Very nice. Just one suggestion, formal. If I recall correctly, Jericho Brown’s duplexes in The Tradition repeat only one line perfectly: the first becomes the last, word for word. All the other lines, while repeated, undergo transformations, many subtle — the change of just one crucial word. Here, it seems you repeat perfectly early on and then go for drastic changes later. The result is that the form feels a bit rocky, off-kilter.
Think about this: when a reader reads the last line of a duplex, echoing the first perfectly, they ought to feel that now it means something different, thanks to the intervening lines. Yet the reader would be hard-pressed to say just when and where in the poem their perspective on that line’s statement changed. The form is performing a little magic trick with transformation.
Don’t revise this one. Write more of them.
I’d love to do a workshop with Jericho. Saw him read once in Atlanta. He held the whole room in the palm of his hand.
This is exactly the kind of feedback I needed on this poem - thank you, thank you, thank you! I do love the form and will take your advice to write more of these.
Very nice. Just one suggestion, formal. If I recall correctly, Jericho Brown’s duplexes in The Tradition repeat only one line perfectly: the first becomes the last, word for word. All the other lines, while repeated, undergo transformations, many subtle — the change of just one crucial word. Here, it seems you repeat perfectly early on and then go for drastic changes later. The result is that the form feels a bit rocky, off-kilter.
Think about this: when a reader reads the last line of a duplex, echoing the first perfectly, they ought to feel that now it means something different, thanks to the intervening lines. Yet the reader would be hard-pressed to say just when and where in the poem their perspective on that line’s statement changed. The form is performing a little magic trick with transformation.
Don’t revise this one. Write more of them.
I’d love to do a workshop with Jericho. Saw him read once in Atlanta. He held the whole room in the palm of his hand.
This is exactly the kind of feedback I needed on this poem - thank you, thank you, thank you! I do love the form and will take your advice to write more of these.
Good to hear! 😀
P.S. I love that this poem is about The Handmaid’s Tale!
Yes - I wrote it in response to other humans expressing fear of this happening now in today's modern day dystopian landscape.
I always find this form of poem difficult to read. It seems like you executed it well.