Random Banter #117

[Phaedra]

I won't tidy this into paragraphs, but will leave it as a stream of consciousness, a yammering conversation among a writers' circle. On a scale of criticism from one to five*, that should place it at about a three, instead of my usual four to four-point-five.

That isn't a poem.
Why not? It's one complete thought, too private for prose, and too refined for ordinary language.
Is it? . . .
. . .Too refined? Maybe not. But otherwise, yes, it's a poem.
In translation, perhaps.
Odi et amo? . . .
Heh. Yes. Our good friend Catullus. Wasn't he more terse than that?
Yes. And this proto-poem could use some pruning, but not to the extent it becomes only a translation of Odi et amo. After all, if it were, we'd only be reading the middle two lines.
The first two lines--the first couplet--are balanced. But are they necessary to write out? Couldn't they be implied?
This--is not--Catullus! Invoking those lines of duality is as necessary to this author as Homer's call to the muse!
Not just this author.
Heh.
(a few moments' silence among the circle, someone's feet scuffing the carpet)
. . .Men.
Yes.
. . .The poem--
--Proto-poem--
Line five implies the first couplet. If this were being tightened for publication, one of them would have to go. Line five is more compact, it says both that there's duality, which took two lines to say earlier, and that she's born of the duality.
It could still stay, though.
It could. There should be more in the first couplet, though, if line five stays.
Line six is six-and-seven.
It's too long for the form.
What form? It's free verse.
The form of one major thought on every line! Five has a major and a minor thought. Six has. . .
Tautologies.
Oof. Yes. I see. That's time mentioned three times in one line and once would be quite enough.
Can't we just cut line six entirely? If the reader can't assume the fact of the speaker's longing for the lady by this point, I'd be inclined to call them deaf and blind--
THIS--IS NOT--CATULLUS!
Well of course not, but it doesn't need to be sprawling Hallmark either, it's not like there's a meter or rhyme to pad out. . .

*On the intensity of feedback:

One: I read it and acknowledge that I read it.
Two: I read it and here's a few things I like about it.
Three: Here's a few things I like and a few I dislike.
Four: I'm an amateur, not an editor, but I'd change this before you submit it. . .
Five: Do this, this, and this, and get this published.

Hmmm. I like this. Reminds me a little of Leonard Cohen's commentaries on his poetry in one of his anthologies. It's a conversation among poets/critics? Without being told that I'd have assumed it was a kind of mental argument on the part of the poet involved, editing their poem, but that assumption probably says more about me than about the work. Without knowing a bit more about the aim of the work though, I'm not sure how well I can criticise, sorry.


@Fred: Catullus was a Roman poet, famed for his poems addressed to the lady "Lesbia". They're very good, you should read them if you get the time.

A tautology is a pair or set or words which say the same thing, making the use of both or all of them redundant: Tautology

Edit: Gah, ninja'd several times over on Catullus and tautologies. That'll teach me to chat and attempt to write a post at the same time.