thoughts on a poem by Traci Brimhall

*
this is a very good poem in terms of its content, but the form, specifically the linebreaks,
detracts from its effectiveness, i think:—


http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15206 

look at the beginning of it:

Via Dolorosa

We have been telling the story wrong all along,
how a king took Philomela's tongue after he had taken
her body, and how the gods turned her into a nightingale

so she could tell the night of her grief. Even now the streets
wait for her lamentation—strays minister to bones abandoned
on a stoop, a man sleeps on the ghosts of yesterday's heat,

pigeons rest on top of the church and will not stir until
they hear music below them. Inside, a woman warms up
the organ and sings Via Dolorosa about a Messiah

who wanted to save everyone from the wages of pleasure.
But how can I keep a man's fingers from my mouth?
How can I resist bare trees dervishing on the sidewalk?
...
why not:

We have been telling the story wrong all along,
how a king took Philomela's tongue after
he had taken her body, and how the gods
turned her into a nightingale so she could tell

the night of her grief.  Even now the streets
wait for her lamentation—strays minister
to bones abandoned on a stoop, a man sleeps
on the ghosts of yesterday's heat, pigeons rest

on top of the church and will not stir until
they hear music below them.  / etc.

/
the poet begins with 12-syllable line, then a 15- , another 15- ,
then a 14- , a 16- , a 14- , a 14- , another 14- , then a 17- , a 14- ,

and then, suddenly, abruptly, back to 12:
 But how can I keep a man's fingers from my mouth? 

—but why?  having established a strong first line, why not stay with it in terms of flow, of feet?

—the soundlinks and pairings are well-done:  the ng-rhymes of telling/wrong/along/king/tongue/nighting,

and the l's: tell/all/along/Phil/mel/gale/tell . . .  and: had/body/gods . .
 .

but if you're doing a brief burst of internal rhymes like had/body/gods, isn't it usually (if not always) better to place them in the same line:

he had taken her body, and how the gods

—but it seems as if the poet's ear hasn't even attended to sounds like those, and can hear instead only the hard t's: tell/story/took/tongue/taken/turned/night/tell/night— 

hitting your reader on the head repeatedly can be effective at times, i guess, but the crudeness of the measure is counterproductive in assisting the subtle plot-thrusts and turns in this poem—

/

(the dash between 'lamentation' and 'strays' should be a colon, by the way)— 

i think the clunkiness of "he had taken" in Brimhall's second line is just terrible—and the following lines also feel forced and awkward in their extrusive lengthiness—

ah, well.  the content, as i say, is very good, awfully good, extremely good,

and perhaps that compensates for the ineptitude of the form—


///