Review time--week 1 and part 1 and this is all about Queenie!

This part of the review is brought to you by the letter Q. As in Queenie. I read over her shorter piece earlier in the week and I liked it well enough--especially after the explanation, but I chose this one to review because it was longer and had more substance to review. The piece is:


CARNIVAL MENU
By: Queenie

          I smell the death of poetry
through a boil-infested nose of a snickering witch with
eyes teetering up and down salivating sockets.
    A rainbow bubbling. Swirling. Mixed with feathered tar.
Carousels decorated with decapitating rotting babies
in their white baptismal dresses.
    White dogs whimpering by the pink curtains,
    Emaciated brains bathing atop ivory plates ,
    Crooked tarnished forks laughed with rusted knives,
    Wrinkled warts embraced by asian wives.

A poetic abracadabra lit up candles without wax.

    Lisping leprechauns clad with left over fairy wings
Whistling songs from the catholic’s last pages.

          Fiddled frogs and processed possums
          Giggling down debutante’s bosoms.

Breakfast is served.


Review time:

What I liked: I enjoyed the imagery that you've laid out with all the different pieces of the carnival and with the witch. It was interesting the way you kept referencing Christianity and then contrasting that with the grotesque. There was some interesting page breaks and line spacings going on throughout the poem, and that did add a bit of visual variety to your work. It all seems very concerned with white verses corruption, almost a pure against vile.

Improvements: Much like a lot of my work, it's a bit heavy in the description--almost to the point of being overbearing. I often have to go back through and tone back a lot of my work because of how much sensory detail I cram into the damn things. It can be good, or it can be bad, and in this case, I would suggest toning it back, perhaps trying to be a little more subtle in the descriptions. As it stands, it seems to be more interested in shock value than anything else, and while the odd spacings and line breaks do add a lot of visual diversity, I am not sure it really works to strengthen the work.

All together: You're heavy in the description throughout the piece, which creates an interesting texture--one that evokes something wholly disgusting and wretched--but at times, it seems over done. I would suggest toning it back a bit, maybe working on hard enjambment over stand-alone lines if you are wanting to jar the reader. It has wonderful moments of contrast which could all be potentially more powerful. You continuously focus on white objects and Christianity and then layer that with frighteningly horrible imagery. while the images are certainly stark and hard-formed in my mind, I think not completely giving it to the reader will allow two things--expanding the poem, and making the reader form the images in his or her own mind, which can often be just as powerful--if not more powerful--than being handed an image. I think if you work this poem a bit harder, it could really pop.