Well, I'm no practiced critic when it comes to poetry, but here's what I think, having meditated on it as an average reader:
The connection between the 3rd floor and the maple tree isn't entirely clear. We know there is a connection and it has something to do with the falling leaves, and the color red -- we could interpret that to relate to growing up, sex, the passage of time? That's how I see it. Superimposing the moment that is the 3rd floor this year against the annual cycle of the tree, whose leaves fall for every 3rd floor group. But to you and the 3rd floor this year, the color red has a particular significance (you end the poem with it). So the tree plays two roles: it is "the other half" of the group's soul, which is red and sexual, but it is also the group's foil ("We are not falling," the binary appears to be something like youth/age). You end with the previous, making it the stronger and more striking of the images, yet the second is always running beneath the surface, creating, for me, a really poignant snapshot of what it means to be my age. But I make this interpretation knowing you, knowing this dorm. So if that is what you are trying to express, you might want to make it clearer for other readers.
I'm not sure I understand the significance of the curls. Are they supposed to be the equivalent of the falling leaves?
"We want the fourth person to scream at sex in the shower." I suppose the fourth person is Bing, but this line wouldn't make sense to strangers. I mean, you might want to give the fourth person a bit more of a colorful identity, maybe a line of dialogue as Mike and Franzi have.
I love the structure of the poem and would not change it, but one thing I tend to always look for is how does the whole suggest its parts, and vice versa? You could just leave it as it is and it would be fine, but you could also try and give the structure itself more significance.
Let me know if my interpretation is anything close to what you were intending (consciously or no).
I hesitate to clarify too much . . . I'm not sure how the screaming-in-the-shower part works for an uninitiated reader now that I've changed it from "We want the fourth of us," which sounded better but produced unnecessarily labyrinthine interpretations. I do like the ambiguity between "We want someone to scream at us" and "We want someone to scream because he's having sex."
The curls are leaves, but also lushness, and waste. I think I read less of the age symbolism than you do, and more about claustrophobia vs. freedom. (Hothouse plants?)
My English prof got two couples out of this poem, which I find hilarious, but also somewhat odd in that it really ought to be about *not* having sex.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-11 11:16 am (UTC)The connection between the 3rd floor and the maple tree isn't entirely clear. We know there is a connection and it has something to do with the falling leaves, and the color red -- we could interpret that to relate to growing up, sex, the passage of time? That's how I see it. Superimposing the moment that is the 3rd floor this year against the annual cycle of the tree, whose leaves fall for every 3rd floor group. But to you and the 3rd floor this year, the color red has a particular significance (you end the poem with it). So the tree plays two roles: it is "the other half" of the group's soul, which is red and sexual, but it is also the group's foil ("We are not falling," the binary appears to be something like youth/age). You end with the previous, making it the stronger and more striking of the images, yet the second is always running beneath the surface, creating, for me, a really poignant snapshot of what it means to be my age. But I make this interpretation knowing you, knowing this dorm. So if that is what you are trying to express, you might want to make it clearer for other readers.
I'm not sure I understand the significance of the curls. Are they supposed to be the equivalent of the falling leaves?
"We want the fourth person to scream at sex in the shower." I suppose the fourth person is Bing, but this line wouldn't make sense to strangers. I mean, you might want to give the fourth person a bit more of a colorful identity, maybe a line of dialogue as Mike and Franzi have.
I love the structure of the poem and would not change it, but one thing I tend to always look for is how does the whole suggest its parts, and vice versa? You could just leave it as it is and it would be fine, but you could also try and give the structure itself more significance.
Let me know if my interpretation is anything close to what you were intending (consciously or no).
(no subject)
Date: 2003-03-12 09:49 am (UTC)The curls are leaves, but also lushness, and waste. I think I read less of the age symbolism than you do, and more about claustrophobia vs. freedom. (Hothouse plants?)
My English prof got two couples out of this poem, which I find hilarious, but also somewhat odd in that it really ought to be about *not* having sex.