critique

A critique that stands alone? I wrote a critique for a poem posted on a bulletin board. I wrote it as though I were writing a poem, with the particular concentration I apply to writing a poem. But I figured it would be just one of those things you write and let go out into the world. Never see it again. Then one of the other poets at the board, a poet whose writing gets more interesting as I watch it, said she thought the critique read rather like a prose poem. Does it stand alone?:

The 3rd stanza repeats the first. In the 2nd stanza a car goes by -- is it the car's door that shakes? I was placing the speaker at home, listening to the next door neighbor's dog bark, watching it bark, the dog in the yard? The door that shakes could be a house door, could be a car door.

The speaker "with eyes closed ... look[s] inside [himself]." Sees "nothing there but white with teeth." The speaker's own teeth? Speaker experiencing empty-mind? A clear whiteness? The dog barks at fog, which is white, so perhaps the speaker is visiting his own fog. And the teeth could be threatening. Teeth bite, dogs use them thus. Teeth also speak, people use them thus. Perhaps these teeth will tell the speaker something and the speaker will pass that along in his next poem.

I am not convinced the dog is barking at the breeze that moves the fog. Dog might just be barking at the fog. Dog might be barking at something else, the car maybe. I am not convinced the way the speaker has observed the dog barking gains strength (or gains anything, maybe loses something) when it is repeated. I am not convinced the speaker sees anything inside, even white. Though teeth maybe. Colors probably. White? Maybe it is the white that comes out, that is outside. Maybe it is the white that is moved by a breeze rising from the speaker. Maybe it is only white outside.

Is it night?

The poem to which the critique is addressed.