# Unwoven



## Glass Pencil (Sep 24, 2012)

it is a time 
unwoven
a setting era
backlit by waning brilliance
a flaming pyre of its promise

an endless ire 
unspoken 
unsettling hungers 
the primal shadow conquers 
we are simple gestures of the act 

the sadness now
disjointed
like aging filigree 
scrolled atop a coffin
all knowledge sapped and wanting

the world an empty effigy
bereft of vital humors 
and we are pale explanations
for that which might have been


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## Cran (Sep 30, 2012)

I think *Isis* will make a better job of unraveling the unwoven mystery. 
I'm seeing some clever phrases, but not much imagery.


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## Isis (Oct 5, 2012)

Cran, how’d you know this was on my to-critique list? 

I liked individual phrases in this as well as the simple presentation (each line doing its own thing, no punctuation). I also am having a hard time unraveling the poem, so I’m just going to work out my thoughts about what’s happening here: 

What ever time “it is”, we are somewhere after the fall: after Rome has sunk into decline, after the atomic bombs have gone off, after some later nuclear war, after popular culture has become vulgar and the arts submerged, after Atlantis has sunk into the sea. This is a time of sunset rather than dawn, beautiful in the background but blacking out all that stands before it. I’m having a hard time with the endless ire – is this a feeling in the air, or does it belong to a particular group of people, or to the speakers, the “we”? The people who have gone hungry in the fall are following or part of or worshipping the “primal shadow”, whatever that means. They kill and are sad about it? Or maybe sadness is something that can be discarded like decoration on a coffin, which seems excessive in this bleak world. The world held so much possibility before the fall, but those things are no longer possible, and the group speaking the poem feels the keen loss of possibility.

I think that the first and last stanza of this poem give me the clearest picture; while I had to work for a while to get the image of a fallen world and a sunset in the first, it came to me clearly after a while. These pieces of the first stanza gave me a very clear picture, and so are very effective imagery: 





> unwoven
> a setting era
> backlit
> a flaming pyre



The last two lines are weighted down by abstractions; the imagery in this stanza helps balance them so I think it works ok. But here they are, bolded: these seemed to be the abstract ideas presented in this part of the poem. I’d be especially wary of the “NOUN of ABSTRACTION” construction in the last line; this kind of thing tends to make good nouns more vague rather than abstractions more specific.


> backlit by waning *brilliance*
> a flaming pyre *of its promise*


The next two stanzas feel too disconnected, too abstract for me. I have a lot of questions. Who is feeling the endless ire? Why is it “AN endless ire” rather than “OUR endless ire”? What is the primal shadow and who or what is it conquering? Are the speakers of the poem the primal shadow? How can people be “simple gestures” and why are the gestures simple if the act is never mentioned? Is the act conquering, killing, war, enacting ire, enacting the poem, or something else?

I think the coffin metaphor in the third stanza is potentially interesting; it sets up a contrast of before and after. Death before was celebrated with complex designs on coffins; death know is celebrated by … what? Maybe nothing. I think that this stanza is worse off for being very abstraction heavy.


> the sadness now
> 
> all knowledge sapped and wanting


If I knew what that sadness referred to I might be more interested in the coffin metaphor or understand it better; I assume it’s the sadness after the death of someone based on the context, but I don’t know; it could be a general existential sadness based on the last line of the stanza and the setting.

However, I really loved the last two lines:


> and we are pale explanations
> for that which might have been


There’s enough here to show the loss, the disappointment, the fall from grace. But the poem ends in an open ended way, making me wonder what might have been. In this case I don’t feel frustrated because I can’t understand what the poem is trying to tell me; I think here it’s purposefully open ended, prompting me to wonder intentionally. That’s why I like this and think it’s so effective.


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## Cran (Oct 5, 2012)

Isis said:


> Cran, how’d you know this was on my to-critique list?


Multiple Choice:
A. The Purple mantle has many powers.
B. I'm just too clever for words.
C. I never give away trade secrets.


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## Aramis (Oct 6, 2012)

Sorry but I think this poem is too clever by half. I believe David Bowie used to cut up prose then reorganise it for effect and to a certain extent this poem reminds me of that technique- nothing seems to follow on from the preceding line. It looks good- it's nice eye candy but it's trying too hard to impress.
Or than again it could be me not being clever enough!


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## Gumby (Oct 6, 2012)

I can really feel the first and last stanza, to me they are the anchors in this. The second stanza is more cerebral than image driven, which may cause a slight disconnect, but I felt it come back with the image of the faded coffin filigree. The last stanza nailed it back down for me. Well done.


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## shedpog329 (Oct 6, 2012)

it reminded me of that plato's cave story, like I'm immobilized by some chain of some sort, until of course the one breaks free and is blinded by the upper world, so much as so to want to hide back in the darkness.

even still, the beings still bound by the showings, its in between the shadows that shape this "ire" feeling of destiny from each prisoner, the inbetween showing of obscurities to obscurities, the ooohs and awws are all i can summon from one to the next.  the unwoven just throws me for a loop hole though, but thats whats so brilliant about it.


either way, sitting here reading that freakin first stanza

it had to have given me a good tan


*it is backlit by its promise
an endless unsettling act 
 like aging all knowledge 
and explanations for that
which have been


*ya, idno sue me and I'll blame Major Tom


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## Glass Pencil (Oct 9, 2012)

I really appreciate the in depth critiques presented here. I'm not much  for specific responses to criticism but maybe I can explain a little bit  about my intentions with this to aid discussion. 

First and  foremost I try not to be too specific in my expression when I write  poetry generally. I feel if I wanted to be exact I'd write an essay.  Poetry to me is more art than exposition and in that respect I don't  think it needs to be too firmly nailed down. The sounds and language are  often more important to me than the precision of the message.

But here's a basic line by line explanation of what I might have been thinking when I wrote this.

_it is a time 
unwoven_

This is trying to establish the immediacy of the message. That this is now, that it _is_.  Unwoven was the first word that came to my mind when I decided to write  a poem. I feel that it portrays a great deal with an economy of  syllables. It is a time that is not only tattered and damaged, but it  has been deconstructed by a willful act. It has been taken apart. I am  trying to imply that this state was not an accident, but the product of  an effort, even though the result may not be what was desired. 

_a setting era
backlit by waning brilliance
a flaming pyre of its promise

_This is probably the most  literal section of the poem. This time is a time of decline, it is a  time in which all witness the ending of something grand. In retrospect  we will be able to look back and lament the things we never accomplished  at the height of our brilliance. In the same vein the death throes of a  wondrous era are a magnificent thing, a thing that is seldom seen.  Perhaps this was my attempt at providing a counterbalance to the inherit  bleakness of the message; that we are privy, at least, to a thing of  surpassing beauty. 


_an endless ire 
unspoken _

These lines, and the stanza in general, are in  reference to concepts of humanity as a collective thing subject to  unutterable rules. That we are creatures of violence and avarice, of  lust and self destruction. This represents specifically man's rage, as  both a general aspect of identity and as a force that rises unbidden in  the absence of centralized governance. It is the beast that is man  unleashed upon itself in wordless, faceless horror. 

_unsettling hungers 
the primal shadow conquers _

Again references to the  ascension of primal nature over reason. The unsettling hungers are  likely obvious at this point. Things which man lusts for. This includes  such base things as sex and food and inebriation but extends to things  far more alien, strange desires that could only be birthed at the dying  of an age of magnificence. The kind of depravity that could not be  sustainable were man a simpler creature. The primal shadow is an  allusion to the collective bestial nature of man I mentioned previously.

_we are simple gestures of the act _

This line is meant to represent the fact that we are not in control.  It is meant to convey the idea that we were never truly in control, but  that by some miracle the illusion of control was enough to build an age  of wonders upon. It is the breaking of the illusion. We lose the surety  of control and are cast down into a spiral of depravity and barbarism.  We no longer feel as though we have a say in what occurs, we are merely  playing out our parts in the tragedy. It goes a step further even to  suggest that we are not even truly the players, but only the gestures  they make in their final act. This is to give a sense that the world is  larger than us as a whole, it is in a way an admission to our  insignificance, but in the same breath a release from the responsibility  of global stewardship. 

_the sadness now
disjointed_

These lines are meant to convey the sense that  our suffering, while widespread and immediate, is no longer on the scale  that we are accustomed to. There no nationalistic fervor, no collective  strife beyond those physically closest to us. We are all lead down the  path of suffering individually, with no overarching power left to  describe the manner in which we should experience our sadness. This is  not directly alluded to, but an inference could then be made that we  have removed the illusion of a pain free existence and have truly  embraced the suffering that is living. 

_like aging filigree 
scrolled atop a coffin_

This is a visual metaphor for the  concept discussed above. Whatever beautiful pictures or poetic script  might have been impressed upon the coffin that is our sadness, our  suffering, no longer makes sense. It is only pretty, meaningless flecks  of gold. 

_all knowledge sapped and wanting_

This line is meant to describe the uselessness of our collective  knowledge. The hard fought scraps of truth we pried from the unfeeling  universe that we took so much pride in fail us. We are left in the wake  of a crumbling empire with no means to rebuild, no way to even preserve  the things we have come to rely on. This is an attempt to convey  emptiness on a large scale, that the soul or perhaps the  id of society  is reflected in technology, and that this soul has died. 

_the world an empty effigy
bereft of vital humors _

I mean "empty" in the sense that it  is without purpose or meaning. That the world itself has become a  meaningless effigy of itself. Not even fit to be considered a corpse, it  no longer wears the finery it was buried in, it mocks itself by its  very existence. 

_and we are pale explanations
for that which might have been_

These final lines are to  express what we collectively have become. Remnants of a thing that can  never exist again. In our very blood we carry the keys to a broken lock.  Every time we look at our reflection, into the eyes of our children and  lovers we will see the tragedy that we have become. We will know, on  some level, that we could have been so much more.


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## Ethan (Oct 10, 2012)

Hi Glass pencil,
 I think you have a real gift with words and this is evident from this piece. However, if such explanation is required then possibly you should restructure the work so that its import is more easily understood by the reader. Having read your explanation carefully and re-reading the poem, it was still quite a struggle to reconcile the two. Perhaps I'm just too thick to grasp it (which is very likely )


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## Glass Pencil (Oct 10, 2012)

My explanation was merely to convey what I was thinking at the time I wrote it. I leave things open ended and to an extent vague to allow others to experience something different when they read it. Many times the way our minds fill in holes left by authors or artists are far more meaningful than anything that was originally intended.


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## LaughinJim (Oct 10, 2012)

Hi GP,

I thought it was madness with method in it. 

I sorry that you felt the need to explain yourself to your critics.

jIm.


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## Glass Pencil (Oct 10, 2012)

LaughinJim said:


> Hi GP,
> 
> I thought it was madness with method in it.
> 
> ...



Ha ha, to be honest I was just feeding my ego by explaining things. I'll tell you a secret, I like it when people pay attention to the things I write.


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