Critical Response to Whitney Moore’s “Migraine”

I really did enjoy this poem. What is very characteristic of Whitney’s work, much like Christina Arganda’s, is her great use of images. This is an outlier on Whitney’s usual subject matter (Argentina), but it is quite good in its conveyance of pain and of sight. What is also quite effective in the poem is the frequent appearance of personification of inanimate objects and aspects of the world as seen through the migraine-victim’s perspective. “teasing my pulsating nerves,/ frayed with each watery look” are two lines which really drew me in and kept me reading along with the “swelling of my sanity” – just great strangeness. I would say, however, that towards the end, the imagery and the strangeness seems to overpower some of what Whitney is trying to do with the scene and the character within the poem, but it isn’t by much. I would say that we are being taken too far into the mind and feelings of the character, and I would like to see what the other senses are like in that moment of searing pain.

Critical Response to Celina’s “After-Thought (Ghost Life)”

While the poem is short, pretty amusing, and fairly complete for its brevity, I feel like it has a lot of room for expansion. The idea of being a disembodied spirit missing your armpits (of all things) the most, is particularly fantastic. This sort of idea has been worked with before, but I think that Celina is taking it in a nice direction. The language is both mournful and sarcastic, which I don’t know if I like, even though I laughed at it the first read through. If she were to expand on this, I would like to see more of the little details like the act of trimming pubic hair or burping or the feeling of a rose petal between the fingers. From there, I would suggest going off into the world and describing the little things about the people the ghost once knew, the things that it misses. It would be interesting to also see how the ghost character’s thoughts reflect on its enemies that it had while it was still a living being. What Celina has in her poem, as I see it, is an amazing beginning to a much longer poem that could be both funny and powerful. Cheers to her.

Critical Response to Kelsey Buck’s “Recognition”

Another eerie poem. Much like Xan’s “Rinds in the Loam,” I found myself getting wrapped up in the overall mood of the poem and the great, but strange, images. The real strength of the poem, I feel, is that it has created a world within itself and it is one which I am able to believe in. Lines like “As I emerge from bracken walls” and “Racing between dark silhouettes” are just plain good and create this creepy dream world which draws the reader in and allows the reader to be chased and claimed by the “something sinister.” This all being said, there are a couple of things which I think could really help the poem. The first would be to strike the line “Nowhere to hide, nowhere to go” from the last stanza and move the last line, “My shadow finds me. It claims me”, to the top of the stanza. It maintains the quick resolution of the poem, but it leaves the reader hanging with the image of the “bleak, faintly breathing world.” The other suggestion which I had was to expand on the sinister something which chases down and claims the character in the story. The elaboration does not have to be a big, long thing but it would help to just have a better idea of maybe how the sinister thing moves or how it smells – something to personify it without describing what it looks like (since that seems to be the point). Also, the line “fleeing superfluous freedom” really confused me. I don’t know if it is really important to the poem, but I would probably suggest, again, expanding it if she wants to keep it or cutting it. Overall, however, I really enjoyed it and I would love to see what she does with it later.

Critical Response 2 to Xan Calonne’s “Rinds in the Loam”

I have to say, this poem creeped me out. I can’t quite put my finger on why it did; but it managed to. The formal structure of the poem is pretty solid, and Xan has managed to make the form his own in the course of the poem, so I cannot offer much in the way of critique there. The lines which really stuck out to me were “A party sits and eats in pungent dirt and leaves and grass,/ Now they begin to drink from hollowed rinds found in the loam” and “The old king feels arthritic while he waits for Ragnorak/ His sword hangs at his side useless it is forged from hollow bone.” Both of these lines are just plain eerie to me. The images are strange, but very vivid and easy to put together in the mind. Yet, there are other lines which I do not see working as well. They are essentially the middle two stanzas of the poem separating the lines I have quoted above. Though “a minted mime” and a “blacksmith… at an old-timey faire” are both interesting and what Xan is doing with the rhymes is clever, they do not seem to do as much for the mood of the poem as the others. I would not say to cut them completely, but to perhaps expand on them and investigate the faire that the blacksmith is at and show the other characters at the carnival/faire. I would really like to see what he does with this and I hope that these suggestions bring up some things that get his mind going.

Critical Response To Christina Arganda’s “My Tiny is a daisy, but mighty is her rowr”

I have to applaud Christina, as always, for her use of imagery and metaphor. But in this poem, she is truly showing off her chops in the category of dexterity. The pantoum is a tricky form and it is hard to make images come into their own when being forced to reference previous lines, but Christina has nailed it. My favorite images, “canary diamond silk sheets” and “a hollow cloud withers in her hands and dies”, are both strange but they work within the context of the poem. However, I am forced to say that the title of the poem does not, for me, match up with the overall mood of the poem. The pantoum can quite easily create a mood or a vivid scene, but just one line can make the reader question it.
All of this being said, however, I have to further applaud Christina for her adaptation of the pantoum form into the blank verse form. Though the meter is rough in places, the revised product has the ghost of the pantoum included in the blank verse; technically making it a sort of nonce form which really works for Christina. The only suggestion I can offer for the blank verse version would be to toy with punctuation and possibly break it up into stanzas. While reading it, I was subconsciously adding punctuation (but that may be a problem with the blog, so…). Anyway, both versions were a pleasure to read, but I would just suggest the little tweaks in order to make the poems truly great.