The fountain in the Alumni Plaza is
shut off. Its faux-riverbed dry.
All the pennies have been scooped out,
wishes spent.
Six sickly trees have given their all to fall
& trampled
dusty remains
gather in the fountain’s base.
The only rumble now is passing traffic,
& the shuffle of students steps on
a mud line cut through dying grass,
always rushing five minutes before, or after class in
shields of iPod interference--sound tracked
bubbles--& cell phones stringing invisible
electric laundry lines for all to hear:
(insert cliché here)
The students stacked in trailers
behind Lytle Hall will soon move
to the academic forum; a giant glowing
17 million dollar fishbowl filled with
goldfish eyes in 200 seat amphitheaters,
the teachers
will never have to
learn my name again.
The dry recycled air echoes
recycled ideas pounded into
five paragraph containers
reused in the library, wasted computer printout
pages, all grades
the same--one
pen stroke pass
or fail--like
finding a parking space
five minutes before class.
We are (the new) Penn State
repackaged in another field, in
another ground broken ceremony
high-rise honeycombed dorms,
where a single room is now a triple
in a numbers game of how many students
can we jam in one place, for one price
& still get away with it. Better yet--
put a food court in the forum so
they can buy Freedom fries. Please just
keep the Republicans away from bake sales.
The turned up corn fields give again--
the illusion of space--like
the fairgrounds on a weekend,
& diversity is half the population
taking a bus back to the city,
taking a truck back to the country.
Monday thru Friday we walk in streams but
never pool into a student union,
it’s just myspace now, faux
facebooked friends & waiting
for the season to slide by,
a fountain filled again.
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8 comments:
take a good shot at this one, i want it pristine.
what does it need more of?
where does it fail?
too much of a tone shift from beginning?
where can i work in the lost line: "how many republicans does it take to ruin a bake sale?"?
Ahhh...a poem for the soul, where the soul is as material as it is ephemeral. Thank you.
Since you asked:
the shift after (insert cliche here). Landscape of sight and sound shifts to more narrow "containers." Trailers, amphitheaters, 5 paragraphs. Is there a way to feel the process of "solidifying" the movement in first four stanzas into the discussion of the Big Ass Classroom Building?
The "faux" of the plaza, the "emptiness" of the "rivers" the "wishes spent" seem suggestive here.
There's my two-cents of wishes spent.
Made tiny edits.
The shift in pacing comes from the ideas bleeding over one stanaza to the next which keeps everything moving. I added a semicolon & reworded to slow it up a little & at the end of the forum section I think I kind of slam a door shut over the bake sale issue. I like to think that commentary stops a Ktown reader for a moment which would soliidify that section slightly.
anyway, thanks for the reading Dr. Mahoney.
gaa. so dense with images. i need to read this about 30 more times. i like your concluding paragraph, how you use myspace and facebook commentary. republicans...
there's definitely a lot going on in here. i've been putting off commenting on it for this past week because im actually a little intimidated. theres just so much! i wonder how organized the ideas in this poem are in your own head, though. simplified, there is a general transition from outdoor to indoor. from fountain to lecture hall. but there are a lot of other images and commentaries throughout the piece that make this initial transition a little wishy-washy. i wanted to read the whole thing in this way, with the two opposite ideas contrasted side-by-side, but there are so many other things that catch my eye and make me think. one of my favorite side-tracks:
"We are (the new) Penn State/repackaged in another field"
that's delightful. it makes a (critical?) commentary about your school in reference to its geography.
bringing the poem back around to the fountain in the end reconnects the interior/exterior contrast that you had going in the beginning, but the progression doesnt really lead me to it naturally. the technological critique that comes just before it seems out of place with the fountain image. the fountain illustrates seasons, stages, phases (being filled or emptied); but myspace, facebook, and faux friends illustrate this technological impersonality and human detachment from one another. in the same way, the fishbowl amphitheater lecture hall does the same thing, but in an academic setting.
is this poem trying to say something about social disconnection, academic disconnection, or natural disconnection? or is it trying to tackle all three in one poem? there are some very big ideas here that might be better if you isolate them and mine each one for fodder in their own poem. make it into a serial poem, i say. there's a lot here and it all seems connected by this disgruntled voice. express your displeasure with kutztown in stages. don't try to do it all at once. it makes a great poem too crowded.
it is indeed a crowded poem. basically a rant condensed into poetics, loosley threaded together. I tried to take the speaker out, the "I" so the reader could assume that role. A lot of what i am saying i am throwing out there, some to stick some to slip by and if you try to grab onto it all in one bit you will choke...which kind of makes me happy because that means the poem is actually doing some of the things it is protesting against--the packing in of students, the disconnection of them, lack of identity.
nonetheless, a greater ending transition needs to be set up, easing out of the indoors and going back outside and that's something i have to find time to finish.
that's true about "throwing things out there, some to stick, some to slip by" and i kind of like that about this poem. it makes the poem very decentralized, far-reaching, and widely spread, which would be a drawback. but it becomes one of those poems through this throwing out there of things that you can pan again and again with a different sieve and catch a different nugget of gold each time. but those nuggets are isolated and independent from the others. one nugget doesnt necessarily illuminate anything about those surrounding it, and it should.
or, take it this way:
this poem is a collection of exemplary appendages of beauty and interest, but as one they do not comprise an altogether intriguing body.
part of the point (there is not student body, no sembelance, no unit to define everyone) but that doesn't mean the poem should be that way.
elaborate & tie together.
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