RE+VOLT+ER

[J.R.Pearson]

RE+VOLT+ER
or "j'attends j'attends la patience de mon destin atteint la fin de la bougie",
Cash for Chaos
& Capitalism: It's a Hell of a Religion!

1.
El is in the ink.
& black is tough to breathe.
Instead, beginnings:
all hail the meteoric rise of the godfist!
Clouds dune, light screws down the sky.
Reverbs round corners in the air
minus the sound of Schrodinger's cat-claws
sunk neck-deep into your tongue.
This just in!
On the second day of creation
"dino might." Made to detonate;
we were created to fail.
Since the first breath, vomit.
This just in!
On the second day of creation
a complete erasure of beating hearts
a rib wringing with breath
a clean plate echos your face
a modified whisper
& a voice thru a split-haired bass clef:
"love's not real."
It's the sweetcrime silent night
where someone slow-lifted
the heat from your chest:
We are we are we are
what we were back then-
& what we were?

This just in!
We were concubines to a riptide.
Hopeless & blind to talc surf.
Fiancés to an autopsy.
Cadavers sand-packed with sea-salt,
soaked in lye for 10'000 generations
& left to cool on eyelashes.
Budding bride to a bullet hole,
the weeping is so funny.
Widows to an exit wound,
painted egg-white & allowed to harden
on display at the Louvre
for tentacular advances of foreign fingers.
Bastard bloodline to a revolter.
Slow removal of snakeskin
from shoulders in the lineage
of the damned.
Peels off in a fury of stars
shaken into snowflakes.
We're born! Something beautiful
turns deadly.











P.S.- Quotes by Tristan Tzara from Approximate Man: "I wait I wait the patience of my waiting reaches the candles end"

[David]

This doesn't deserve to languish unnoticed, JR, but it also needs a bit of close attention. Dense reading and all that. Bit pushed for time on that front at the moment, but will get back to you.

Anybody else, leap in whenever you like.

Cheers

David

[clarabow]

There is some very good lines, actually brilliant lines and images in this, but I did feel the poem was getting slightly lost and hence the reader. Loved the quote but not sure of the relevance although such a line could apply to so many abstract ideas and economic dictates and political systems. So many promises - and fading hopes.

I have no suggestions and just enjoyed those wonderful lines and images, even if the poem left me behind somewhere.

[Arian]

Sorry, JR, not one for me.

Some nice sounds and images (I liked sweetcrime silent night, whatever it might mean, and a talc surf is very good. Plus some others), but - for me - the whole thing seems too determinedly gnomic, too self-consciously learned, trying (much) too hard to be "poetic". I think it falls between two stools - on the one hand, it's too obscure to be a narrative poem, while - on the other - its doesn't quite convince as an imagist piece or exercise in sonics.

Sorry to be negative, but it's only my opinion. Others, I'm sure, will disagree.

cheers
peter

[Arian]

my post crossed with clara's - didn't mean to repeat her points.

[J.R.Pearson]

Hey guys, sorry this didn't translate for you. It's a work in progress...so i'll try to incorporate these suggestions.


JR

[benjamin]

I quite like this. It's a bombardment of images that are all very fresh and evocative. Good work--no crits here.

[brianedwards]

Exceptional.

B.

[Raincoat]

some believe that there are many patterns that exist in nature and rather than asking why they exist we should be making the point that creatures able to ask that kind of question are only able to evolve in a universe with that kind of structure. we're unimportant. we're trivial. I just don't buy the whole evil capitalists ruling the world telling us to worship money and stop loving people. It's nonsensical, patterns aren't that black and white. sorry. I severely hope I have misunderstood your poem.

[benjamin]

some believe that there are many patterns that exist in nature and rather than asking why they exist we should be making the point that creatures able to ask that kind of question are only able to evolve in a universe with that kind of structure. we're unimportant. we're trivial. I just don't buy the whole evil capitalists ruling the world telling us to worship money and stop loving people. It's nonsensical, patterns aren't that black and white. sorry. I severely hope I have misunderstood your poem.

I think you actually missed the point of reading poetry. It's not to agree with the writer, or even to know what the poem is about--it's to appreciate the poem as an aesthetic work. Rather than criticizing the alleged intention of the author, you should be asking yourself, "Are the poem's images evocative? Does it sound good? Is it a beautiful poem? Does it work?" Start asking yourself those questions about the poems you read, and I guarantee you will not only understand poetry better, but write better poems.

[Raincoat]

some believe that there are many patterns that exist in nature and rather than asking why they exist we should be making the point that creatures able to ask that kind of question are only able to evolve in a universe with that kind of structure. we're unimportant. we're trivial. I just don't buy the whole evil capitalists ruling the world telling us to worship money and stop loving people. It's nonsensical, patterns aren't that black and white. sorry. I severely hope I have misunderstood your poem.

I think you actually missed the point of reading poetry. It's not to agree with the writer, or even to know what the poem is about--it's to appreciate the poem as an aesthetic work. Rather than criticizing the alleged intention of the author, you should be asking yourself, "Are the poem's images evocative? Does it sound good? Is it a beautiful poem? Does it work?" Start asking yourself those questions about the poems you read, and I guarantee you will not only understand poetry better, but write better poems.

Huh? that's just reiterating the point I was trying to make but perhaps I didn't make it well. When i read a poem I don't want to be told what to think. I think the reader should be left to extract their own meaning from a poem. I believe in putting lots of scope into a poem. I can't stand it when people write poems with only one meaning as if it's the only meaning in the world and we all should believe it. Surely the world is beautiful because there is so much meaning.
This poem annoyed me because I felt as if it was trying to ram an idea down my head and I reacted against it. Looking back maybe I jumped too fast - "cash for chaos" - about chaos theory? and linking that it with capitalism... it just didn't work for me. but that's just my opinion. If someone else can extract meaning from the poem that meant something for them then great.

[Raincoat]

Actually I can't stop thinking about this poem, and it stirred up such a reaction from me which never usually happens. It has moved me but I'm not sure how.

[k-j]

A few ugly spots in an invigorating poem:

- the title is awful. You need something innocuous. And the quote and subtitles are superfluous too I think and I was so put off by them I almost didn't go any further.
- Schrodinger's cat. I'm so sick of seeing that flaky furball in poetry. And schouldn't Schrödinger have an umlaut?
- Since the first breath, vomit, is quite arresting but strikes me as sort of hyperbolic - I mean vomit isn't related to breath and it's perfectly possible to breathe without chucking up. Sort of a tired Beckettism.
- I would go with just one "we are".

I think the best writing is in the first part, too. I love the creation, the godfist, clouds dune, and light screwing down. Dino might / detonate is sort of dumb but I do like it. And then from the complete erasure of beating hearts there are no false steps, excellent.

The second section has a lot of fancy-schmancy imagery but seems emptier than the first. Concubines to a riptide I can just about swallow, but fiancés to an autopsy, budding bride to a bullet hole, widow to an exit-wound, I think is the trope running away with you. I do like the fury of stars / shaken into snowflakes.

Much enjoyed.

[Denis Joe]

JR I've come back to this poem a couple of times today, and I think it is perfect. It reminds me of painting, especially a mural with so many images. It is a poem that shouldn't be experienced to find meaning, I think that the different approaches (wordplay, alliteration, etc.) are the important thing, as Benjamin states: ' I think you actually missed the point of reading poetry. It's not to agree with the writer, or even to know what the poem is about--it's to appreciate the poem as an aesthetic work'.

And for me this works really well.

[Raincoat]

as Benjamin states: ' I think you actually missed the point of reading poetry. It's not to agree with the writer, or even to know what the poem is about--it's to appreciate the poem as an aesthetic work'.

lol

I think I should clarify my point again because it looks like someone has else has misunderstood my point (I didn't think it was that unclear?) I'm not arguing about the "meaning" of the poem, I'm arguing about the lack of dynamism, how the meaning is forced onto the reader which I'm not sure a poem should do.

It's lines like for example

we were created to fail.

it just feels too definitive -feels as if the voice of the narrator is telling us what to think? I think if the poem was more dynamic, if there was more to engage with, more to contemplate rather than a narrow perspective then I wouldn't have had so much of a problem.

God this sounds grouchy, I'm sorry J R Pearson, I feel I have to be so direct due to the ambiguities that are arising from my initial message. I've been ill this week which is probably why I'm so negative. This is a subject area which really interests me and I feel that the poem is very beautiful, I guess I have a problem with people telling me what to think...maybe that's it?

And also, just skimming past my previous comment, it sounds as if I meant capitalism was incompatible with chaos, I didn't mean that, just meant I wasn't sure about the statements applied to capitalism (the religion aspect and not loving etc). there are generally considered only two types of patterns in the world and chaos is one of them, capitalism is in essence chaos - it's possible that there are laws underlying chaos, that would mean there are patterns in capitalism, but we don't know yet (that's why I had problems with your claims about capitalism), and would probably need to come up with a whole new way of dealing with mathematics to understand it i.e. not differential equations. there is an interesting film about a man who tries to understand the laws governing the stock exchange called PI.

[David]

I think you actually missed the point of reading poetry. It's not to agree with the writer, or even to know what the poem is about--it's to appreciate the poem as an aesthetic work.

Two responses immediately occur. The first is: Well duh.

The second is: Up to a point, Lord Copper. Is that the only point? I suspect not.

All theorising aside, the poem, I'm afraid, is not for me. Too windy. Too shouty. I admire the vividness of the language, but that's all.

Cheers

David