Thread: Thirteen
View Single Post
  #8  
Unread 10-24-2016, 10:41 AM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,307
Default

Ripped-from-the-headlines poems always make me a bit suspicious about exploitation and sensationalism. Not that I'm poised to scold--just that I'm a little harder to win over, and am looking for either an overt or subtle message or agenda. By presenting the "clenched and shaking hand" of the thirteen-year-old who seems simultaneously braggadocious and troubled, I think the poem succeeds in not being too preachy. (Then again, maybe I'd like it to be a little more preachy on this topic.)

I thought the sestet's imperfect and distant rhymes (abccba puts those a rhymes pretty far apart) helped convey the sense of something-not-quite-right-beneath-the-surface.

Actually, the octave contains more quibbles for me than others had with the sestet. Would a narrator this young and admittedly clueless about sexual undercurrents know or care that this woman was a yoga teacher, and would he characterize her as "with cheeks / like dynamite in tights"? And was the woman wearing tights at the party, or is that part of the cheek-dynamite metaphor? Both possibilities seem odd to me.

The anticlimactic misdirection of "touch...leaned in close...felt" followed by "breath" is interesting.

Still thinking about this one.
Reply With Quote