How Is this a Poem?

[gailkate]

Obviously our posts crossed, roges. Metered flatulence explains it all.

[slb2]

This poem, by John F. Walter, won this month's Poem of the Month contest by Edward Nudelman. I just don't get it. A little help, please?


Freezing In Phantasmal Light, by John F. Walter

Throw away mousepads, wolfman gone to snow! Blood moon glows
with a crispness not envisioned in virtual risings ever displayed.
Nocturnal light was shunned a century ago, yet the lunatic mood
persists in you. Resist that urge back onto neverland's screens.

When did you last to real window steal? Once upon a frozen fall?
Dim subjects swoop into the room: the mind maps a wife, a child--
their own ghost-boards held in hand, happiness' geiger counters.
La luna llena, te espera.... but a report zooms into upper left corner:

news coming in from an iceberg sighting--LIVE ICEBERG CAM--
as a frigid voice like a slur swings by, no longer language.
She's turned on an ambient strobe, the baby wails on the patio;
time to nosh a midnight nano snack cast rudely on the keys.

No "Tranquility Sea" frees your gaze from this fractal flicker. Choose.
Shall love return, the iceman thaw, or baby take chill in our winter?

[michael]

The disjointed thoughts
Flow like catsup
Across the frozen berg
From whence the author
Drunk on his a$$
Produced his ghastly dirge

Mike

[michael]

I am encouraged by John F. Walter’s poem.

Mike

[Jane]

I don't get it either. Where's PT when ya need him?!?!

[gailkate]

slb, when your poem won, the editor or whatever he is made some very astute comments. Were there any comments on this one? Other than playing with the notion of living the computer's life more fully than real life, I can't read the images. Maybe if I worked really hard at it, but nothing grabs me enough to make the effort. Does anybody here do computer games?

[slb2]

It's interesting, gk, that you found Ed's comments astute. I found most of them quite off-base. No, that's not fair; I'm too harsh. Some of Ed's remarks simply were untrue. He suggested that the narrator of the poem needed to jettison certain personal objects that were reminiscent of the dead person. Quite the opposite. It wasn't tossing of the objects that was needed, but closure. Those half-used items were left pending and the narrator was looking for completion.

Also, the Frenchman wasn't any sort of "lover" in a human sense, but the love of the country of France. The dead woman wanted more than to simply feel the "rasp of his peppered beard"/the surface of the land. She wanted to truly know the longed-for nation.

Well, gk, you can see this is a hot-button topic for me.

But you can see Ed's explication of John Walter's work with this link.

[slb2]

I can use Ed's comments to strengthen my poem so that I convey my intentions more clearly. And I know that poetry is subjective, but I can still seek clarity and conciseness.

[gailkate]

Slb, this is almost spooky. When I wrote to tell you how pleased I was about your win and seeing the poem stand on its own so professionally, I said I'd get back to you with more. I also intended to comment on Ed's comments. But I couldn't express what I thought your images expressed perfectly.

Because the thing that was all wrong, totally off, was the word jettison. We two know especially the need to live within and for and as part of a sister. I think that kind of closeness is possible in other relationships, but sisters may be especially symbiotic.

Your poem was published near the time of the Memorial Day show on which GK said "May we live the good lives they would have lived." To me that said exactly how I have felt after terrible loss, and exactly what your poem was all about. I may still not be quite in sync with your poem, but that's my subjective response.

[slb2]

:-*gailkate

You got it right, sweetie.