ERRATA: how to know if a poem "works" or if it's finished

unrelated visual I made this morning.

I was looking for a document and came across this old poem draft (see below) on an old hard drive. I made a couple of edits and now it is something like a “finished poem.” Is it? But how do I know?

I’ve questions!

Is the line about the bricks too on the nose? Too “poeticky”? And “I was put here without my country”? It feels like the kind of thing that Ilya Kaminsky might right, but he pulls it off. (If you haven’t read Deaf Republic you should!)

And this second half of the poem is different than the first. How does vibraphone fit in here? I like the images and I don’t want to smooth the poem out so that all the images are of a piece. There’s something energetic about having vibraphone and parachute in the same poem. Is the opening too seemingly glib in its absurd surrealism? Or is it a good way into the more emotionally more real element of the poem?

I originally had “praying hands like playing cards” which sound pretty, but I though I like the image rhyme of the hand and the cards, I thought the image might be stronger without the hands. On the other hand (sorry!) “praying like playing cards” might also be too obvious: praying is a game of chance, or managing hopes.

I do like the image of a coffin filled with snowflakes that then melt and drown the supposed corpse. But again, that might be too suspiciously “poeticky.” It does feel like it links back to the Fisher King (who even writes about the Fisher King any more?)

So what to do about this poem? Is it nice that it isn’t in “my voice” — or a slightly different variation of it? How do I know if it is good when I don’t have the template of my usual operation? (I think we often judge things against our usual and it is hard to know whether something works or not if it one has to judge it by different-than-usual standards.)

I do love this failure.

ERRATA FOR THE FISHER KING
after C. Dylan Bassett


I enjoy the taste of love
if by taste you mean parachute

and by parachute you mean corpse
I love this failure

running water like a dress
in jazz, the vibraphone takes on the role of smoke

praying like playing cards
Father said, bricks are made for those who wish to carry 

their own walls
I was put here without my country, Mother said

the coffin was filled with snowflakes
and when spring came, we drowned