[Julie Steiner]

I had no problem with "limp," which I understood to mean "flaccid," and I understood that diminished masculinity was somehow intended here. I just didn't understand how a "petard" (a bomb) could be limp.

Does the narrator think that "petard" is some sort of structure by which things might be hoisted—say, a gallows, halyard, or flagpole—based on the expression "hoist by one's own petard"? I suppose something like that might resemble a stiffy. Unfortunately, the "hoist" in that expression refers to being pushed up by an explosion, not to being pulled upward by a rope or hook:


HISTORICAL
noun: petard; plural noun: petards

a small bomb made of a metal or wooden box filled with powder, used to blast down a door or to make a hole in a wall.

a kind of firework that explodes with a sharp report.

Phrases

be hoist by one's own petard — have one's plans to cause trouble for others backfire on one.

Origin
mid 16th century: from French pétard, from péter ‘break wind’.

[Rick Mullin]

Yeah, I understand the expression to mean being blown up by your own bomb. I've used it a few times before and have suffered consequences personally to which the metaphor can be applied. It is, in fact, a metaphor, and I'm trying to stretch it a bit. I'll admit it's confusing. What you're saying, I guess, is that it stands out in this long poem as particularly confusing. Red flag planted.

But you're also saying the phrase as used here indicates that the scribe does not know the meaning of the expression, which is certainly something to take under advisement, which I shall.

Thanks.

--Gave it a look, and it's coming out clean, I think. I say his banners are flapping with his limp petard. No hoist. I really think it's OK. He and others are at little risk of being hoist by a limp petard.

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

The Shakespearian ‘hoist’ is virtually ‘blown up’ as a petard is a small bomb nothing phallic, the etymology of petard is based on fart, Latin via French.

I am still in the process of an intermittent digestion of this Rick, my apologies.

I will return.

Jan

[Rick Mullin]

Thanks Jim, Carl, Julie and Jan,

I'll admit I had been hoping to get a couple more deep dive crits on this, but at its length that's asking a lot. It's experimental and borderline abstract as well. I hope I have given due consideration to my petard. ~,:^)

Rick


Note appendage to the title, which may help with traction...now Expression (Sunset) or The Death of Venus

[Rick Mullin]

I removed the reference to Thalidamide. OK?
RM

[Siham Karami]

Rick,
This is absolutely spectacular. It somehow manages to capture the zeitgeist of the moment. Its density and the layer upon layer of images that need revisiting and carry enough ammunition to feed that urge to reread. My favorite part right now is this:

Impervious to all the moon can sorrow,
frozen mountains slam their wood-crack strains.
All color drained, gone even from the dayglow
factories that burned once and their trains
that throttled through the county night and day.
A river choked with surplus nurdles plies
the fallen forest like a mindless snail.

I could really hear the mountains, and the dayglow thing is an example of that layered density. Regarding “limp petard,” I like to think non-spherians will need to look it up, discover it originated in flatulence, and the “flat” part’s slant-rhyming with “flapping” altogether sets a scene, humorous without detracting from the serious. Somehow that latter part of the sonnet brings Trump to mind, probably not what you had in mind, but still. Like “Huncke,” there’s this madcap image-jumping fervor to it yet the sonnet form (and I like the rhyme scheme!) ties it down somehow and there’s an overall solemnity to it, as there should be. It’s like a Götterdämmerung poem in a grand style. And the absurdity and humor is appropriate to the era in question. Sorry I couldn’t find something I’d change really. Just my general impressions. Well-worth reading and reading again…

Siham

[Rick Mullin]

Thanks Siham,

I really appreciate your giving this one time, and of course I'm happy with your generous response. I'm also glad you mention Huncke. Writing this might be the closest I've come to the kind of free-wheeling style of that poem. Both require re-reading. And both loose a great many readers in the middle of a first reading. Like others here, I am managing a situation where a person needs to be familiar with my poetry before reading any of my poems....

I'm interested in the segment you highlight. I like the first line, but I wonder how my use of the word sorrow as a verb will go over. Also, the word "nurdles" was a concern. They are the basic pellets of plastic kicked out by the huge ethylene crackers (plastics factories). Rivers near crackers are full of them. So are oceans. The line I like best in that stanza is the one with cracking mountains.

Thanks for you input and insight on "petard"!

I'm really glad you see this holding together with the support of the crown mechanism. And "a Götterdämmerung poem in a grand style"--I may frame this critique.

It was so great to hear from you on this. Thanks again.

Rick

[Siham Karami]

Probably I shouldn’t post again on this, but I’m surprised you have qualms about “sorrow” as a verb. I’ve used it that way, and it feels quite natural. It gives “sorrow” a more dynamic role, which I think it not only appropriate, but in many cases, necessary. A person also doesn’t need to be familiar with your work to appreciate it. All they need is an openness to form and structure as background music and let the chips fall where they may. By that I mean it doesn’t and sometimes even shouldn’t have some obvious meaning. Even oddball pop culture references (I’m thinking Huncke) with which I’m notoriously unfamiliar, suddenly within the context of a poem, jump out with new life. A poem is a world unto itself. If the sound of it rings true somehow, it’s a springboard into that world, which itself is a delight.

[Cally Conan-Davies]

I've never heard the word "nurdle" before!

This discovery is one of the seemingly endless sources of delight I find in reading these sonnets—in re-reading them, I should say. They truly repay re-reading. Joe said it. There's so much happening (in a good way!) that one is drawn back. It creates its own world. It has its own chaos and its own order.

I'd read on if this this went on, Rickster!

Cally

[Rick Mullin]

Siham,

Come back to this one as often as you'd like! ~,:^)

I also like "sorrow" as I use it here. It's just that I'm aware that many readers will find it Poety and "Rhyme-Driven ®". This wouldn't stop me from using it.

I really appreciate your openness to a poem like this one. I am also aware that many readers will find it Poety and "Rhyme-Driven ®", but this will not stop me! ~,:^0 I'm relying on a reader finding meaning, objective/subjective, by and within context, and I love the idea of a poem being a world onto itself with the door left open. Thank you for you receptiveness.


Cally,


Thanks to you too for finding something here that draws you back for rereading, and for finding a world of navigable chaos.

Yes, "nurdles"! It's flat out the word that is used by the bastards that make the damn things--at towering factories called crackers (they are made from "cracked" ethylene). We are introduced to nurdles in "Wood Metal Plastic" or "Shop" class in middle school in the USA, where we melt them down and mold them around nails to make corn holders. Elsewhere they are turned into everything for sale at Target and flown by United Airlines. And they are poured into the ocean before they are turned into plastic bags and thrown in the river. Nurdles. Most of them are shipped to China.

Thanks to anyone who's taken the time to read a nine-poem poem. I hope people who hate it aren't holding back on saying so.

Rick