Sunday Night Dinner
The driveway is empty and cold
except for the spot covered by
the lone newspaper on the block.
A quick flip through this week's headlines
find that we are made fools of Global Warming's
effect on Icebergs. The headlines
of budget crisis' cruse and divide our
table like last week's collection call
about our Macy's dining room furniture bill.
These stories, give way to
tender moments we share as our
tiny child holds his head steady like
the Sears Tower -wait- that is just a
memory, renamed for some corporation shelling
out promises for America.
TV, radios, even Windex attempt
to clean our latest familiar transgressions of
trusting one another. These situations
force us to evaluate our communication
as archaic and unreliable like the gold standard
debate in last week's New York Times.
Glad to see this one again. You've really made some great improvements with the draft's overall logic and its specificity. The two book ending stanzas are pretty fantastic and really hold together the draft's tonal register with not only just great lines, but also by deploying these long, slow words- "familiar transgressions," "evaluate our communication."
ReplyDeleteIt's a dark piece for sure, and, though its a fleeting moment, I still see a glimpse of light in that middle stanza. I wonder if there is any opportunity to increase the weight of that fleeting "tender moment.." What do you think?
Wow, great revisions on this; I really like the direction you have taken with this draft. I do agree with Brian about the "tender moments" though. What would happen if you tried a Ginsberg-ian list with 3 or 4 specific (maybe even strange) moments/memories that this couple holds sacred? It might be most beneficial to generate a large volume of possibilities for this and grind it back down. For me, flipping through our anthologies (or just any random books really) and performing a version of our "found poem" calisthenic works best. Whether you add this in or not however, I do think that you have brought this draft a long way from where it started.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you might expand this draft by creating a story for what has happened to the car that should, supposedly, be in the driveway with the "lone newspaper." It could involve a repo man, then you could subtly tie it in to the references to the national budget crisis in the second stanza. You could use a similar expansion strategy with some of the material in the final stanza by supplying more detail concerning those "familiar transgressions" and the inadequate communication, and showing, with those details, an example. Perhaps it could involve the missing car--gone because one person forgot to tell the other about an important phone call, or because each person thought the other would be taking care of an important budget-related task.
ReplyDeleteI'm still not sure why global warming is mentioned in this draft, but perhaps you could tie it in to the national budget crisis, then back to the situation caused by inadequate communication between the man and wife. I think it would work best, though, to focus on the other elements and insert only brief references to the newspaper headlines, letting them comment on the closer-to-home situation.
I'm also interested to know why the driveway is empty except for the lone newspaper. It might be interesting to note on what the headlines were on the newspaper and then, perhaps, tie it to the rest of the draft. I like how you have taken such charged subjects of global warming and the budget crisis and compared it to a seemingly mundane image of the Macy's dining room furniture bill. The ending, though, may need a little tweaking as the idea of communication seems a little abstract and baggy. Perhaps a way to expand this image of the family's communication and the people debating over the gold standard might be to blur the lines between the two subjects. I find it particularly interesting that you juggle between the image of the family and compare their situation to newspaper articles and headlines, yet I agree with Jonette that such uses of the subjects in the newspaper could perhaps act more as commentary in which the family could be given more focus, perhaps try to individualize each family member so we have more insight into why they don't communicate well.
ReplyDeleteI really like the sense of loss and emptiness that has developed through the revisions. Perhaps, you could try showing how the news/technology has isolated the family and keeps them from communicating. If the family is closer than they appear in the draft, you could use the headlines to contrast their closeness. I think more description about each family member is a good suggestion. I felt as though they were hidden behind all the other imagery. Bring them to the forefront either through the use of the headlines or in contrast. I'd like to see where this goes.
ReplyDelete