinatown pretty neat. Still, though, the ending was less rewarding than the beginning.
The first two stanzas are the best. They are the most musical, and they are easy to follow, which befits the beginning of a conversational poem. Henry is the clearest character in this poem, and I can feel the speaker's offhand affection for him.
The rest of this poem is good, but less striking than the beginning (even though the subject matter gets more serious and the anecdote reaches its crux). This is mainly because the 'narrative' of the anecdote introduces more, less developed characters and the pacing becomes less fluid. I had to reread the stanza in order to understand who Robert and Marvin were, and once I did I still didn't fully understand their relationship to the dramatic ending of the poem (which feels like the purpose of the anecdote).
In a way, the tangled-loose-ends conclusion of the poem suits the conversational 'stream of consciousness' style of the speaker, but it fails to wrap the poem up in a satisfying way. The end doesn't feel like the most important part of this story to the speaker. Again, I don't know that that is a bad thing, and it is interesting that the ending treats the violence with a newspaper's nonchalance. The issue, though, is that the speaker becomes less realistic as the story progresses: why did he throw in all these details (note that I don't question why he threw in the stuff about Henry: it is clear that he thinks fondly of the between-meeting lunch routine) about Marvin the Prawn and the bets getting mixed up? Was Sydney murdered by Robert, or someone else related to his gambling? I feel that if that were the case the speaker would have gone into more detail about Robert's reaction to things at the track, or at least might have told the story differently. The joke at the end isn't funny enough to be the point of the poem (but I do like the idea of resolving a tragedy with a joke).
After writing all that, I must say I find the idea of this poem being an indirect account of the transfer of power in chinatown pretty neat. Still, though, the ending was less rewarding than the beginning.