sara's poems

Night: Starless

A somewhat limbless speaker is sleeping and stumpy on a starless night.

Once again, your writing and use of language is quite impressive. You've got rhymes and rhythm without a solid rhyme scheme, which in my view is great. Interjections ("Whoa! / Ho! / Go!"), rhyming even, totally energize the poem. Some sort of surreal imagery in some precious language ("Oh, give me arm! so I may be / creature fair as she/ who has more limbs than me."), it's great. Your choice of topic is so unexpected, and that scores like +2 bonus points out of 10. But again, you sort of lose me on the what of the poem. From what I can make out, this is a disfigured woman who is ultimately content to be disfigured (stumpy, even), but I'm not sure what that has to do with the starless night, or the artisan, or quoting the speaker, or ... suffice to say you've sort of lost me and I'm not entirely unhappy about being lost -- you make it seem that I would rather be lost than beaten over the head with something obvious.


Not afraid of sharks

The speaker is afraid of dolphins (but not sharks)? She (I assume she) discusses favorite sharks with Mohammed (of Islam? or just a Middle Eastern guy?), and her fear of dolphins. Along the way I am confused.


I do feel that this one tips the scales a little bit past poetic device into simply befuddling me -- I can grasp more of Night: Starless and that adds measurably to my appreciation of it. I like the conversational way this begins, and that's a good device for a poem that involves conversation. And the fear of dolphins is quaint and amusing. And -- is it the Islamic Mohammed? Would you care to expand on the speaker's fear of what others trust (and things that aren't ugly)? Not that I didn't enjoy this -- I do enjoy the way that you write -- simply that I think this is more a poem of ideas than language, really -- not as flowery, vivid as some others -- and without being able to grasp the ideas I lose some of it. I look forward to discussing this with you, but pity a reader without that opportunity.