Tori’s poem describes the experience of 11:12 pm through a serious of images and metaphors. She captures the way this time feels, freeing, exhilarating, and relaxing for the tired, tortured, tense body and soul. However, Tori does not simply tell the reader this, she shows them through beautifully crafted images which build upon each other surprisingly and elegantly. A particularly good example of this is the images compared across two lines:
your skin gently laid across bones
like violets blanketing the empty street
I think one of the reasons why I find this poem so charming is the way it is able to take the reader to so many places through vivid images even in its simple formation- short lines and twelve lines divided over three free form stanzas. Nothing is capitalized and the sparing punctuation, two periods, provide necessary emphasis and pause, caesura, that act as spaces to breathe and absorb the last images and feelings you experienced before moving onto the next. The images Tori chose all really jived with me.
My critique if I push myself would be that I personally feel that some of the smaller words used (it, to, for, the) almost seemed to clutter or break the more rounded and smoother descriptive words. In other words, in a poem that is already so quaint this could seem like unnecessary filler preventing the author from more active (versus passive) or novel ways of moving through thoughts. Also, the lines, though quite refined, mostly absent of punctuation and not really forming sentences per se, only break in places that focus on one image and seem syntactically logical. For a more surprising effect, I think Tori may experiment with more asyntactic line breaks and enjambment. I think the current form of the poem helps prevent the reader from running too quickly through a small, image-laden poem; but, on the flip side, unconventional line break could trap the reader in certain images or hang them up on certain words. I personally am really attached to assonance and other subtle sound devices to “tighten” or “polish” lines of poetry. I would be afraid to risk Tori’s simple crafting of images but that could be an area in which to bring more senses into an image heavy poem. In general, the inclusion of smell and taste could amp up Tori’s good use of visually compelling and kinetic images.
I feel lucky to have received such a lovely poem to spend some time with. Thanks Tori!
Isabel Williams
Poetry 1 Wednesdays