Thinking Over Emma's Poem!

Now obviously you gotta listen to this unfortunately long episode to understand the purpose of it. But I’ll lay it out gently here as well: Emma sent me a poem for to think over. I go through the particularities of formatting in arduous detail, and talk at length about the considerations. All in all, it takes me about thirty minutes to make some minor edits because of the amount of communication around them. This is fun if you are someone who does not bore easily, and are curious what kind of things I think about after writing for years, only to arrive finally at mediocrity.

Special thank you to Emma for volunteering their work to be scrutinized, it is a vulnerable thing.

Here is Emma’s Original Poem:

I Will Have A Panic Attack Down in the middle of the Mosh (no) conversation (no) Pit I lose the thread of Why this Motivation of how why anyone would Partake in this Sinister brand of World collapsing around me and Everyone else all At once Air a precious Reason to clamor for square Inches of hot Breath instead Wishes for outside Crisp, spacious Smoke and tires shedding millions of Microplastics a second and Anything In the space where space goes forever until The atmosphere that is Eroding away at Least I cannot smell someone’s Bad perfume laced with Headaches or Unflossed Teeth Crop dusting A field denser than any corn but at least ten times less biodiverse For one more moment or Else

And here is the edited piece!

A NOTE: I had noticed when I first read the poem the way in which the line

‘the atmosphere that is’

could be understood. But forgot and missed it when I was doing edits. I stand by the usage of ‘which’ to change the pacing, but given the intention behind it and how successful it is I have changed it back in the edit below, with added punctuation to better inform the reading as a qualifier. “that is”

Pick your poison.

I Will Have A Panic Attack Down in the middle of the mosh-conversation Pit I lose the thread of Why this Motivation of how-why- anyone would partake in this Sinister brand of world collapsing around me and everyone else all At once Air a precious reason to clamor for square inches of space thus occupied- -Hot Breath- wishes for outside- Crisp, Spacious Smoke and tires shedding millions of microplastics a second and anything - happening in the space where space goes forever until The Atmosphere, that is, eroding away at least I cannot smell someone’s bad perfume laced with headaches or unflossed teeth crop dusting A field denser than any corn but at least ten times less biodiverse for one more moment or Else

If you are at all interested in having your work picked over publicly, message me. It might feel nice to be examined, to be the center of attention.

Thanks as always for listening,

Oliver