that awkward moment when your soul comes back through...

[lawrencemullen]

title: that awkward moment when your soul comes back through your husband's deceased new wife's corpse, but y'all fall in love
found poem taking language from Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia"

the lady ligeia
apparition
the statue
the demeanor of the figure
of unutterable fancies
for a crowd

connected
with the air,
the breathing
of lady rowena
trevanion of tremaine
her cheek roses as in her noon of life
the fair cheeks

of my love --
began the lady of tremaine

of the lady --
began the lady ligeia

fair-haired and blue-eyed
inexpressibly bound to
hair blacker than the wings of the raven
from her touch
to the atmosphere of the chamber
mouths and thoughts
shrieked madness.

[maranda]

Title is cheesy. Also, we don't need the word deceased if we have the word corpse.  



Accessibility is a major concern here. If you are not familiar with this Poe story, this poem is hard to access, and how much out of poem reading will the reader need to do to gain access? I suppose if you were writing an entire collection of Poe Poems in various forms then your intended audience probably wouldn't have to do much reading!

Question: Am I to take away from this that Ligeia comes back in Rowena's body and they are now coexisting in that body and are in love? LMAO. Is this an episode of Long Island Medium? Anyway, if that is what is going on here the dialogue could be stronger as you could graze right over that and not catch it, clarity, specific, give the reveal. If that's what's going on if not then I don't know what the hell IS going on. 

Also, tossing in chamber, shrieked, madness, raven, certainly makes people think of Poe but I found it a little lackluster. For me what elevated Poe's language into something poetic is the surprising word choices combined with the intent to make them seem beautiful and intriguing. It's been a really long time since I've read this but I'm certain he described Ligeia by saying something like emaciated with strangeness ( that's likely not exactly right) but this feels the same as him making a rotten crumbling city seem enticing. You don't forget this kind of description, it stays with you.  His descriptions have a lingering quality where strange/gruesome/alternative are recognized as desirable. 

 

[chello]

the title is bit much, and a little mocking of 'black-speak' so to speak i'm not usually one to comment on titles because i struggle a with titles but this one for me tells more then the poem. i do get the story that the title tells in the poem itself. the poem with out the title though has some beautiful moments that get a start but then dissipate before they give me enough to hold onto.

[maranda]

Jan 23, 2018 5:00:10 GMT chello said:

the title is bit much, and a little mocking of 'black-speak' so to speak i'm not usually one to comment on titles because i struggle a with titles but this one for me tells more then the poem. i do get the story that the title tells in the poem itself. the poem with out the title though has some beautiful moments that get a start but then dissipate before they give me enough to hold onto.

The title did a lot of lifting here. When I read the title I pictured and old southern white woman about to feed me something and tell me a story about awkward love. 😂 it’s funny how different we can hear things. Either way, the point is the title needs work and can’t do all the lifting. I think the story needs to be clear in a poem that is already making an obscure reference.

[Brielle Kroner]

I love the title. It reminds me of that meme "explain a movie plot badly," because it's such an accurate depiction of what this story is. I haven't read it, but a quick summary read on Sparknotes, and, yeah, the title says exactly what happens.

I agree that "deceased" isn't needed in the title, and I do think that the poem itself doesn't say quite as much as the title. Since I know what's happening by the title, I feel like the rest of the poem should dive a little deeper into analysis, description, revelation, etc. Right now, some of the lines feel like a basic reiteration of the corpse coming to life.

I do love the lines...

the fair cheeks

of my love --
began the lady of tremaine

of the lady --
began the lady ligeia

The repetition is satisfying.

[chello]

Maranda yes and also my post should read i do not get the story that the title suggests.

[whoismisterjim]

Jan 23, 2018 14:41:50 GMT Brielle Kroner said:

I love the title. It reminds me of that meme "explain a movie plot badly," because it's such an accurate depiction of what this story is. I haven't read it, but a quick summary read on Sparknotes, and, yeah, the title says exactly what happens.

I agree that "deceased" isn't needed in the title, and I do think that the poem itself doesn't say quite as much as the title. Since I know what's happening by the title, I feel like the rest of the poem should dive a little deeper into analysis, description, revelation, etc. Right now, some of the lines feel like a basic reiteration of the corpse coming to life.

I do love the lines...

the fair cheeks

of my love --
began the lady of tremaine

of the lady --
began the lady ligeia

The repetition is satisfying.

What about these couplets:



of my love --

began the lady of tremaine



of the lady --

began the lady ligeia



Beyond the repetition of sounds, is the look working for everyone? How is the linebreaks informing action for the remainder of the poem?

[Brielle Kroner]

Jan 24, 2018 13:09:30 GMT whoismisterjim said:

Jan 23, 2018 14:41:50 GMT Brielle Kroner said:

I love the title. It reminds me of that meme "explain a movie plot badly," because it's such an accurate depiction of what this story is. I haven't read it, but a quick summary read on Sparknotes, and, yeah, the title says exactly what happens.

I agree that "deceased" isn't needed in the title, and I do think that the poem itself doesn't say quite as much as the title. Since I know what's happening by the title, I feel like the rest of the poem should dive a little deeper into analysis, description, revelation, etc. Right now, some of the lines feel like a basic reiteration of the corpse coming to life.

I do love the lines...

the fair cheeks

of my love --
began the lady of tremaine

of the lady --
began the lady ligeia

The repetition is satisfying.

What about these couplets:



of my love --

began the lady of tremaine



of the lady --

began the lady ligeia



Beyond the repetition of sounds, is the look working for everyone? How is the linebreaks informing action for the remainder of the poem?

It's definitely a major turn. Everything before these couplets is fairly light and pretty. "Her cheek roses as in her noon of life."

After the couplets, it's much darker, and I think the shift is effective. Then we get "hair blacker than the wings of the raven." In the couplets, I feel like there are logical jumps. Not like a gap in information, but I see Lawrence transitioning the poem the way the speaker's new wife transforms into their new love sort of nightmarishly in the Poe story.

[maranda]

of my love --

began the lady of tremaine



of the lady --

began the lady ligeia


This is the obvious turn and I think it's smart to separate the dialogue off so the reader doesn't just lose the moment slowing down and turning into something else. 

[chello]

i agree with Brielle and Maranda, this point is definitely the turn in the poem, i'm just not certain that i have enough information to still access the poem. as far as how it looks on the page, they sound nice but i feel like being the turn of the poem there's too much space perhaps if instead of two couplets it was one set of couplets or two singular lines

"of my love --began the lady of tremaine
of the lady --began the lady ligeia"

or

""of my love --began the lady of tremaine

of the lady --began the lady ligeia"

and also if the first part of each sentence is the characters speaking i would put them in italics.

[maranda]

For the record, after everything that’s been said, it certainly would be interesting to see a book of poetry responding to Poe’s stories. This establishes a project and who it’s intended for, also, isn’t Lawrence a Poe scholar? I feel A challenge coming on! 😂 you can ignore me I’m feeling antagonistic this morning I have to take my mom in for surgery today ( she is fine) and I spent the night dreaming about shitty health care and T****.

[whoismisterjim]

Jan 24, 2018 17:50:38 GMT chello said:

i agree with Brielle and Maranda, this point is definitely the turn in the poem, i'm just not certain that i have enough information to still access the poem. 

What additional information do you think you may need? 

[chello]

there is so many questions, there are four lady's listed in the poem with no explanation who they are or what their role in the poem is. how do they relate to the title and who is the lady the two other lady's speak of or are they speaking to one another. unless i read Poe's Ligeia i would have no idea of what is happening. i do like Maranda's challenge of a collection of poetry in response to Poe, but then, then i would come to the poem having that knowledge and would not need to seek it out.

[Brielle Kroner]

I think that this poem is a poem that is written for a collection, rather than written to stand alone. I'm not sure if this is Lawrence's intention, but say Lawrence is writing and trying to publish a book of poetry. They are a Poe scholar, and that would start to be a feature of them as a writer: Poe references. I know that a lot of my work is written with a larger collection in mind, so a lot of my poems need additional context. There's a difference between poems that are written to be sent off individually and poems that are written to be paired with other poems so that they can polemicize with each other.

The question is, if this is a poem that belongs in a collection, and the needed context is elsewhere in that hypothetical collection, is it okay that we have questions now?

[lawrencemullen]

Hey everyone!

Firstly, I definitely agree about the title & re-working it. It was "royal wedding," but I got some feedback that that title didn't do much for the poem, so I tried doing the exact opposite with some extremely long title that summarizes what's going on in the piece. (Also to clarify there are only two women in this poem).

I think in revisions, I'm going to go back through the original Poe story and look for more language about a wedding itself, to help clarify that, and to add more to each woman so they can sort of stand on their own.

In terms of context, I wasn't really sure about how much to provide or to not to. The poem is about something that doesn't actually occur in the text itself, so I wasn't sure. I'm still sort of unsure about how to incorporate more of the text.

Thanks for all the feedback!!