[Tony Barnstone]

Florida Man

1. The Rocket's Red Glare, the Bombs Bursting in Air

“The star gets ripped apart by strong tidal forces, forming a disk
of stellar debris on which the black hole is feeding.”
--The European Space Agency

It rattled walls and brain like midnight thunder:
some assholes were deploying fireworks,
making me surface from the darkness under
understanding where the dreaming works.
I walked out on the lawn to give them hell,
“People are asleep!” I’d say, “You jerks.”
But then it all drained out of me. Oh, well.
Let them shoot off their goddamn fireworks.
Let their bonfire piled with palm fronds reach
towards comets raining from the splintered night.
Let them give whoops of laughter down the beach
with each bomb burst that smashes dark with light
like the last flicker when black holes eat stars
and crow about roughhouse sex, skunk pot, quick cars.


2. A Whole Florida of Despair
“Brain imaging studies in humans show activation of dopamine and opioid
neurotransmitters during alcohol and other substance use.”
--The Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health

Midnight in Florida was trouble’s dawn.
That’s when the door-boards shook and called.
There was weeping, screeching from the lawn
and something tore the lattice, rattled walls.
I walked out with a flashlight: dark palm trees
tossing dreadlocks, fat iguanas sneaking
off, the ocean’s aria, black breeze,
and found her by the pump house, shoeless, shrieking,
body shaking like a dying gator.
Her eyes were holes, her brain exploding powder.
Someone yelled, “I’ve called the cops!” Then, later,
the boyfriend shouting, “I won’t leave without her!”
and the young policeman fiddling with his gun,
smiling, “Some young folk having too much fun.”
-------------------------

1) As with "The Singularity," I had the sense that the poem might appeal more as a double sonnet, though who knows! In any case, the second sonnet has been added and the whole thing is now under the "Florida Man" title.
2) Lowercased Hell and Skunk
3) Folks didn't like the troches in last line, so changed "skunk pot, stripped raw, dazed roughhouse sex, quick cars" to "and crow about roughhouse sex, skunk pot, quick cars." It has an anapest with "about" but I think "crow of" is clumsier and "brag of" is plainer.

[Carl Copeland]

A poem doesn’t have to have some grand meaning, of course, but your title and apocalyptic last lines encourage one. I see the N’s tolerance at the volta revealing itself, over the sestet, as an ironic cry of despair at the fatal degradation of American youth, detonating in that metrically jarring final line. As a college professor, you surely know whereof you speak, though I suspect each young generation has always looked depraved to its predecessors.

Nitwise, I prefer to give “fire” one syllable as in “bonfire,” rather than two, as you do in “fireworks,” but that never seems to bother anybody but me. “Hell” and “skunk” should both be lowercased, shouldn’t they?

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Tony,

You're recounting a banal occurrence here, attempting to elevate it to poetry. That's a great approach! Homer did it. But I don't think it's working. The second line is what I'd call iambic talk. I actually dreaded reading further. And lines three and four are just a bit much.

In all I'm not buying where the experience takes you. The black hole comparison, for example. And the sex at the end registers as gratuitous. It's one of those poems that I read sometimes that make me feel the person that wrote it, as a poet, has taken on an assignment from a daily experience. I don't feel the narrators engagement, otherwise I wouldn't say this.

I'm also concerned the demotion from "assholes" to "jerks" may be rhyme-driven. ~,:^)

Rick

[W T Clark]

I think the 13th line is the line the poem wants to end on.

[Julie Steiner]

Ah, yes, Airbnb in residential neighborhoods...complaints about which are frequent topics of San Diego Nextdoor postings.

My main nit with the sonnet is that although it clearly has a turn, the poem doesn't really end. It just sort of stops. I'm left unconvinced that the curmudgeonly narrator has a change of heart from an Apollo-like sense of law and order to a more Dionysian anything-goes vibe. Perhaps there could be a confession of the "I once sowed wild oats as well" variety. (The list in L14 might be that, but if so I feel I need a little more permission to connect those dots.)

Perhaps you could repurpose one of the existing lines to build a stronger sense of trajectory. I nominate this awkward, tell-y line for cutting:
     “People are asleep!” I’d say, “You jerks.”
Why can't the narrator just say he was about to give them hell?

To answer my own question, I suspect it is because you are rhyming "fireworks" with both "works" and "fireworks," and feel a little desperate to mix things up rhyme-wise with "jerks." Personally, I'd much rather see a nonce rhyme form (as in "Ozymandias") than rhyming for rhyming's sake.

Maybe one of the "fireworks" could actually be a type of firework that sets up another rhyme possibility.

I'm having trouble picturing the logistics of the lawn and the beach. Why does the lawn need to come into it? Does the narrator have to cross his own lawn, and maybe the neighbors', in order to ring the bell, which might not be answered anyway if everyone's out on the beach? I guess the narrator's house is not on the beach, but the neighbor's is...in which case there's probably a street separating the two houses? In that case, maybe the road should be mentioned instead of the lawn.

The position of the apostrophe in "The Rocket's Red Glare" suggests that there was only one rocket, which doesn't seem to be the case. But I think you can do better with the title than quoting the national anthem, anyway.

Interested in where you might take this.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

My main nit with the sonnet is that although it clearly has a turn, the poem doesn't really end. It just sort of stops. I'm left unconvinced that the curmudgeonly narrator has a change of heart from an Apollo-like sense of law and order to a more Dionysian anything-goes vibe. Perhaps there could be a confession of the "I once sowed wild oats as well" variety.

The affable tolerance is ultimately unconvincing, but that’s the movement of the poem: from Apollo to Dionysus to Jehovah. Tolerance fails when bombs are bursting in air, black holes are eating stars, and kids are having rough, stoned sex on the beach. I’m not sure this is what Tony means, but it’s what I get.

[Tony Barnstone]

Thanks, folks! I'm enjoying reading the responses. I'm going to wait a bit and see if more come in and then muse on possible revisions and reply to these smart notes. Best, Tony

[Susan McLean]

Tony, it's going fine for me until the last line. I give "fire" one syllable, but I am aware that some people give it two, so I roll with it. But the meter of the last line is so jumbled and off-putting that I can't tell whether the speaker is accepting the listed items or scorning them. I end up not with a sense of life's ambiguity, but a "Huh?" It's not a great note to end on.

Susan

[Tony Barnstone]

So, this one really rattled people's cages!

Rick hates the use of form to depict beach partying, which I understand--it's a formal poem written with a free verse esthetic, which is not to everyone's taste. Here, I think, it's just we have very different esthetics.

Most everyone else has an issue with the elder narrator critiquing the young, loud partiers on the beach. I am going with the idea that leaning into the narrative by expanding it into a double sonnet--two nights of craziness in Florida--might allow the readers to accept the grumpy narrator more. I could be wrong.

In any case, expanding the sonnet into a double sonnet seemed to help the readers of "The Singularity," so maybe it will help here?

I've made some small changes in capitalization and meter in the last line per issues people had.

I do appreciate the comments!

Tony

[Rick Mullin]

...what? .........