[Rick Mullin]

Hi WT,

"drown" is not a problem. "in" is a problem.

Which you still allow to drown you.


RM

[John Riley]

First, I read "drown you in" as "drown" being a force the city has, similar to how the city "pulls you in." Drowning as an active force, almost a temptation the way alcohol is a temptation. The way Dionysus' revenge metaphorically drowned the women of Thebes. Maybe I see that because I know quite a bit about the drowning properties of drink and drinking cities. Places that are so associated with drinking and drugging it become an indivisible part of the experience--a triad. That's my take, FWIW.

The narrator is afraid he will become like Pentheus, down to being dressed as a woman and losing his senses. When the poem turns to the present and where I assume is New York--I don't know Josh--and makes statements about the insanity of the U.S. that I certainly agree with I'm not sure the metaphor--comparison--holds up as well as it should. Maybe I'm too deep in the corrosive insanity of what is going on to see it as a drunken orgy. It's more Hitchcock than Euripides. The bizarre Christians who know nothing about Christianity, etc. may seem wild in a media way when they are essentially steely-eyed sociopaths. I'm not sure the comparison to Thebes connects. As for the discussion of free will, maybe we need more if you want to keep it.

As usual, I haven't added to the helpful line and word critiques as much as the others. They do a great job. All I can do is read and let my mind go blab blab blab and hope something helpful arises. I don't know if this is helpful. Overall, all of your poems have a specific genius, and some, as with all of us, work better than others. Perhaps this needs less compression. You have a city and a strong myth and then centuries of the wild destructive other-worldly magic of wine to use. Maybe it's a good one to go on longer--Blake, Whitman, Milton . . . .

Hope this helps

[Nick McRae]

The poem's title drew me in, but I'm not picking up too much meeting a poet in New York at night. The title is atmospheric, and to me hints at an atmospheric poem, but much of the language you used seemed to obscure, not elucidate the atmosphere.

It's an interesting poem, just maybe at odds with the title.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

The poem's title drew me in, but I'm not picking up too much meeting a poet in New York at night. The title is atmospheric, and to me hints at an atmospheric poem, but much of the language you used seemed to obscure, not elucidate the atmosphere.

It's an interesting poem, just maybe at odds with the title.

Thinking a little more on this, what about Meeting a poet in New York.

Adding 'at night' seems to put special emphasis on nighttime, which the reader might be expecting in the poem, but this poem strikes me as a meeting of two minds, with a few flashes of night. Why not let the nighttime aspect be implied, and let the poem be about you and the other poet?

[R. Nemo Hill]

As usual, Cameron, I read this poem as a part of your work as a whole, a work which seems always to be initiating me into your world where things are not 'seen' in the usual way, where they are un-seen, or seen with senses other than the eyes. Here the emphasis is given to listening, for the poet is talking as you two are walking through the city, a city that you (and thus we) hear more than see. I can, as I read, hear (and feel) the blasts of desperate merriment spilling out through the doors of bars passed by, a background accompaniment to the voices of poetic colloquy. I remember long walks of my own through the city, solitary walks, where the revelry of strangers seemed so different from that of my own neighborhood with its own close circle of inebriates, the strange distance I felt as if my eyes were closing to it, transforming it to blasts and shadows. I love the fact that though you admire the poet, yet you are obsessively intent on holding onto your own hard-won modes of perception; that you stay cognizant of the fact that one can be "blind with seeing"; that you resist "starting to see like you". In a way we are all blinded to any world other than our own and, more poignantly than most, a poet sends his words out like seeing-eye-guides to navigate the larger world and to bring messages from his or her own. Here to be blind or to be drowned are overlapping states, each with its own "washed-up clarity" whose lonely tenuousness is what creates the tension of affection shared by all wanderers who feel their way through a world too large not to include them as night and day trade places ad infinitum. I too know of Josh, more distantly, I think he is a fine poet, but can imagine myself resisting him as well (though we have never shared moments as intimate as these).

The drunkenness that plays out both through biography and myth here, well it introduces a complex state for me—as I used to embrace alcoholism with all my strength of soul, but have fallen far away from drinking. Ditto the somewhat daunting specter of this city, an apparition I was once willingly, even wantonly, possessed by, but one that I now avoid. I have always held it a matter of principal not to summarily reject anything that was once of passionate value to me, and thus, in a way (my own way) "to hold / these ghosts atomed inside" me "from decay".

The poem walks a fine line, balanced between blindnesses.
Perhaps it is its ability to un-see that makes its affectionate tribute so clear-eyed.
My own eye thanks your eye for it.

Nemo

[W T Clark]

Thank you Rick, Carl, Nemo, John, and Nick.

Nick: I am not sure we are in accord that the poem isn't atmospheric. You want a more studiedly nocturnal disposition? (We cannot all be Trakl.) Night is a sensation for me, a thickness: and I must think whether your words indicate that I should bring that sensation into the poem more fully. As John says: it may need more space: another stanza.
Rick: I talked with several other people. I think the main problem with the phrase is not quite "in" per sé: but rather the muddled grammatical relation of subject and object: who is passive, who is behind the action: addressee or city. I think a better phrase is lurking behind this one: and I will wait to let it come out.

John and Nemo: these are wonderful critiques. Thank you so very much! John: i did not mean the Bacchae to be a comment on wider American politics: the "presidents" were a passing reference pulled into the poem's forcefield: and briefly held, I'm not quite pleased with them: I think again there is something better. I may have posted this too early. — Or maybe not. It needs to grow a little: and that will take time.
Nemo: you are breathtakingly eloquent. Yes to all you say: I RELATE. The poem needs work: but for now while I let it grow, I will leave it like this.
Carl: I meant your attempted mapping of my "You are the mask" realm.

Thank you again, all!

[David Callin]

[Sorry, wrong poem! Over to the Nocturama.]

[Sarah-Jane Crowson]

From my perspective, the basic premise is good. The idea of meeting a poet in NY at night, and reflecting on the poet’s identity and how it works with both the narrator’s burgeoning sense of self-conception and their growing understanding of how place and love-of-place might affect poetry-as-self is great.

The metaphor also works.

You’ve also got some good lines. But I think you have weak lines, too. I won’t do a line by line as that would be deeply annoying but an example would be S3 line 4, which is a strong linebreak but perhaps not working in the specific context. Do you need the ‘Josh, who’d’ and the specificity of the dialogue or would it be stronger asking who would go sane, throwing us (readers) into that conundrum of city?

I think S4 is also a little over-written. Sometimes less is more.

For me, for this, I’d cull, be brutal. It starts well, I think, but then there’s a sense (from my perspective) of you padding out the lines, walking around them to fit a pattern that no longer serves the poem. I love ‘blast shadows’ and ‘absence’s red taste’ and the hint of gothic melodrama, but at the end of the poem I feel the form weakens this, not adds to it.

There are some gorgeous descriptive spaces, like ‘needle-veined/Bacchae’, which I adore. Also I like the idea of sobriety as a kind of apocalypse, which is interesting and, when framed in terms of the greek myth, those skeins which link past to present, done well. It makes me think of similar paradigms, also makes me feel, as a reader, that nice 'plus ça change' which works nicely with the semi-fatality you seem to express in the poem. But this, though it works, still isn't philosophically entirely cohesive to me.

The premise is clear, the metaphor is clear (ish) but I wonder, what is your overarching intention/concept - the core thing you wish to communicate with this?

I hope that this is helpful

Sarah-Jane

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Hi Cameron, there has much heavy lifting by many here. There is little further I can add. I generally concur with nits given but as usual with your work you have some striking images.