Agreed. It doesn’t have the umph in it. S6: Yeah, I wondered if that was going to raise some red flags! ;-) Thanks for the read and the suggestions. Cheers.
Poetry / Sylvia Plath's Dog (Analysis)
I nuzzle small, metered lines, gnaw slippered poetic feet
my head laid low to the Persian rug where skirt folds
end in hardwood, engrained with year after year of failure.
Her voice full with love and disappointment
she runs fingers along the back of my ears, soothing me
until I sleep from the unbearable weight of words.
At night we dream the same things: bones, dug up or buried
while she twists her bed sheets, cries for freedom
I desire no escape from my mistress, bound and tied to strings of rhyme.
On Sundays we picnic in the cemetery, between concrete rows
where she empties pain into champagne flutes
until so drunk with suffering, she cannot stand or want.
We always return home the same way we came
down the cobbled road, numbed by the fleshy mess of living
gasping back time, clutching at the cold womb of death.
If I could speak, I might’ve warned her:
you can’t crawl down rabbit holes like being John Malkovitch
ovens are for baking, hot buns and apple pie:
A lone sentence served in your prime.
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heidipatton reviewed Version 3 -
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Bravo…from the perspective of a 4-legged friend, a companion in life and in death. I was brought into this piece with a cunning pen. Walking as the dog right alongside you through the cemetery, feeling your pain the way an animal does when their master is hurting. A beautiful piece of work.
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TheDisturbedOne reviewed Version 3 -
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Overall I like this.
But, as always there is something that I found thats not so good.
the lines in this seem a bit to long, you might want to break them up, like this in the 1st pharagraph
“I nuzzle smal metered lines,
gnaw slippered poetic feet
my head laid low to the Persian rug
where skirt folds end in hardwood,
engrained with year after year of failure”
or something to that effect.
Just an idea, good job though :)
Butterat_Zool reviewed Version 3 -
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This is an interesting and creative topic you’ve chosen here. I’d really like to see this turn into a series about all the great artists so admired, yet weird enough to be kept on the fringes of society. Poe’s Dog, Joyce’s Dog, Coleridge’s Dog, etc. I think the use of her fist name in the title is unnecessary and says a little too much. Simply “Plath’s Dog” will suffice.
In stanza 3, I don’t think you should refer to yourself as “bound in rhyme” when the poem itself isn’t rhyming. As Plath’s dog, you should know good and well how to do that, even if it is dog-sloppy (for comedic effect). The rest of the poem is strong, but unmemorable. I’d like to see more emotion in here instead of just a list of details. Give me something to sting my mind and stay there forever.
Stanza 6 needs work. You can’t accuse a person who died in 1963 of imitating a movie that came out in 1999. That and, I find the word “warn” to be inappropriate, considering it was her intention to end her life. ”Plead” might be a better word.
Stanza 7 just re-says stanza 6, so you can cut that out as well.
Again, though, stanzas 1, 2, 4, and 5 are excellent. Just a pinch of salt and a few rewordings and the poem as a whole will be top notch.
Thanks for sharing!
Butterat Zool.
sciencefictioncomedy reviewed Version 3 -
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It is one of the best poems I have read on Urbis. The imagery is excellent. The only thing I didn’t like was the last sentence. It seemed to me that the tercet before the last line summed up the poem quite well.
Ctoyboy3 reviewed Version 3 -
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Second stanza- I would move “soothing me” to the bottom line. I was a little confused about John Malkovitch…. or if you take being out it might work.
I really found this piece of her moving, and quite accurate of what her life might have been like. And writing from her dogs perceptive was origional, unique an rather wonderful Well done.
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