> Thanks very much, Carl.  A few thoughts/questions in the body of your text.
> bw
> christina
>
> > L3: Perhaps swallowed 'hastily', not "whole"? I had to wonder for a
> > moment if they weren't shore birds....
>
> ***  Yes, I take your point.  Raw salted herring's a traditional sea-side
> snack in Holland.  You dip them in finely chopped raw onion, hold them over
> your mouth and down they go.  Mercifully, the heads are removed and the fish
> are filleted.  I wonder if this would work if it were clear that the poem's
> set in Holland?  Or would it still be meaningless?  I've always been
> fascinated by the way they're eaten and I quite want to include it in the
> poem.  'Hastily' doesn't really convey what I'm trying to say.

I'm not sure how you can incorporate the cultural basis, but I'm not
sure that situating the action in Holland will make sense of the
swallowing as described.

> > L5: "polka dot bikinis" could apply to a very wide age range, given what
> > is sold these days.
>
> ***  Yes, this is a problem.  I used polka dot bikinis to try to hint that
> the poem was set in the late fifties/early sixties ('It was an itsy-bitsy,
> teenie-weenie, yellow polka dot bikini...') but then reverted to now by using
> 'awesome' . Your feeling is that awesome's trite.  I'm not sure: in a sense,
> it's reclaiming the word and I quite like the idea of reclaiming words.
> Nevertheless, I don't think I can keep both.

You've done a lot to try to insinuate time and place. It's possible that
the poem would be more successful if situated within a specific
collection. The herring does situate the poem in Scandinavia or so, I
was thinking that before, but the other signals may be too weak... See
what others think. The signals may be more strange ("whole", "awesome")
and generic ("bikinis", "chew their nails") than subtle.

Hope I helped! :-)

Carl