Critique Paul Stewart

Part Four - The Critique The Work of Paul Stewart Unofficial Challenge

The Worm Burns

I gravitate to poetry, so I naturally went to Paul’s poetry section. So much to choose from. I picked The Worm Burns specifically because of the title. The first stanza of the poem is twelve lines written in an almost prose like style. I love how the repetition spirals or gives the effect of spiraling, lines as such, as the world turns is repeated throughout / rolls and burns / rolls and turns/ as the world turns / worm and burn / worms and burns—It has a very musical, a lyrical quality about it. This spiraling gives the poem movement, something I have been working on in some of my work. The internal rhymes give it the musicality, almost sonnet like, specifically Shakespearian.

This first stanza is heavy, dream or nightmarish.  I get this feeling from the use of worm / roll / soil. It brings me to one of my biggest fears of being buried alive or dreams I often have where I’m running as fast as I can to get away and not able to move. Suffocating or torture, almost Edgar Allen Poe like. Poe’s writing frightened me when I was a kid. Especially The Pit and the Pendulum.  Paul’s poem makes me think, has me searching for some sort of cause or resolution.

Then the poem turns. When Faust comes calling / when Proust comes calling. I wasn’t aware of the meaning here. Faust comes off as evil or the devil and the only meaning I could find with Proust was a novelist best known for a novel titled In Search of Lost Time. These two interpretations seem to fit with this poem for me.

The poem picks up again with a spirals of words and repetition as it did in the beginning, but it is much less intense as hope seems to come to us slower then grief. The speaker appears to awaken from the dream and considers hope, keeps hope always in the back of the mind. The speaker is reminded of what there is to love and what happiness they are surrounded with. The poem reminds us there is always hope and to keep an open mind and find hope in all our daily lives.

This is my take on the poem. I like this poem and think it is one of Paul’s better poems.  I loved the movement and I learned something. I like writing that sends me to do a bit of research. It took me to dreams and fears I had forgotten. The worm metaphor is a good representation of what a crutch could be and how suffocating its surroundings. It's deep, dark and complex and I went into it blind and love it!

Paul is a very active member here on Vocal and easy to like and get along with! I highly recommend giving him a follow.