Carr's Review of Israel's Poems 2/27

Israel,

“My Quest” revolves around a great topic for a poem – the search for meaning, the quest for love, happiness, peace, in a world that is seemingly unjust, violent, chaotic and mean. Excellent idea. And I like the questions you ask in the first section – “Do you feel an emotion so strongly/ That it is almost tangible?” Good. Now what your task is as a poet is to make all those intangibles tangible to us. How? By giving us concrete images. Go for the vivid here. Look to your own life for the true things around you. Look and think small. Find the real.
Similarly, in the seventh stanza when you talk about the “innocent child/ Corrupted/ Into a bloodless hound”, your image gets lost in the cliché. Innocent children? Maybe. But that seems like something you’d hear on the news. “Bloodless hound”? Where? Are children really that corrupted?
So instead of relying on our newsreel imagination, SHOW us the little kid you see. Then let us make our own judgments about her. See what I mean?
OK. This is a good draft. Now take it down to the real level of the poet – the image and the true emotion that it evokes.

I like the idea in the last line of “Life” that the answer lies in the dance. That’s interesting. I also like the idea that the Self here was blacked out for some of the ride – that it had been overly intoxicated with love and didn’t see. That’s good. Overall, though, I have the same issue with this poem as with the previous one: it’s not specific enough for me. I think you’ll find that readers can relate more to the real, little details of your life than the broad generalizations. So give us some real examples: why are you crying? What happened to your face? What scars do you have? What does death smell like to you? What faces do you see? What do you remember about your loves? Be specific.

All right. Think about it, Israel. I have the feeling that you know what you want to say, which is awesome. Now let’s refine the way you’re saying it. Be a poet!