Review of Joel’s Next Poem
[Joel],
Just a few thoughts about the [Mr. Moto] poem you sent me for review.
On the style: Sort of a hybrid between first and second person. And it might have all been in second person, se for the reference to ‘I’ in stanza 1, and the reference to ‘my moralistic bull…’ in stanza 2.
The poem raised more questions in my mind than it answered in that it was not too concrete — the mark of well-written poetry, so I’ve heard. I might even adopt elements of this writing style in my lady-in-the-park story, to give it a more mysterious air. Your work had good subtlety as well as ambiguity, which makes it a bit confusing on the one hand, yet inviting to the imagination on the other. It encourages the reader to read again and again, looking for hidden meanings.
Who was this [Mr. Moto]? He seemed to be a heroic and memorable, yet melancholy, powerless, and trapped man (as a ghost, in an attic).
It seemed like he did something wrong in the eyes of the speaker (you apparently). Why would the speaker disapprove of, and thus feel compelled to give [Moto] his “moralistic bull…,” as mentioned in Stanza 2? Why would the speaker wish to   preach   at [Moto]? There’s much mystery left unresolved here. Maybe that was your intension.
Or perhaps he was a homeowner protecting his property from the prairie fires for an entire summer, as evidenced by his wheezing breath and discolored skin in stanza 1. Did he die somewhere between stanzas 4 and 5? Or, was he dead (and thus, a ghost) throughout the entire poem? Did the speaker die with him in stanza 5, since both he and the speaker were on the roof together when they discovered their ladder stolen? Perhaps in his lofty view in the attic (from the vantage point of death), he sees better than those still alive, the threat of the fires burning on the horizon. But what if he hadn’t been trapped on the roof? Would he have taken his bucket and ladder and put out those fires? Could he have done so as a ghost, or would he have even become a ghost if he had some fire-fighting apparatus?
Overall, I didn’t come away from this with new insights or perspectives. Reading the poem didn’t seem to change me in any obvious ways. No ah-has. In short, I didn’t find it particularly moving. But then, I’ve never spent much time in the western US, which seems to be where the poem’s imagery was staged — references to prairies and bluestem gave the air of the west. So, perhaps I’m just not identifying with the subculture of the west.
By the way, are bluestem plants  really  blue? I remember as a boy traveling for the first time to Kentucky. Eagerly, I anticipated our arrival during the twelve-hour car trip, all excited that I’d finally get to see some bluegrass for the first time. But when I finally saw the grass, man, was I disappointed! It didn’t look blue at all. Perhaps the people we visited there were mistaken and thought that the grass they showed us was bluegrass though it was not. That’s what I thought, and so, still held out hope that one day I’d see some  real  bluegrass.
Then twelve years later, when I bought a home near Dayton, Ohio in 1992, I learned that the grass in its lawn was Kentucky bluegrass. Again, it didn’t look blue, and was actually a very bright green. So I pondered many hours over the four summers I lived there while cutting the lawn, why such grass was called bluegrass when it really wasn’t blue. I shared the quandary with a coworker, who said that the blueness referred to in the name, comes from the fact that its blades have shiny sides. On a clear day, when the sky is very blue, some of that blue light reflects off these blades, giving fields of the grass a hazy, bluish tint when you look over them at the correct angle. The blueness, he said, is really an illusion, for if you look at the grass on a gray day, it doesn’t appear blue at all. So, the question remains: Aside from flowers that have blue petals and blueberries, do any plants really look blue?
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Tom Hesley