‘Super Flower Blood Moon’ met some initial resistance—both of us tend to rebel against common poetic obsessions:

The moon is there as a primary object. The sea. Too many poems about the sea. So many that poems now wreck themselves in the moonlight on hidden reefs. Surely the tides of time have caught up with these. (A)

… It’s about poets as well… poetry as itself. Is it ars poetica? I don’t think so. A poet obsessing about poetry using two of the greatest and most enduring cliché objects. (A)

And against straight narrativity:

Through our lives we create narratives to explain the world around us—is this why narrativity in poetry is considered so necessary? I’m not against narrativity per se, but I favour the broader idea of movement and enjoy stories as story rather than verse. (J)

And against the sestina form:

… which is hard to do elegantly, subtly, without contrivance… I’ve tried this and have not produced anything that I’d share. And this piece doesn’t seem to mind, seeming to deliberately display and enjoy the awkwardness, the framework, the visibly forced constructions. Like postmodern architecture. (A)

The only sestina I recall thoroughly enjoying is based on snippets of conversations involving a bartender and with that poem it feels like there is no form other than the sestina that would accommodate that kind of exchange. I think a sestina works best when the recycling of ideas is integral to its concept. (J)

However, ‘Super Flower Blood Moon’ does a lot of work to overcome a number of these resistances.

On its sestina form:

In my opinion, deliberate and visible construction is the point of the sestina, even at the expense of elegance and subtlety. Hawkes has created a poem that exploits the sestina’s way of cycling and recycling, which matches the wild abandon, drunkenness and morning-after perseveration portrayed. (J)

For me, successful sestinas are also clever poems—poems which delight as much through playfulness and wit as emotion. Look at how Hawkes manipulates those end words! (J)

On the poetic obsessions:

Yes, there are an abundance of poems about the moon and sea. Most are romantic, some are cruel, many feel rather predictable. But Hawkes up-ends romance and turns the imagery toward the abject: the moon as a ‘squeezable boil’, ‘the bilious moonlight’—we humans tend to deny the distasteful and corporeal in favour of the agreeable and the ‘good’. It’s great to have reality vomit in our laps occasionally. (J)

It is safe to assume that everything is there for a reason: the framework, the awkwardness, the visible construction, the presence of the poet. ‘Super Flower Blood Moon’ could be read as a poem taking a shot at poets, poets’ pretentions, poetic devices and forms. (A)

… the presence of the poet/s, the sense of self-mockery, the flamboyant language, the reminders of life’s distasteful realities, the sestina’s specific form reflecting content and then that final take-down that points out our own irrelevance… she turns her face away from us! (J)

So, as it should be in poetry, the form becomes not itself, but part of the message. And the implied truth is probably a universal. It is an achievement. It was worth re-reading and sitting with. There were orgies. Milt. Thank goodness it didn’t mention love. (A)

alistair tulett & jac jenkins