(Week Three) Critical Commentary: Kelsey Fleming's Improv 4, Week 2

Kelsey's Improv':

What have you done, my lover, with your skin?
That monolithic excitement rushes over every tenderness,
the same I feel when I dangle my feet through the hole
in your car’s floor. I watch the oil splotches between bent knees,
as if watching a movie in fast-forward, I catch only their apparitions.
You constantly lost to the rusted gap: fast food burgers, button-down shirts,
even your favorite cd, slamming the steering wheel as you watched
it splinter into pieces in the road behind you.

My Critical Commentary:

Kelsey,

I think I really like the first line. I say ‘think’ because I’m not completely sold with the “my lover” bit—but, regardless, the first line is pretty solid: it caught me off guard, which caught my attention even more. That’s the kind of “first lines” you want to have at the beginning of a poem. (I still have serious problems with this. It takes me, sometimes, nearly 10 lines into the damned thing to reach the actual poem.)

You prefaced the improv’ with your infatuation with the word ‘monolithic’—but I’m not so sure I like it, at least not for this improv’. Maybe the issue is really the stacking of polysyllabics (in the same line). The other issue, which polysyllabic words tend to breed, is all the abstractions (again, still in the same line). Basically, the second line isn’t anything but an abstraction; so not only do I have a difficult time reading the line, I have trouble understanding what is going on and visualizing the scene.

What does excitement look like, for the narrator, in this particular context (or town, as Richard Hugo might ask)? I would probably find another word for ‘rushes’ though—it seems a little too much like “poetry,” as Davidson maintains. The same probably goes for ‘tenderness’ too; although, depending on the way you (re)shift/work the first half of the line, you may still be able to use it. It honestly will depend on whether or not you are paring the word to an antithetical image, giving the conventional uses of both some internal conflict, some friction with each other.

I know this is only an improv’, so there isn’t as much emphasis or pressure on content; however, I would suggest adding more background information, more on the characters, and what is actually unfolding in this scene (if you choose to work this into a draft).

Keep on keepin’ on!

-Sydney