[mignon ledgard]

Thank you for the super responses!

I posted a revision and will start posting individual responses.

~mignon

[mignon ledgard]

Roger:
Do you mean "chimney"? I think of chimneys as being on top of the house, but you're describing the mantelpiece, aren't you?

I laughed out loud. All my life, it’s been Chimenea, and the translation to English, ‘chimney.’ There’s only one word for it in Spanish. My family is going to love this! No doubt the poem started with the memory of my mother placing her flower arrangement ‘above the chimney’, and it stays that way so I may be able to find it. Lost to its separate universe on the day of its inception: year 2021. I’m actually loving this.)

Chimenea: chimney. There is no hearth in my vocabulary; I’ll have to resort to fireplace, even though I love chimney. And thanks for the surreal painting in my mind. I smile.

And yes, I see about the extra beats and the ‘grandpa’. Will fix. And it’s an honor, even if only remotely, if anything I write brings Borges to mind.

Thank you for sharing your keen perceptivity.
~m

[mignon ledgard]

Carl:

A delicate still-life: nothing moves except your grandson at the baby grand.

Quite lovely, Carl, may I steal it? The house feels like that when only he and I are home. I stop, to listen fully.

the continuity of generations and their passage into anonymity.

Sometimes, thresholds are bittersweet.

My dad had two guitars—a ‘new’ one (because he didn’t use it), and an old one, the only one he played, which he had since before I was born.

Thanks for your delicate thoughts,
~m

[mignon ledgard]

Yves:
Hello mignon,

For me poetry is a simple games of lines, of finding enough emotionally resonant lines, and you certainly do find the lines. The metrical inaccuracies have already been pointed out. It hits the familiar emotional points of 20th century metrical writing: [1] The epigrammatic wisdom saying: "the future make new space for well-worn things"; the exotic specificity: "still keep the Ikebana flowers straight"; the emotional interjection: "My ostrich egg!"; the final lyrical lift: "of ageless angel faces with no names".

Just all round solid metrical poetry technique, well modulated emotionally!

.Quick suggestion/edit for metrical regularity (you might just have to go rework the movement of the poem):

Yeah!

Yves!

I quote your illuminating response because I can’t bring myself to dissect it. But I clipped away the poem, to keep it from a second page that would show up in Google search.

I am touched by your words, and I blush because I only measure syllables and follow sounds—had I paused for revision, I might not have posted it. Lost amid files since July 9th of 2021 at 4:03 AM, it popped up on my screen only days ago. For me, a simple sonnet lulls and is naturally calming, if I let it.

Your fix to lines 6 and 12 are most helpful. I smile at the sneaky “sings like me” but my dad is my grandson’s muse and I sing like a cat in agony. I have tweaked the poem to eliminate the “metrical inaccuracies.” I will gladly keep at it until it meets with your approval. I don’t remember what else changed—how did you know there would be some shuffling?

Thank you for being a kind and generous wizard.

~mignon

[Matt Q]

Hi Mignon,

Originally Posted by mignon ledgard

But I clipped away the poem, to keep it from a second page that would show up in Google search.

Just to say that none of the pages in poetry workshop threads show up in Google. First page, last page, they're all protected. It's just Fiction where there's currently a problem with the protection.

Matt

[Carl Copeland]

Lovely revision, Mignon. The long lines didn’t bother me, but you’ve trimmed them to good advantage: it’s now clear that father and grandpa were the same person, and “fossil mud” is neater and prettier. You’ve told me about the guitar, but it still strikes me as odd to have the experience of your grandson singing and playing the piano summed up as “guitar and passion.” It doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone else, though, so never mind me.

[Yves S L]

Now Carl has mentioned it, let us have a look at the two lines again:

"my father’s baby grand and sings like him:
guitar and passion—quite a treat to see".


It is a compressed analogy: my grandson while playing the piano sings with the passion my father sang while playing the guitar. The disjunction occurs because the normative path is to compare both singing while playing the same instrument, especially since the father owned the piano. It makes me think the father never sang or with passion while playing the piano, and expressed himself most fully with the guitar.

If "guitar and passion" is to consider modifying "sings" as separate from playing the piano, then I don't think the issue is that large, but you might experiment with another line to see if you could find something better, just for fun.

[Jim Moonan]

.
This poem was stealth on my board until this morning. That sometimes happens here. Suddenly I notice a poem that has been posted for days but that I hadn't seen. Poltergeists at play!

The opening line is so simply, sonically good, so authentic in its depiction, that I ease into the poem effortlessly, like a Rilke swan.

I love "above the chimney" as an image independent from but somehow connected to the still life within the room. There's something about the connectedness of it all: the hearth... the mantel... the flu... the chimney...) I get an out-of-body experience from the image, as if something is hovering above the chimney outside the house — namely, love. It is one of those lost in translation things.

I like the new title well enough, though it seems disassociated from the pent emotion in the poem. "Still Life with Piano Music" is what I see/hear, but it would connote a painting... which is what, in fact, you've accomplished with your words: brushstrokes of images. It's an unpretentiously beautiful, peaceful poem.

YVES: For me poetry is a simple games of lines, of finding enough emotionally resonant lines, and you certainly do find the lines. The metrical inaccuracies have already been pointed out. It hits the familiar emotional points of 20th century metrical writing: [1] The epigrammatic wisdom saying: "the future make new space for well-worn things"; the exotic specificity: "still keep the Ikebana flowers straight"; the emotional interjection: "My ostrich egg!"; the final lyrical lift: "of ageless angel faces with no names".

I hear what Yves is saying, and in a workshop setting it is altogether appropriate to dissect a poem in this way, but I don't know that pushing all the buttons makes for a good poem. For me, my important measure is in the emotional authenticity that is translated into words, phrases, imagery, that compensate for wordless things of beauty. There is absolutely nothing in this poem that feels calculated. Nothing. The moment the N realizes the ostrich egg to be his/hers is a true moment of discovery. It's my favorite image in the poem.

How well this reveals the treasures hiding in pain sight within most of our homes! (You could have very well been describing my home — but I've seemed to have misplaced my piano. We did have one growing up. I wonder where it went.) The boy at the piano supplies the only movement and sound, and that represents the future making room for well-worn things. There's an intergenerational spirit to the whole poem.

Everyone seems to be busy trying to reconcile beats, but I just go with the flow of it. Still, I know it is important to the form to get it right. I just hold my breath and hope the spirit of the poem is not bruised by the tweaking of the meter.

And then I have this idle afterthought: is there a fire burning in the fireplace? No matter. There is a fire burning in the poem itself : )


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[Yves S L]

Jim,

I don't think you get what I am saying at all, at all.

The thing is, poetry is made out of repeatable, recognisable elements, which means, if a person likes conventional metrical poetry, then one should be able to repeatedly write something that person would recognize as poetry. Sure most folk cannot consciously recognize what those repeatable elements are (there are many patterns I never speak of, because if a lot of folk think they are so good, then they can work them out themselves). Poetry is not magic. Nobody is saying that a poem has to push whatever buttons, more that most poems are constructed of a set of familiar building blocks arranged in familiar ways, and metrical poetry even more so, and sonnets even more so on top of that. Is a song calculated because the chorus occurs at a certain ratio along the song's duration? Is a poem calculated because it has a strong close? Is a sonnet calculated because it modulates emotionally along along the quatrains and octet? As I said before somewhere else, folk think unconscious thought processing is something good because they are not conscious of their own thoughts, which means most folk have no conscious idea of what they are doing while writing poetry, which makes everything a hit and miss affair while folk try to conform to poetry board opinions which are also mostly formed unconsciously/subconsciously.

Most of a person's subconscious thought processing of poetry is based on the things they have read and liked, call it subconscious pattern matching.

It is sort of like someone is being super-authentic and pouring their hearts out while remembering their late mother, and they end up writing a 3 minute pop song, with AABA form. Is that a coincidence? Is it calculated? Is it something else?

[Jim Moonan]

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Originally Posted by Yves S L

Jim,

I don't think you get what I am saying at all, at all.

You’ve pulled a Prufrock on me : )

Aye, there's the rub. (That’s me pulling a Hamlet on you ). We can never know the true intent of what someone might say. What one person says is easily subject to be understood by another to be something different. What I had wanted to say was I don’t care much about the scaffolding of a poem. Perhaps that’s my achilles heel as a poet. I still have not acquired the skills involved in the craft of writing poetry. I am a wild child in that regard. A Peter Pan with Tinkerbell qualities. A Rilke wannabe (Though I know Rilke was an exacting, disciplined poet who labored over his poems.) In the Tower of Poetry, I play in the basement dreaming of what’s above).

So now we both have misunderstood each other. You’re right to push back on my minor rant against the formulaic aspect of metrical poetry. I apologize if I seemed to be pointing a finger at your critique. I actually saw everything you were saying. I just felt the poem was being picked apart (though all agree it is a good poem) and that it was being given what felt like a post mortem. It is my insecurity showing, I think. I am not a formal metrical poet. I’m ragtag. Whenever I venture through the door and into this metrical board, I do so on cat's feet.

Carry on. I’m learning.
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