Thursday, August 18, 2011

disposable

sturdy
paper towel
absorbing sadness
loneliness
pain
addiction
fear

quicker picker upper
bountiful
beautiful
plentiful
pick you up
let me down
toss away
easy

patricia spreng

connecting to d’Verse Poets Pub tonight… here we are posting for Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft…
let ‘er rip.

11 comments:

  1. Very nice-- you work with the metaphor but let us in on your meaning, which to me is the right balance to strike! xxxj

    ReplyDelete
  2. nice...love the metaphor...and if only we could toss away those fears and jears....well i guess in a sense we can...smiles.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A relationship that's like a commercial -- and it ultimately won't work. Good poem, Patricia.

    ReplyDelete
  4. you've wasted no words here for sure...tight and clean write and great use of metaphor

    ReplyDelete
  5. As Claudia says, it is a tight piece. The paper towel metaphor helps to tackle that theme which is emotionally huge for the first person Narrator. he fact that you've stripped this of any redundant words (especially pronouns) also helps make this more accessible and gives it more bite.

    I'd be inclined to make more of that paper towel metaphor though. Although it's there at the end (toss away/easy), the majority of the second stanza only alludes and could easily be seen as veering away from it -

    bountiful
    beautiful
    plentiful
    pick you up
    let me down

    this gets into more direct language as I interpreted it; also what the towel is absorbing in the back end of stanza one -

    loneliness
    pain
    addiction
    fear

    is a little to overstated in my opinion. More oblique/subtle ways of saying the same things might do the piece service. It's almost as if you start with the great metaphor, but half take it away again (in terms of not tackling the big topic head on/directly) by listing these heavy, human emotion/states of being. The metaphor must work together with a subtle approach to language generally when addressing such grave topics, otherwise the metaphor is half-wasted.

    It's a strong piece, though, and there s nothing a little editing wouldn't fix (of you agree with my opinions). You certainly have a good analogy on your hands and excellent sense of succinctness/word-economy which is so important

    ReplyDelete
  6. Immediate access and a powerful opening stanza.. this works well and I agree that if the second matches the first in terms of impact... the whole will be greater..

    ReplyDelete
  7. Luke, et al...
    Here’s my revision, for the sole purpose of seeing whether I understood what you were saying... is this what you were getting at?

    Originally a play on a popular U.S. commercial slogan for paper towel ("Bounty, the quicker picker upper"), my use of bountiful, plentiful, beautiful were descriptions of paper towel/ the one being used in a relationship. I can see how those adjectives get lost in the translation…

    But, alas… now I’ve used more words. Let me know what you think… for better or worse.

    Disposable

    sturdy paper towel
    absorbing
    spilled milk sadness
    through shards
    of pain

    falling apart at the seams
    mop you up
    squeeze me out
    toss away
    easy

    patricia spreng

    ReplyDelete
  8. oops... meant to say

    mop you up
    squeeze me out
    falling apart at the seams
    toss away
    easy

    ReplyDelete
  9. I like the first version but I am in the US and got the quicker picker upper bit which I thought was a great description of someone who is trying to make things better for someone else (if I read your meaning correctly.) nice job, Patricia.

    ReplyDelete
  10. thank you for sharing a bit of my birthday with me today...smiles.

    ReplyDelete

A penny for your thoughts ...