[Critique Group 2] Emailing: Group 2, 1-24-17 critique session

[James]

Hello Alice, Abbie, Leonard and Valerie,

Unfortunately some totally unexpected personal business which demands
immediate attention will cause me to miss tonight's call. I must say I was
looking forward to the call and have my critiques all ready. I have pasted
them below and attached them as well.    Perhaps someone could e-mail me the
number for listening to the recorded call. I look forward to our next
session and am interested in all feedback.
Regretfully, Brad
Group 2, 1-24-17 critique session

1. Welcome, Winter
-Valerie Moreno

I always enjoy your visit.


A gracious guest, you bring gifts--


crisp wind, refreshing cold,


velvet, gleaming snow.





Why do you keep giving


biting, howelling blasts,


combinations of snow and ice


that sting eyes and scrape skin?





Can't you tell--


you wore out your welcome


with black ice, waling winds,


disgusting slush made of dirt,


grey-mudded snow laced with bits of


rock salt?





No place to park,


downed wires, broken shovels


enough!





Good riddens!


May Spring boot you out of here


quickly!
***
In line 12, disgusting slush made of dirt, might work better without "made
of dirt" as it would then read "disgusting slush, grey-mudded snow laced
with bits of rock salt?" 

 I like the imagery and The technique of your feelings souring as the poem
and the season continue. Actually your positive feelings lasted about 4
lines out of 20. And, I couldn't agree with you more!


2.  House of Horrors
          by
Leonard Tuchyner 

The house, if it merited such a noble classification, had long since worn
off any sign of paint, if ever it had been adorned by that protective
cosmetic. Rotting wooden board siding hung loosely on the hovel's sagging
frame, like dead winter oak leaves waiting for a gust of cold air to blow
them away. Only ancient, mostly-rusted nails, forged by a blacksmith when
New Jersey was hardly more than back country, held them in place. The
senescent, grey house sagged like a dying old crone caught in a bog.

In the back of the house was a tilted storm door entrance, typical of many
old structures of the time. But no door remained to keep out the inclement
elements. This opening led to the cellar beneath the sagging hovel. Lenny
had been in that cellar once, but only once, until one day, when he had more
than good reason to wish he had never allowed himself to be in the clutches
of that foul monstrosity. In that earlier day of exploration, he was forced
to bend his seven-year-old body way over to avoid scraping his head against
the bowed, half-caved-in floor above. A few posts were all there were to
prevent the final crumbling of the spectered dwelling; for dwelling it still
was. If ever there was a house deemed less likely to harbor life, save
termites and vermin, then surely it was a desolate place.

Little good should have come out of that place. But there were two souls
living there, nevertheless, who were of exemplary character. One was
Blackie, a very large jet black dog and the other was Ina, a beautiful,
vivacious blonde teenager who just happened to have been Lenny's babysitter
a few years back. Lenny had never met the parents, not ever having been
invited into the deplorable dwelling, which by modern laws, would have been
condemned a decade before Lenny's seventh birthday. In all likelihood, the
tenants therein were as ashamed of that shack as the shack was of itself.

Oh yes, there was one other member of that family, Georgy.  At least ten
years older than Lenny, he was all the evil of that domicile, manifest. He
had the same golden hair of his sister, Ina, but his heart was as black as
the cellar; and with that heart came the power to corrupt.

Some houses of the same vintage were kept up with love and pride by their
caretakers, adding to the houses' humble beginnings as time passed. These
houses that were cared for, in turn, took care of the people they sheltered.
Homes and families kept up with the changing times. Such buildings were
valued for their antiquity. But somewhere in the passage of years, this
particular structure was neglected and became a misfit in a progressive
neighborhood, where it languished less than fifty yards from an A&P grocery
store, in a lot coveted by said market. To make the situation even worse, it
was a mere forty yards off a major thoroughfare, where it stood out like a
sore, infested thumb , surrounded by respectable homes and businesses. This
impoverished abode had no lawn, flowers or trees to soften its stark grey
nudity. The gravel parcel it sat on was used mostly for business parking. 

Except, in the far back, there were three marvelous acres of untended vacant
lot wildness, where Lenny and his friends often played, made short cuts to
other destinations, and threw hard, wild peaches at each other.  If the
shanty could have only lived in the midst of that contained land of the
untamed, it could have died with some dignity, slowly merging and even
nourishing the land -- its roof gently folding into and blending with the
un-straight lines of a natural environment. It could have been an oil
painting echoing beauty instead of the desperate evilness that had doomed
it.

Yes, this building was soon to be condemned, bulldozed, and its land
confiscated by the A&P, which expanded to compete with Grand Union, newly
built across the street. But that was not to happen for three years in the
future, and after Lenny was deeply injured in the old, damned cellar. But
first we must go to one year previous to that episode. 

Lenny watched with a sickly fascination as Georgy nailed the garter snake to
the rickety porch banister. The flaxen-haired older boy stood over two heads
taller than Lenny, who  had only watched Georgy from afar until that day.
He wouldn't have come into his territory if Mark, Lenny's long time friend,
had not beckoned to him. He had often seen Georgy and Mark hanging together,
but being of a shy nature, he had never dared to join in. The older boy made
him feel uncomfortable.

Georgy used a hunting knife to cut the impaled, foot-long snake along its
elongated belly, as the serpent thrashed wildly. Lenny was too young to feel
real empathy for the creature, but something felt wrong about it. He was
scared by what he was witnessing. Mark, on the other hand, didn't show any
reaction, other than emotionless interest in the procedure.  The knife cut
just deeply enough to sever the skin, without damaging the internal organs.
The snake-skin was splayed out to either side and nailed to the splintery
banister.  The animal made no sound as it squirmed crazily. Its heart could
be seen beating, which Georgy pointed out with a self-satisfied, tutorial
air.  When he finished giving his lecture, he walked off into the fields
surrounding his ugly house, while Lenny watched the snake slowly becoming
motionless, its impaled body stretched over the now bloody banister. 

Lenny saw Mark follow Georgy into the vacant lots. He did not want to look
at the snake any more, so he turned and walked back to his own house, where
he could look at the pictures in his Donald Duck comic book.

It wasn't the first time he had seen bloody violence perpetrated on helpless
animals. When he was younger and lived in a house on the border of a swatch
of woodland, he once watched a white chicken tied upside down while blood
dripped out of its slit neck. The sight of its attempts to flap away from
its tethering post was not a pleasant sensation. But the young boy did not
understand what he was feeling. Neither enculturation nor brain development
was adequate to give him a clear sense of revulsion or sympathy. 

Once, he watched Tommy, a slightly older boy, beat a box turtle to death
with a bat.  The boy laughed as he swung the bat over and over again, his
face turning red as blood oozed out of the turtle's shell, and its head
lolling senselessly. Lenny could not understand that either. He never sought
the company of Tommy again after that, but he could not have explained why
this was so.

He was not innocent of cruel acts himself. When but a toddler, playing in
the park's community sandbox, he delighted in burying scurrying ants under
handfuls of dry sand, watching their tiny antennae popping up through the
surface, as they dug their way out to hurry along their way; no matter that
he entombed the same ant time after time. They were animated toys whose
feelings he did not understand, nor care to.  For that matter, he had little
understanding of his own feelings. Feelings for him were only of the
immediate present and purely egocentric.  When he was old enough to play
with five-and-dime-store punks, he enjoyed touching ants with the red hot
tip of the burning incense stick. The touched part of the ant shriveled and
melted under the glowing tip, while the rest of the creature tried to keep
going. It never occurred to him that pain was part of the experience.
Strangely enough, he had lots of sympathy for Black Beauty, the horse. But
in the story, Black Beauty could talk and eloquently express his feelings.
He had lots of empathy for poor puppies who were tied up and left to be by
themselves. The whining sounds they made were unmistakably the sound of
crying. He knew exactly how they felt, because he felt the same way
sometimes. Ants made no sound. They did not communicate. They just kept
going until they were broken and couldn't move anymore, or were all burnt
up.

Now that he was a little older, his feelings were more complex, as was the
world in general. Snakes were no longer interesting toys. He didn't know
what they were, but watching Georgy treat that snake as a thing didn't
harmonize with his growing sensibilities.
***
 
A nicely slightly horrifying exploration of the development of compassion in
a boy.  The first 2 paragraphs of description of this somewhat deplorable
dwelling have several examples of rather poetic imagery. You asked if part
1, could stand alone. I would say no which is more a tribute to your story
than a fault. I really want to know what happens next! To what levels of
depravity does Georgy ascend? Does Lenny develop deeper levels of compassion
and join the Peace Core? Does he save either the girl or the dog from
unimaginable horrors? Though I am interrupting my critique work, I am going
back to read the other two parts of this most entertaining story. Oh yeah,
you write of ants having feelings, do they?

 

 3. 
>From A Family Poe-TREE:
 
The blessed Babies of a Fortunate Family 
 
by Alice Jane-Marie Massa
 
 
Having written more than two thousand words
about my youngest aunt
for the celebration of her 80th birthday
on January 28,
and knowing that I could have written
a thousand more recollections,
I continue to think of
how blessed our family has been
with babies--healthy, beautiful babies.
 
(Second Stanza)
 
Yet, tonight and when I am on a prayer walk
with my guide dog,
I sometimes send petitions to the skies
for the sweet, little babies--
my Uncle Martin and Aunt Rosemary--
who never celebrated one birthday on Earth.
Then, I ponder and pray for Uncle Dominic 
who, at age five,
succumbed to meningitis.
These babies, lost to Heaven too young,
were of my parents' generation--
the two boys were older brothers of my mother
and Rosemary was a younger sister of my father.
Despite being blessed with a collage of seven aunts
and seven remarkable uncles,
I often wonder what kind of individuals
Martin, Dominic, and Rosemary
would have become.
Would I have followed in the footsteps of Aunt Rosemary?
Would Uncle Martin have been a baker or teacher?
Would Uncle Dominic have been a miner or poet?
Would any one of them have been blind?
Do they look down upon me
and question why I am who I am,
why I do what I do,
why I make disparate decisions?
Are they my guardian angels
whom I sometimes feel in the beneficent air?
 
(Third Stanza)
 
As my family prepares to mark
the 80th birthday
of my youngest aunt--
the baby born in the year my dad turned 24
and her oldest brother, 26--
I realize how fortunate her parents were in 1937.
When Katherine Mae was born,
the little surprise's mother was close to 45
and the baby's father was nearly 58.
Happily, my grandparents lived to 95 and 89--
long enough to not only raise their youngest of six,
but to hold her three children.
 
(Fourth Stanza)
 
Now, as I send 80 birthday wishes
to my youthful and energetic,
beautiful and beloved aunt,
our extended family is waiting--
waiting again for two babies,
twin girls  to be born in a few weeks
to cousin Andrea, a pediatric nurse,
and her husband Dan, 
a major in the Air Force.
My treasured Aunt Kathy will be
the smiling and grateful great-great-aunt
of the little baby girls.
What circles of love
surround the blessed babies
of one truly fortunate family tree!
 
January 16, 2017, Monday
number of words:  408
number of lines:  62
***
This poem is well written and paints a number of pictures. What stands out
most to me is your very strong sense of family connection. However to really
comprehend all family members relationships to one another would (for me at
least) require 3 or more readings. It is very ambitious to try to introduce
7 uncles and 7 aunts in 408 words!


4. Abbie's piece:  
AQUARIUS



Abducted as a child,
forced to carry water to the gods,
when Jupiter aligns with Mars,
will peace guide the planet
along with harmony, understanding,
sympathy, trust?
Can love steer the stars?
Can we let in the sunshine?

***
I like this piece. Perhaps partially due to many of my younger days of
exploration and seeking being against a background of "the age of Aquarius."
Also, I am very interested in mythology and have not until now seen a poem
about such from you. Finally it is asking questions which are ones we should
be concerned about given  the recent terrible alignment of stars in the
Electoral College.
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attachments:

Group 2, 1-24-17 critique session


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