Whippet (title change)

[azure]

First Edit

with each breath
a multitude of doves
like the maelstroms
of forgotten genocides.


Original

with each breath
a multitude of doves
violent and desolate
like the maelstroms
of silent genocides.

[billy]

not sure if i got this one azure. for me it reads of chemical warfare, (it's what i got from the title) the actual content of the poem played into the title, i get a feeling of syria or some such place where such weapons were used. sorry if i'm wrong.

[azure]

This is a poem I scribbled down quickly. Its about a really horrible experince I had doing Whippets, a drug categorized as an inhalant. I wrote this poem a few years back. Ambiguity is my forte...  

[SimikPK]

with each breath
a multitude of doves
violent and desolate I would ommit this line. If you really think of it, a mealstrom is both violent and desolate, or at least relates to it
like the maelstroms
of silent genocides. not really sure what silent genocide is.. i can´t think of one.. even if drugs, at least the dying scream or delude somehow.. and if a genocide, someone must scream.

Careful about ambiguity and vagueness.

Simon

[Erthona]

azure,

Whippets: Original meaning. Was the gas (nitrous oxide, aka laughing gas) in canned whip cream such as redi whip. Thus the name, whippets from "whip". People have been doing whippets, as well as clear acrylic spay paint,  gas, et al, since I was a kid, about fifty years ago. Personally they always gave me a splitting headache. I found the sensation not dissimilar to shooting up alcohol, only whippets have a shorter duration. Not a bad drug as far as inhalants go. I'll take my nitrous at the dentist office where they have oxygen to give afterwards so you will not get a headache. Country and Western does sound much better on nitrous    

Ambiguity: Ambiguity works best when it leaves the reader with one of two choices, not one of one hundred (and excellent example of the first is "Young Goodman Brown" a short novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.) However I see no ambiguity in this poem so it is a moot point.  

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I think you are maybe trying to describe something along the lines of one of Dore's etching that has a circular motion to it, but downward. A downward spiral also fits with the idea of despair or depression, it's probably archetypal, and thus the use of maelstrom. So I think I have a sense of what you wanted to do, however I do not think you accomplished what you meant.


How are doves (multitude is redundant, doves nearly always congregate in large numbers) like the maelstroms of forgotten genocides? Are you referring to a specific event of forgotten genocides?  

What does "forgotten genocides" mean? If they are forgotten, then it means nothing, nobody remembers them. It might as well be that they had never happened. If one knows of it enough to say it is forgotten, then it is not forgotten. If you mean forgotten for a period of time, but then recovered in some way, that needs to be noted, such as. "Memories of lost genocides once forgotten, now recovered." You don't even have to tell how this happened, but it must be noted that it is not still forgotten, or the statement is nonsensical.

What is a maelstrom?  Strangely enough this is not a common word. I found that out when I looked it up to see if there was a definition to fit the way you were using it.

There are two definitions (there are others but only variations of these two): The primary definition (the one most people are familiar with):

"a large, powerful, or violent whirlpool."

Question: How are doves like a large, powerful, or violent whirlpool."   

Secondary definition: "a restless, disordered, or tumultuous state of affairs"

Question: How are doves like a tumultuous state of affairs?  

Using the second definition you could maybe make it fit to doves, but there must be better word choices. I do not believe maelstrom is a good word to use. Even with all the definition in hand, I can see no correlation between maelstrom and the behavior of doves.

A possibility might be "whirlwind," as it deals with the air and not the water. It can mean anything from tornado to  dust devil. I could see that being a descriptor for doves in flight as they circle up from the ground. Maybe a "small whirlwind." Of course "doves" may be the problem, if you are trying more for a downward image...doves do not go downward

Maelstrom as hyperbole. A maelstrom has to be several orders of magnitude stronger than a covey of doves. The only connection between doves and maelstrom, and it is a flimsy one is the circular motions, and that is a slender reed to hang one's wing on.

Additionally it would help to put a verb in somewhere:

"with each breath a multitude of doves" (doves do what?) "like the maelstroms of forgotten genocides."

Unless you mean "doves like maelstrom," in the same way that "Sherry likes Bob."

This is neither a haiku or a senryu, it is just a short poem, as such it needs to follow the general rules of grammar to make sense. You cannot link several dependent clauses together and expect it to transmit meaning to the reader, no matter how many words you cram together. 

Just on the surface of it. I just don't see how Breath-->Doves-->Maelstroms-->Genocides connect in anyway. But I am willing to be wrong as well as dense. Let me know.

Dale