Featured Guest Poet Charlton Metcalf
American Daylight
waking up
like a roller coasters first drop
accelerate aware
American daylight
hair of the dog
French maid toast
breakfast in bed
covers hog
stretching,
armpit close
chewing like a tropical Gauguins best girl,
murmuring a name with the occasional vowel.
January, 2002
Charlton Metcalf's Questions:
Is this too disjointed?
What is the narrative, if any?
Hmm . . . well it did seem disjointed to me, and I didn't really get the narrative other perhaps than waking up on 9/11 to the news and watching TV in bed. I liked the Gauguin allusion. I don't mean to sound harsh because I know people take a chance who put a poem out there for public consumption, which is sort of like exposing one's self (inner self, not physical self!--well, maybe that bad, too!). I do think you need to look to some punctuation and perhaps develop some semblance of meter. And I wonder if cliches should ever be used in a poem unless, perhaps, one in which dialogue or a second speaker is used. But despite its flaws, I think you do somehow manage to relate the feeling of many people on that dreadful, historic day. I just wonder why my poem, which has meter and complex metaphor wasn't put up on the site!!!! Oh well!
Steven Davis
USA - Tue Jan 22 18:25:46 2002
I really should have said that you manage to relate the situation of many people on 9-11 more so than what they were feeling.
Steven Davis
USA - Tue Jan 22 18:28:39 2002
I liked the fact that the poem was broken. I think it added a complex tone and offered the feeling of a broken-up "roller coaster" that is not as smooth as everything is sometimes perceived. I got a sense of a space-time continuum, however, I'm not completely sure that I "got" a narrative. All in all, I found it intriguing.
Megan Schmitt
USA - Mon Feb 18 15:23:55 2002