The Arsonist’s Itch

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Crave isn’t love, don’t mistake me
To want a whiff of sulfur
Is not a lust to paint with ashes

But the noise
But the blunt, chewing muzzles
The slack and sickly hue

A tower
A toy
A tune
A tome
A task
A talk

Take one, take all, take something, please

The gear
The green
The garter
The going
The giving
The game

Get one, get all, get something, please

Desire could have made you better, but it hasn’t.


Then all the ready, unbloomed match heads…
 
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CassandraW

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Jamie, this feels nicely creepy. The title is delicious, and I love the "unbloomed matchheads" in the last line (I immediately see them blooming into fire, and feel the arsonist's itch to make them do so). I also really like this line -- "To want a whiff of sulfur/Is not a lust to paint with ashes"

The blunt chewing muzzles -- I see flames eating away at a building, so that works nicely for me if that's where you were going -- but then I get to "slack and sickly hue" and I'm not sure I'm right. What I see in that line is a slack and sickly face (the arsonists) lit by the lurid glow of the fire, but I'm thinking perhaps you meant it to describe the fire and then it doesn't work quite so well for this reader -- slack and sickly light is the sort of thing (to me) that comes from a dying flashlight rather than from a crackling fire.

Tone-wise, I like the alliteration in the middle sections -- it sounds great when I read it aloud (as I often do poetry; just as well I live alone). But after a few reads, I'm not sure what you're going for meaning-wise there.

Despite my denseness on that front, I enjoyed the poem and do very much feel the arsonist and his explanation for his acts. His craving to set fires isn't a happy thing -- it isn't love or creativity (he does not paint in ashes). It's not lust, it's an itch.

Thank you for sharing it.
 

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Despite my denseness on that front, I enjoyed the poem and do very much feel the arsonist and his explanation for his acts. His craving to set fires isn't a happy thing -- it isn't love or creativity (he does not paint in ashes). It's not lust, it's an itch.

You're not dense. I'm just not a very good poet.

So, as mostly usual, I feel regret for having attempted it. Urg. Ha!
 

CassandraW

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You're not dense. I'm just not a very good poet.

So, as mostly usual, I feel regret for having attempted it. Urg. Ha!

gaah! no! No regret necessary at all! And you are a good poet! Your images are quite vivid and the rhythm of the piece is compelling -- as is the case with all of your pieces I've read! Please don't stop posting poetry.

(And I most certainly am occasionally dense. I totally embarrassed myself analyzing one of Kie's poems once -- missed the point entirely. I still cringe when I think of it.)

I'm one reader, a sometimes dense one, who didn't fully understand what you were doing with one section of your poem! Not everyone gets every stanza in my poems either, nor in William's, nor in Kie's or Trish's or anyone else's. Don't you dare regret posting it!
 

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Crave isn’t love, don’t mistake me
to want a whiff of sulphur
is not a lust to paint with ashes

but the noise
but the blunt, chewing muzzles
the slack and sickly hue

This is excellent. Arson and pyromania are not drives to create, but to destroy. The wording in these 2 stanzas really sets that tone and makes clear the intent behind the act.

A tower
A toy
A tune
A tome
A task
A talk

Take one, take all, take something, please

This confuses me a little. At first I read tower/toy to mean that the narrator sees this colossal piece of engineering (a pinnacle of creation) as a mere toy, a symbol of delight to be bent to his will through seeing it burn and be destroyed. Then the introduction of 'tune' interrupted that for me; the word itself is not consistent with the theme, nor does it hold any evocative property to lead me back to fire or the disposition of the narrator. Following that then with tome/task/talk further pushes me away from what I had initially assumed the point of this section... it appears the words are there purely for sonics -- sonics which although lovely, add no actual phonetic weight to the poem. If you had gone for something similar using the 's' sound and occasional hard 'c' you could have created a sonic allusion to flames. That, I would love to see introduced into this poem :)

The final line of the section causes a further rift from the poem's core subject. Who is being entreated to take all/take something? And take from what? The predefined selection of alliterated artefacts? If so, the why of it escapes me.

The gear
The green
The garter
The going
The giving
The game

Get one, get all, get something, please

As with the section previous, the first 2 items in this list 'gear/green' connote and impart some sense of purpose. They give me the impression of addiction -- gear = drugs; green = marijuana = calming. However, the rest to follow becomes likewise almost absurdly random, which leads me back to the same point made about the previous section.

desire could have made you better, but it hasn’t.

Then all the ready, unbloomed match heads…

I feel the first sentence here is overstatement. Desire is the problem, desire for destruction instead of to create >> but you've already said that in your opening line. This sentence needs a bit more meat to be more than a simple reformulation of the implied substance of the poem. Also, that last line summons an image which remains incomplete. un-bloomed match head, little flowers of violent and destructive acts yet to blossom; I'd like to see a field of these here; perhaps a field bordering the outskirts of suburbia. Christ that would be a powerful image to end on, but it would require a little bit of tweaking in the sections ahead of it.

Thanks for sharing this.

ETA:
having read through the conversation on this thread, I want to add that this is not a negative review that I wanted to post to someone who was a bad poet, or who should better not write poetry. This is an honest critique regarding my impressions and responses to what I read; that covers the things I feel positive about, and areas that I believe could use some additional work. I'm not saying the poem is rubbish (thus somehow implying the poet is too)--I'm giving my opinions and providing constructive feedback where I believe it would be useful. I do this because I believe the poet is able to take that criticism and make use of whatever they see useful in it. This is my stance on all critique I provide, regardless of who the originator is.
 
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ETA:
having read through the conversation on this thread, I want to add that this is not a negative review that I wanted to post to someone who was a bad poet, or who should better not write poetry. This is an honest critique regarding my impressions and responses to what I read; that covers the things I feel positive about, and areas that I believe could use some additional work. I'm not saying the poem is rubbish (thus somehow implying the poet is too)--I'm giving my opinions and providing constructive feedback where I believe it would be useful. I do this because I believe the poet is able to take that criticism and make use of whatever they see useful in it. This is my stance on all critique I provide, regardless of who the originator is.

Oh, please don't worry! I don't mind negative reviews. The thing I dislike the most in poetry in impenetrability and, sadly, I'm way too often impenetrable. It does make me think I shouldn't write poetry, but it doesn't hurt my feelings for people to point out where I didn't make my point. No worries! All is well. :)
 

kborsden

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I'm also often accused of being 'impenetrable' (that's an interesting concept), or being overly abstract. For me, abstraction is equal in many ways to simplicity. When you strip something down to its most basic components, it suddenly becomes more than those parts and each individual element can grow independently to be something quite different to where it began. I also appreciate that my reader is not an idiot and hope to treat them as an equal by providing enough complexity to entice the intellect, and offer enough of a platform to anchor to in order to avoid leaping too far (possibly appeal to the affect, maybe)--it's also important to me that I provide enough to speak directly and be understood. That said, if my work is understood in a way I didn't intend, I enjoy that, it becomes a point of extended experience and I never want to dictate what anyone should get from my work. There will always be points that I do want to make a deliberate statement, I choose to be less poetic in my language in such cases, or make use of more common connotations.

I understand you may feel that you fail if your poem goes misunderstood--that couldn't be further from the truth, unless you are dictating interpretation. Then I will say write pure exposition instead. But you don't want that; you wanted to write poetry, and you wanted to write a poem because you wanted to create and be expressive with language. Let your language express then. Look at what you've written as if it were a piece of expressive art. Take away the reality, any notion of reality and then dab it back in where it's needed.

I honestly feel this poem could work very well and that you approach your theme eloquently (to start), but you did lose me midway through for the reasons given. If those lists are more than just lists of artefacts, allow them to be that, anchor them, or taint them with some degree of connotation. Leverage the crux of your poem through conceit or phonics to express to me the importance of them. I'm not opposed to mundane interruptions, or things popping in out of the blue (Frost does it all the time)... and I don't need to know or explicitly be told why they're there, but I do appreciate a nod or a wink that I can capture and digest so that if I read it again, eventually I can understand or at least decide what I want to think about them.

Does that make sense?
 
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Sarita

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I really liked this. The alliterative sections work for me, as I mentally checked off what could happen in a fire and it felt very much like an arsonist going through a mental checklist, though not necessarily the one you'd expect.

Small question: I'm hung up on garter. Did you mean girder, as in a steel girder for a building or an actual garter?

Thanks so much for sharing this. A new character, perhaps?
 

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Small question: I'm hung up on garter. Did you mean girder, as in a steel girder for a building or an actual garter?
The checklists (including the garter) are supposed to be things the arsonist wishes to feel attachment to, wishes would scratch the itch. They are things that other people seem to attach to that the arsonist both resents and envies them (and their blunt, chewing muzzles) for.
 

William Haskins

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jamie, this is a compelling poem, at time chaotic and somewhat disjointed, but crafted in a way that those would-be weaknesses play well into the intensity of emotion on display.

i admire very much your turns of phrase in "whiff of sulfur" and (especially) "unbloomed match heads" which i find tremendously loaded with potential consequence.

it's wonderful to see a new poem from you and i hope to see more.