New Jersey 15, or The Nicest Rejection Letter Ever Delivered

Dear Dane:

We’ve had an opportunity to review “Creator,” “Canada Geese,” and “Villanelle,” which you submitted via e-mail on 4 July. Your poems engendered a great deal of discussion, and while I regret that none seems quite right for CICADA, I would like to pass on our feedback. You are a poet who sends shivers down my spine.

“Creator” is a poem of striking originality that seems to start out with a parent teaching a child how to weed, but it gradually becomes clear that the garden is the Garden of Eden, which changes the meaning of that simple beginning. Marianne Carus, our editor-in-chief, agrees. “There are some brilliant lines here,” she says.

“The pain of separation” comes through so clearly in the following lines:

I couldn’t keep my hands
from shaking when I lifted South America out of Africa’s
arms and carried her across the water,
while she sobbed into my shoulder.

While that image is a truly moving one, Marianne wondered who created the landmass that was there before it split into South America and Africa. Wouldn’t it have been the Creator? If so, why pluck South America from its mother’s arms and carry it across the ocean?

Then, who or what does the Creator wish to hold one more time: South America, the tide, the moon?

The single rhyme in the poem jarred us a bit:

I think of
The day I drew the line
Between ocean and sky,
Watching as the raindrops kissed them goodbye.

Could you just delete the last line?

Stanza 6 begins “You were an accident,” and I love this conception imagery! In the last line, however, I think “awhile” sounds wordy and would suggest that it read “an unspoken invitation to play. So I did.”

Three lines down “would be able to hold” sounds wordy, too. Why not “would hold”?

Finally, from a formatting standpoint, we wished the lines had looked more even on the page; some are short and are some are very long.

Now, this is probably more picking apart than you ever want a group of editors to do again!

Despite our comments, “Creator” is a gorgeous poem, Dane, and if you’d ever like us to con-sider a revision on spec, we’d be more than happy to see it again. As one of our editors said, “It definitely offers a lot of provocative, moving ideas about God and creation that would wow a teenager.”

In “Canada Geese” the line “Tar and feather our sidewalks” is soooo perfect! Other editors commented on “wrapping myself in feathers” and “listening for five months’ worth of Florida gossip / and hurricane stories.” But the last line leaves us hanging. Do you need another stanza to provide closure? While the poem reveals a good conversational voice, it’s our feeling that teens might not find this as appealing as older readers. Your poem has a mature tone to it with lines such as “I am a mountain lake woman / the welcome committee.” Have you submitted “Canada Geese” to an adult literary journal?

For “Villanelle,” I had the impression you’re trying too hard to fit the words to the villanelle form, and as a result, the rhymes occasionally seem forced. You’ve also got the close repetition of “just” and “just” in lines 5 and 6. At the end we didn’t understand why the speaker says “As for tears, I promise him none.” Is it because her father’s death would not be beautiful? Yet she is singing Mozart arias, which are definitely “beautiful things.” This poem also struck a chord with us, and if you ever rework it, we’d be happy to see it again as well.

Thanks so much for your interest in **********, Dane. I hope you’ll continue to keep us in mind with your poetry. We don’t usually get to have such lively discussions!