Review of The Art of History/Freeverse 566 by Emily Butler

1/27/22

First, read the poem The Art of History/Freeverse 566.

Second, read the review by Emily Butler below.

wine bottles efficiently stacked
gravy ladles zigzag their paths
	[Great sensory details]
dripdropping on stitched placemats that match

the cranberry cans give their dented all
	[great sounds in this stanza- alliteration and assonance]
crayon marks mark the wall
like ancestors' caves 
	[Great images!
Are there children drawing on the walls? You might want to clarify. I'm also not convinced that "marks mark" is the best possible way to construct the sentence.

cranberry cans give their dental all
children's crayons mark the walls

This phrasing still maintains the rhyme, assonance, and consonance you've crafted in this lovely stanza.]

if we turn the game down we can hear
history whittling the table's uneven legs 
	[WOW! I read poetry for lines like this: fresh, original language, sentences I could never think of myself, things that give me pause and make me think. I love it.

Optional, as always! But I personally would have broken the line like this:

If we turn the game down we can hear history
whittling the table's uneven legs

In this version, the lines are more rhythmically even (12 syllables followed by 10, as opposed to 9 followed by 13). 

One function of any line break is that it can surprise the reader, when the expectation set up by one line is broken by the next. The way you have broken these lines, you are achieving this, expertly! But, there are two surprises here- 1. I don't expect "history" to be the thing "we can hear," and 2. I don't expect history to be "whittling the tables uneven legs." So, even with history on the first line, there is still a brilliant continuation of surprise in the second. 

Just some things to consider :)]


I do like the play on words here- art history, vs the art of history. But I'm wondering if "Thanksgiving" might be a more effective title. Maybe I'm just a lazy reader! I like to know where/when I am as quickly as possible.

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