Another interesting poem with a surprising point of view. I like the poem and admire your judicious word choice for a form with such restrictions.
I found your explanation of the form you created for this poem fairly confusing and did not follow all of its technicality. In any case, I firmly believe that for my appreciation of your poem’s form, it was unnecessary, to explain it, for it is the poet’s right to write in any form he desires, original or not.
But the inherent imbalance in the form – beginning with four quatrains and ending in two which do not follow the initial ones, is what bothers me the most.
The fourth and fifth stanzas impart much more concrete information to the poem, and the change of pace by enlarging the line lengths is welcome.
The closing quatrains are the most original part of the poem, with their pseudo-e.e.cummings aspects. However, your use of parentheses is not coherent, because the information they impart is essential to the poem and you do not impart this information in the same way each time.
Conscious bitch! How can you/lie awake while they/ rip apart/my life?
This is one solid idea, which can be read differently without the parentheses. Except the question mark after “my life?” precludes reading the stanza without the parenthetical inclusions: Conscious bitch/lie awake/rip apart/my life.
The final stanza works less well.
Forced to die, I’m being/mutilated.
“why/can’t you see?/I am alive!”
The cutting of mutilate(d) and a(live) are cute imitations of cummings style, but I have not yet found what they add to your poem, if not a visual aspect that I do not know how to appreciate. As in cummings, the parenthetical asides can often be read together, but here we have only “I’m being D)? why live!”
My proposition for a clearer stanza here would be:
Forced to die, (I’m being)
Mutilated. (Why?)
can’t you see
I am (alive)…
As to the line lengths of these last two stanzas, I had hoped to find an intelligent “catch” so that they would somehow fall into your announced format of “3-3-3-3 for the outer quatrains.” I hoped at first that the parenthetical inserts added enough syllables to complete the lacking two stanzas for the poem’s balance. This would have been an elegant and original solution to the poem’s balance, if these two stanzas had a combination of 48 syllables – there are only 34.
And by the by, the line “my life” needs a third syllable, and the poem’s final line is an incomprehensible “I am a” — only completed with the parenthetical “(live)” which adds a fourth syllable.
Other than the obvious imbalance in the last two stanzas and your use of the parentheses which could be improved, I am pleased to have discovered this poem.
Keep up the creative work,
alfred
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