Sunday Chaconne by Hollander

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Submission Name: Sunday Chaconne dots

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Author:	Hollander
Elite Ratio:	5.16 - 36/52/17
Words:	148

Class/Type:	Poetry/Misc
Total Views:	186
Average Vote:	No vote yet.
Bytes:	1104

Description:

Sunday Chaconne dots

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Drinking absinthe
outside the Vortex
my friend buys lunch.
Sinatra sings in a passing car
as pink hair, street preachers,
and we two lucid revelers
step on
the same sidewalk.

Barely brushing the ground
traveling asphalt tributaries
trees thin,
museums rise up,
stone carves itself into forms.
Graffiti blurs into an urban Pollock.
Shop windows
warp our reflections.

Atlanta concrete greets us;
her face, many faces.
She watches
as we hover between bookstores.
Rilke caught me among backroom shelves,
and his panther prowled within.
I absently coin those pages.

Skyscrapers lose us
among anthropology students.
Homeless squatting with styrophome cups
don’t accost us.
We’re happily ambivalent,
oozing around eye contact,
invisible;
a speck in the sea of this city.

The crowd hushes,
air shimmers,
pigeons burst upward.

Submitted on 2009-02-09 03:23:57 Terms of Service / Copyright Rules
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||| Comments |||
  for one, i wanna drink absinthe, at least once. (the creative in me is going puleassssssssse).

what i really like is the city drawn into this. there is something about movement, and people, and buildings, and music. and walking with a friend, after tying one on, into it.
how every one thing kinda hits you and captures you all at the same time.

it kinda reminds me of tripping on mushrooms when i was a teen. we were walking on the berkeley campus when they just kicked in and classes let out. we were five of us bombarded by a sea of students. we were like - duuuude. (though dude wasn't in just then) .... but it was like that.

(smile).
| Posted on 2009-08-19 00:00:00 | by isabella | [ Reply to This ]
  You've tidied this up very nicely. It's easy to read and lose yourself in these razor sharp observations and yet it's the kind of poetry I will never write, but am proud to read. Proud because of who I know you to be and for the eyes through which you see the world.

desperate musicians? For me you don't need to reinvent the wheel but there is little left to pick on.

no room for Rilke?
| Posted on 2009-03-11 00:00:00 | by Daniel Barlow | [ Reply to This ]
  I found your work through O's page, where one of your pieces is a favorite. I'm absolutely going to be going back to that one and this one to comment.

For now I just wanted to say that I could see the ATL from:

"Drinking absinthe
outside the Vortex
my friend buys lunch.
Sinatra sings in a passing car
as pink hair, street preachers,
and two lucid revelers
step out on
the same sidewalk. "

Perfectly capturing L5P. It's nice to see my city in poetic form. Can't wait to get back to this and properly comment.

| Posted on 2009-03-04 00:00:00 | by FallenGrace | [ Reply to This ]
  I like the graduations in this poem. It seems it's all about height and the intimacy/ realness of society at those levels.

Drinking absinthe
outside the Vortex
my friend buys lunch.
Sinatra sings in a passing car
as pink hair, street preachers,
and two revelers, lucid,
step out on
the same sidewalk.

I find "lucid" would make for a smoother read if it was placed after "two"

You've established the tense in this stanza and so an obvious nit with the writing is that this isn't consistent throughout the poem.

Barely brushing the ground
we travel down the side streets
of natives to peruse the real
voodoo stalls.
Trees thinned,
museums rose up,
stone carved itself into domestic shapes.
Urban beauty and graffiti blurred.
Shop windows
refract our reflections.

"graffiti" could be placed before domestic shapes and urban beauty because it's more likely to radiate outwardly from the city, but I guess your drinking spot may have been in the opposite direction.

Atlanta concrete greeted us;
her face, many faces.
She watched
as we hovered between bookstores.
A white cat startled me
at the Vintage
but Rilke found my heart.
I coined his pages.

I like this passage, especially the last two lines.

Skyscrapers lose us
among anonymous students
and desperate musicians.
We’re happily ambivalent,
tap dancing around eye contact
because here
it’s easy to be invisible;
a speck in the sea of this city.

The crowd hushes
for a funeral procession,
pigeons burst upward.
I have no burdens.

Here I think it fits better if you say "a crowd" that way it seems more random instead of something you had prior knowledge of or expected to see because of a specific event like a state funeral etc.

I like how the last section places an expectation on the populace as opposed to the freedom of invisibility. They sink while the speaker is free of burdens... it's that use of height again. I do wonder though if you need to be as obvious as that since most readers should already be on board with your symbolism- and I do question what you want the reader to take away from the journey. Somehow I think it's more than what you have here.

Just some thoughts,

DB

| Posted on 2009-02-13 00:00:00 | by Daniel Barlow | [ Reply to This ]

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