[Erik Olson]

Paula,

I have been reading and enjoying this for some time. Thank you for sharing it. I made some notes and suggestions.

The form, with its repetition and transmutation of lines, contributes to enforces the impression of the message, the cycle of one headline replacing another in the mind. One of the hardest tricks about a form like this is to make every line seem naturally placed in the context of what preceded it. I think you did this well enough everywhere, except possibly the third line of the second stanza. After—'What’s that falling off the mind’s horizon?'—I expected some type of response, but the question was left hanging. It might be worthwhile to try modifying that line so as to extend the previous statement. To illustrate:

The slaughter of Gazans has been buried
in rumors of Haitians eating kittens,
they have fallen off the mind’s horizon.

I read the rhythm of line 3, stanza 3, like so: ‘the heart rocks, | but gently | ...’ I think it would be better not to have a double stress where the sense is gently. So maybe:

the heart rocks, though gently, over the deep.

Lastly, if you could make the pentameter lines conform to the tetrameter meter, without sacrificing meaning, I think tightening the metrical screws might gain concision and sharpness. To show what kinds of things you might do to that end:

The slaughter of Gazans has been buried
in rumors of Haitians eating kittens.
They have fallen off the mind’s horizon,
as always, memory overwritten.

Someone said Haitians are eating kittens.
Bombs fall where Lebanese babies sleep.
As always, sadness overwritten,
the mind is rocked, gently, over the deep.

Five Hundred Dead in Lebanon.
Yet the day of wailing falls off to calm;
the heart rocks, though gently, over the deep.
If one small kitten fills up the palm,

a day of wailing falls off to calm.
When morning dawns, the tears are gone.
Just one small kitten fills up the palm;
we cannot hold much more for long.

You get the gist. I hope this helps.

Best

[Paula Fernandez]

Max--Ok. I take your meaning better now about the reason that an event pushes out another event being important. I've conflated two things in a way that rightly gave you pause. In some cases it's just recency bias but in others the second event seems to respond to and then surpass the first in its heinousness. Sigh. Maybe I'll rewrite for content as well as style--always more difficult.

Erik--Those are very thoughtful edits. Greatly appreciate your offering them and your deep engagement with my work. I'm honored.

Given this poem has gotten a fair bit of positive reaction but also needs meaningful rework, I'm going to keep with it. Thanks everyone and I'll see if I can get to a rewrite sooner than later--unfortunately, other work awaits my attention at the moment.

[Mary Boren]

Paula, this is an ambitious topic to tackle in a challenging form, and I'd say that with the few minor edits so far you have almost wrestled it to the ground. Since the technical parameters are ambiguous at best, what interests me about the pantoum is the means it provides to forge a connection between seemingly unrelated concepts by slightly refocusing the lens with each repetend as you have done here. Sad but true that the mind's eye is incapable of holding the whole picture at once and the suffering far more than the human heart can contain when the world is too much with us, which seems like all the time lately.

I realize you're not going for an established metrical pattern, but to my ear the iambic/anapestic mix flows fairly well except for three lines where the stress falls out of balance. S1/L3 feels cheated of a beat, but I'm guessing you give 'piled' two syllables. Those darn regional pronunciations. I agree with Susan that 'fully' crowds the penultimate line, and I wonder if you might consider moving 'very' over three spaces in the final one. ("I cannot hold much for very long.") Would that change the meaning too much?

Max makes a valid point, and I too was initially put off by a gut reaction to your opening lines. Your explanation makes sense, but the author's luxury of a chance to elaborate on intent has its limits outside a workshop environment.

[Jim Moonan]

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I haven't read all the comments closely so forgive me if I'm repeating something that has been covered.

I, too, think the opening stanza presents a problem. It comes on gangbusters, touching the third rail and barely escaping through the holocaust. I think, too, that there is a bit of ambiguity about who "their dead" is referring to — those in Gaza or those that perished in the holocaust? At least to me. I think it's those who perished in the holocaust(?)

But still, I like the opening stanza for its raw emotion and the bombastic way it starts off what is a litany of atrocities.

The whole of the poem feels a bit all over the place but I like the helter skelter way it conveys the tumult of our times.

I'd like to hear the poem whisper, "same as it ever was" but maybe that's just me self-medicating : )

Since you first started this thread the tragedies keep coming. It's the poem that never ends. (i.e./e.g. what's now unfolding in Lebanon, the man-made natural disaster that is climate change that keeps coming on, wave after wave, storm after intensifying storm, drought and heat and flood — God is not good! I don't mean that to condemn. I'm just letting off steam. American democracy has also been slip-sliding away. Kind of like a slow crumbling of what we thought was a strong foundation. All three branches of the government are burning, fueled by the incendiary MAGA fires being lit every day.

The poem has this sense of despair, maybe even resignation. I feel like a young Bob Dylan would have taken the tumult of our times head-on and given it something to provoke us to re-imagine how we live.
But Maybe you don't want to go there. But I wish you would.

I like the poem very much. Poetry should not be afraid to wade into the ugliness.

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