Response to Modeling Poem

OK, it seems extravagant to analyze my own work so extensively but here it goes. Once I saw a one of those new cars called the “Crossfire” but it looked like Crotchfire for a second. I thought this was a hilarious phrase and as it conveyed a sense of urgency and dealt with light it would make a fine title. I tried to compose the poem in four line stanzas with some enjambment and half rhymes in order to emulate the writings of Lowell, Sexton, and Plath who come between the more formalistic New Critics and the more experimental poets. I also attempted to have a clear speaker who was interested in conveying some kind of meaning to the reader, while still operating in the vague language of poetics. The poem is devoid of any obvious references to classical literature due but rather speaks from my own views and experience. I also tried to keep the language as simple as possible to avoid sounding too formal.
As far as subject matter goes I really only had a few images in mind that I wanted to convey to the reader. I feel the poem worked as a confessional because it dealt with ideas and images that were personal and of a somewhat disturbing nature. I wanted to provide a sense of being somewhat alienated from society and family, as perhaps someone born into something which he didn‘t particularly desire. Growing up I had reoccurring dreams of being outside the house looking in at my family. Unable to enter the home, these dreams often left me feeling as if I was not part of my own family life. I have also often felt, as I’m sure most have, limited by the types forced on me by conditions of birth. I also wanted to allude to the desire to forget the facts with which one is faced. For me, the bottle is a symbol of man’s desire to operate in darkness. I also attempted to contrast that darkness with a sense of light. It has been on my mind much lately that fireplace of old has been replaced by the television of our day. While camping, a fire becomes humanity’s source of light, warmth, and comfort. The fire, for me, is that which is formless, that from which all form springs while remaining itself the stuff of possibilities. I think of poetry as an attempt to mediate between the realms of form and formlessness--to extract some kind of meaning while remaining unbound by any confining and limiting forms.
I also, towards the end, wanted to vaguely reference my brother’s deaths. Having witnessed by brother’s drowning early in life, and another brother’s death later in life, I have often felt as if I too did not belong here. The pressure to “be” something or “do” with a life that could have been as easily taken away has, as often as not, made me not want to do anything at all. I have felt, with Plath, that desire to join with the departed and a certain anger at being left here alone to muddle through the mess with the rest of the miserable bastards.