I’m not familiar with wasp fig imagery, but I enjoyed reading this. It’s one I would love to hear dissected on a poetry podcast- I think. Maybe I’m still outside, but there is so much mystery to be enjoyed in your phrasing, in your turning images that keep rerevealing different light. Anyway, I enjoyed it, found joy in reading it. Will save to reread again. Thanks.
The fig/wasp image earns its keep; it does real structural work. this is great: being inside the poem while trying to imagine someone outside it. Five hours a day for a week suggests you were trying to solve exactly that. Whether it lands... I think it does, particularly in the third movement, where the compression gets tightest.
And there are people who say writing is rewriting. I do like the idea of making a thing legible, but I think the poet's job in revision is to make things less "poemy." Sometimes I wonder how often "the first thought" is really our own first thought, rather than a thought, image, word that's been ihnerited/recieved, or an internal calibration (this word is poetic, this word isn't). Distance usually helps me here. Incidentially, I wrote a fig/wasp poem last week. Tis the season!
Always the question, "Who is a poem for?" Is the concern that a reader "get it," or that you, the poet, get it right for yourself. Maybe it depends on the poem.
Beautiful poem, and gorgeous craftwork.
I’m not familiar with wasp fig imagery, but I enjoyed reading this. It’s one I would love to hear dissected on a poetry podcast- I think. Maybe I’m still outside, but there is so much mystery to be enjoyed in your phrasing, in your turning images that keep rerevealing different light. Anyway, I enjoyed it, found joy in reading it. Will save to reread again. Thanks.
The fig/wasp image earns its keep; it does real structural work. this is great: being inside the poem while trying to imagine someone outside it. Five hours a day for a week suggests you were trying to solve exactly that. Whether it lands... I think it does, particularly in the third movement, where the compression gets tightest.
And there are people who say writing is rewriting. I do like the idea of making a thing legible, but I think the poet's job in revision is to make things less "poemy." Sometimes I wonder how often "the first thought" is really our own first thought, rather than a thought, image, word that's been ihnerited/recieved, or an internal calibration (this word is poetic, this word isn't). Distance usually helps me here. Incidentially, I wrote a fig/wasp poem last week. Tis the season!
Always the question, "Who is a poem for?" Is the concern that a reader "get it," or that you, the poet, get it right for yourself. Maybe it depends on the poem.