Negative Capability Press Poetry Blog

I love the line “warmed walls” and the kind of irony that cold fluorescent lights are doing the warming. Speaking of the fluorescents, I think you left out the “u” in yours. Anyway, I also love the way you moved from the ending of your last poem to the beginning of this one. It feels smooth, but urgent. I can almost see an aerial shot of Birmingham with the lights twinkling at night, then you zoom in on your family’s crisis.

I think this poem’s urgency is my favorite aspect of it. That final image of the “gurney / crashing through / the last set of doors” followed by “the wait” makes me want to hold my breath. Also, we’re left with the tension and sense of finality created by lines like “the last set of doors” and “his last waking / hours as himself.” This book is going to be amazing.

Terrific, terrifying ending. I like the suspense–the terrible “not knowing’ of what will happen next.
Sue

I wonder if “this” which calls forth “light” and “warmed” walls is part of the “silent stifled dread” or if “this” could be replaced with the image of darkness rather than light.
Sue

In shaping the novel poem, in the progressive movement of the novel poem, it seems to me that the writer may have as great a challenge as the novelist per se in establishing mood and in evoking emotion — the weight of joy, grief, despair, desire. I think the shift from one emotion to another may be heightened — and thereby more difficult to convey. This is not a comment on Rob’s poem / poems but on the art and craft of the verse novel — how one mediates between emotions

I really like these two “airport” poems so to speak. They’re really powerful!

This is another consideration in realtion to the verse novel — not related to Rob’s fine poems. What about voices — for example, I’m thinking of what the doctor says — if he should have a voice in his own right as he gives news / a prognosis — of if what he says should be conveyed by some other character?

Sue

I’ve been thinking a lot about that and am frankly getting to that part…

One of the problems I’m having with the doctor is that I have no memory of him. I’ll just have to make all of that up…

Meagan, I had actually intended to put an introductory comment on the blog about how I was going to go directly from the airport poem into the poem about my parents getting the lake house when I was 8 poem, and then to the Drew poem, and then to this poem, and then to another lake poem. Although I’ve been thinking through a meditative poem that will follow this one nicely.

i like the second half of of this stanza “buoyed by…reckless hope” as to your question above, i know you don’t need my opinion, but if i may, i wonder if you need “this” or “was” at all…rather, just:
artificial defiance
of impending
darkness
reflected
in the mood
of those gathered there

or maybe you remember something drew said–did he try to deflect the nervous energy by saying something protective or upbeat? you could insert that in the middle of the 3rd stanza…or perhaps the doctor spoke and you just could not “hear” him through the air of the mood you speak of…

I like “silent stifled dread,” “stubborn faith and reckless hope.” That’s an intimate picture of a close circle of family/friends gathered in a hospital waiting room.

Drew’s “terror that lurked” is heart-wrenching. The first part of this stanza, though, leads me to think it lurked beneath a “jovial air” instead of “guarded smiles.”