Dreams

[CalebPerry]

I dreamed that I lived in a brave new world,
the world that ours is coming to be.

I bathed at the shore — surrounded by cling film,
flip-flops, chip bags and yogurt cups galore,
better aquatic life than what we had before.
I saw the plastic as part of the beauty of the sea.

I hiked up a mountain and found the top gone,
mined for its minerals and gems, to make more of what
we need: appliances, tires, circuit boards and jewelry.
I was pleased. This is the way it should be.

I drank water from a spring, and my mouth flamed
like a fire-breathing circus man! That was fun.
Thanks to fracking, I take my entertainment with me.

I walked from town to town, through land-fills
so huge that they blended one into the other.
In them were more of the things I loved:
pens, paper, broken toys, glass jars, caulking guns;
and those lovely yogurt cups, more cheerful
than the flowers that poets wrote about before.
The methane made me high, which is how I like to be.

Suddenly I couldn’t move. I was frozen like a board.
Some industrial chemical had destroyed
the motor neurons in my brain, and forced me
to be still, to be at peace. What tranquility!
... though I got a little bored. L-dopa fixed me up,
enabling me to walk again, if not perfectly.

And when I awoke, I was so very happy at what
I had dreamed, I stopped recycling immediately.

-end-

You may notice that I end each strophe with a long E sound. Ultimately, I want to add more end-rhymes to make more strophes like the second.

(I read that I should call blocks of text in free verse "strophes", but I'm wondering if "stanzas" isn't also correct.)

[Macavity]

I was pleased. This is the way it should be.

I like the twisted appreciations in your poem Perry. Humans are adaptable Away from the environmental issues, the poem nudged me to think of periods in art where the 'ugly' becomes the new 'beauty'.

best

mac

[CalebPerry]

Thank you, Mac. I think this poem is too raw. I need to work on it more.

[Elphin]

Hello Perry

I hear this poem more as a performance piece than written verse. I think it needs tonality of voice to land well.

I see you believe it to be raw, raw is probably a good quality in an “anger” poem.

For improvement, I would look at stanza lengths. It had nice 4 line start then deviated, I found that off putting.

Hope that helps

Elph

[CalebPerry]

Yes, Elph, those are very useful comments. Thank you. Poems like this need structure, and this poem is very unstructured.

Does the ironic or sarcastic tone of it, with the dreamer saying that he enjoys the trashing of the environment in his dreams, come across as effective?

Thanks.

[stuartryder]

All in all I enjoyed the inversion. A couple of observations:

- Although each verse (I find the word strophe pretentious!) ends with a long ee sound, the stress on those final words is different, eg the SEA; SHOULD be; WITH me; like to BE; PERfectly... I don't know if that matters to you or not but it was an observation because you specifically highlighted the verse ending syllables.

- I found the last line a little bit flat and anticlimactic compared to the rest. Then I thought, just moving "immediately" onto its own line at the end might make it work much better. Just a thought.

Cheers

Stuart

[bjondon]

Hi Perry, the workable premise here is that if you take anger, grief and despair and then slap a big enough greasepaint clown smile on top you may, just, escape the twin evils of 'heard it all before' and rampant didacticism. You have a great ear for tragic/comic tone and there's some neat metric and rhyming work going on here but for me it doesn't really get going until half way through.
Your list on L17 is one of the finest I have come across in a while (I love a good list).
Before I get my giant pruning shears out (I'm sure you could see them. behind my back) I'll attempt to put my fingure on what seems a bit lame about the start and end sections. It's partly the change in rhythms and line length (there's a magnificent loping energy from L14 through to L24 that is lost and underminexd by the rest). The change in locations, the unnecessary repetitions (not just the yogurt cartons but the whole basic business of bashing the reader over the head with a rubber hammer) and even the set-up of the dream are all superfluous and sapping the essential energy. And given the predictability of the basic message I think it works better to almost ambush your audience, throw them into the middle of the action/'dream'/metaphorical inversion . . . which is what happens if you dare to start at 'I walked. . .' L14 and then I'd suggest ending on '…tranquility!'
Apologies if I sound a bit harsh . . . I know you are hard to persuade without concrete demonstrative detail and argument. I actually think this is a great example of why it sometimes pays to post fast-written, raw first drafts and I'm making my case because I think there's a great poem here sitting in plain sight. That central section is strangely reminiscent of Blake's furious walk through 18th century London, and on an odder almost blasphemous level, it seems to make a connection with Wordsworth's daffodillian stroll.
Best Regards,
Jules

[CalebPerry]

Stuart and Jules, thank you very much for your advice.

Jules, yours is by far the more detailed advice, which makes it a little hard to follow. You have a vision for the poem, and the problem for me is that it's not easy to follow someone else's vision, especially since you don't give any rewritten lines as example. Also, the things you talk about as being superfluous strike me as being reasonable things to include, like the dream context and the changing locations.

Since I can't envision your advice that well, I have to go with my own vision, which is to hammer the poem into strict form. Like a child's nursery rhyme, this type of poem would benefit from even stanza lengths and regular rhymes. In other words, the perfection of the form would provide an ironic contrast to the chaos of what I am describing.

I appreciate the amount of time you spent analyzing the poem. If you could include a few examples of the kinds of lines you'd like to see, that would help -- or even give me a rough outline of what you'd like the poem to say (if you want to, of course).

Thanks so much.