[mignon ledgard]

Matt,

Your poems are always an adventure, and your response to me makes me smile.

I did see the poem’s Daniel as biblical, and it’s why I Google-searched after I posted. Of course, I was searching to justify my interpretation, since it is known that we (only) find what we look for. Hmm. Ha. In a nutshell, from several sources, this made sense of my response:

Daniel was an interpreter of visions and dreams. He was single, reason why he escaped castration (he was not a eunuch.) But he was, indeed, circumcised, and not as a baby boy, but, according to experts’ calculations, between the ages of 16 and 19.

These are some of the links I stopped to read:

https://lifehopeandtruth.com/prophec...g-the-book-of-
daniel/daniels-three-friends/

As Matthew Henry notes in his commentary, “Their Hebrew names, which they received at their circumcision, had something of God, or Jah, in them: Daniel—God is my Judge; Hananiah—The grace of the Lord; Mishael—He that is the strong God; Azariah—The Lord is a Help.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Dani...e=U TF-8#ip=1

God blessed Daniel with the gift of interpreting dreams, and he rose to leadership positions within the Babylonian and Persian governments. In many ways his life was similar to the life of Joseph, who was sold into Egypt. (See Bible Dictionary, “Daniel.”)


I didn’t know any more about Daniel than the lions. I didn’t know about him being an interpreter of visions and dreams, and I had no idea about any mention of his circumcision, so it was easy for me to imagine that, at least, maybe, I had guessed correctly. Oops!

I love reading your poems!
~mignon

**The new title would not have made me think of a surgical intervention.
Uf!

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

I had the spoken part in and then out of italics, but eventually decided I didn't need it. I'll be interested if others had the same problem you did. I am trying to workout in what way you found it ambiguous, misread it.

I did warn you that it was one of my characteristically perverse misreadings.

Originally Posted by Matt Q

"Daniel, he hears them hiss" seems an odd construction if it's read in the sense of "The man from Del Monte, he say yes" (that's from a British ad). Is that how you heard it?

Or “Mistah Kurtz—he dead.”

Originally Posted by Matt Q

I'm not sure italics/speech marks would make a difference.

Quotes would do it for me, but don’t add them on my account.

Originally Posted by Matt Q

Isn't the "whose" in "Daniel, whose fishhook claws ...", ambiguous until you read beyond the line break anyway?

I took “them” to be the antecedent of “whose,” since it’s closer, and I don’t see Daniel as having fishhook claws, but that misreading was derailed by the question mark. I just have to do a little more backtracking and head scratching than your average Spherean aesthete.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

At surface-level, part of what I'm hoping to get across is that the poem occurs after God has intervened to save Daniel from the lions. And the lions (or their jaws) in his dream are asking him / taunting him about the "new beasts" he now faces. I'd be interested to know if that came across. Maybe the new title works against this. I'm not sure.

Led—and apparently misled—by an updated understanding of “intervention,” what I got was “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” as “Daniel in Detox” (Nemo’s persuasive reading). It never entered my head that the intervention was God’s and that live lions had preceded their bone jaws. “Now” and “new” were clues I failed to pick up on. The new title has the advantage of being less (mis)leading, but without getting me any closer to your intended meaning. Happily, my loss of a clear focus doesn’t detract from my appreciation of the poem, which I like quite a lot.

[David Callin]

Hi Matt. I am still finding the poem oddly resistant to your preferred reading of it. The post-intervention misreading keeps on stubbornly asserting itself.

I should go back and read the original biblical story, I suppose.

David

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Matt,

Just saw your response and query.

I think my calling the first stanza a bit of a slog had to do with having to come to grips with the narrative and it's meaning in the poem. That is established by the second stanza. There is also a comparative calmness that sets in in the second stanza, which is a fine effect, and it reads more smoothly. I had read the poem three times or so before my initial comment. Reading it today, more familiar with the poem, I am noticing less of a slog in stanza one.

[John Riley]

Matt, I do read this as what we would call today PTSD. Daniel has been traumatized and his dreams are disturbed. I read it as the rats not being real. I can't think of any single word or syntax changes that would make this more clear or delivered any better than what you've done. I do wonder about some confusion with the theme. What the poem is about. Is it more than a clever idea? I think these types of questions aren't often asked here and there have been many more poems with much less thoughtful themes posted, but this one, which takes a bible story into a modern conceptualization, is more open to the question.

The rats mock him by asking where god is now. Does god appear when it isn't time to make a point? Does god desert you when there isn't a crowd watching? It's also interesting he has no songs to heal his flesh, which suggests a paganism separate from monotheism. I think you have developed an intriguing narrative and theme. One a religious-minded person could ask themself.

I don't think the S2 works as well as S1. The Daniel story is set during the Babylon Captivity in Babylon, which makes the sea metaphor feel off to me. It's set between the rivers east of the desert. I've never been there but I assume there is river sand. However, the gulf is a good distance away so I don't know that the sea metaphor works. When Daniel prays for armour, and god ignores him, it questions if the rats are real or if he has been driven deeper into confusion. I assumed it was similar to "PTSD" because of the dream reference in S1. Leaving it unclear could work but I'm not sure it works yet.

Whenever one comments on a theme more than text you're out on a limb. I may be reading it all wrong. I have read it several times and thought about it, but that still doesn't mean I haven't missed the point.

I like the poem and hope something I've said helps.

[John Riley]

Matt, I've been thinking about my comment. I sometimes let what I read interfere with what I should say about a poem. Maybe it doesn't matter how far Babylon was from the sea or the desert. Maybe the sea metaphor works fine. I can't say 100% that information hasn't interfered with my poetry-reading mind. I'll have to leave it to you to decide.

[Matt Q]

Mignon, Carl, David, Rick, and John,

Thanks all of you for coming back. It's much appreciated.


Mignon,

Thanks for the research. I hadn't known that either. I guess that's one problem with writing a poem that uses references I haven't properly researched! Useful to know that changing that title removes that reading.


Carl,

Thanks for clarifying what was confusing about the spoken part. I went back and changed put the spoken part in italics. I guess "intervention" without "divine" was a bit cryptic. And yes, the new title isn't really doing that much steering. I'm pleased that the poem's obscurity isn't preventing you enjoying it.

David,

Originally Posted by David Callin

The post-intervention misreading keeps on stubbornly asserting itself.

Are you saying that even with new title, which doesn't mention intervention, you think of an intervention (other than divine intervention)? Could you say what sort of an intervention and what leads you to that reading?

Rick,

Thanks for coming back, that's useful to know.

John,

Thanks for your detailed thoughts on this. I think you're likely right that there's some confusion with the theme. Or at least, I think the poem probably doesn't quite make the sense I wanted it to, even if I explained it.

I wrote the poem after reading someone write about being addicted to opiate-based painkillers as a young man. When he finally quit, he found he had no tools to deal with anxiety, having been protected from it for so long by the opiates. He'd never learned how to face it, how to cope.

So the analogue here, then, was that Daniel, having been protected by God -- having been invulnerable -- is more vulnerable afterwards. The new beasts -- real or imagined -- are drawn to him because of this, because of his vulnerability, his unmarred skin is like a beacon. Daniel sees the world as threatening. And huddles in his bed, hiding from it. His mind sculpts the world into predator shapes. His den is "homemade" in that sense. He is "less blessed than other men" because the protection he once had wasn't a blessing after all.

So I initially wanted two meanings of intervention (divine and substance-misuse related). But, as I said previously, having the word "intervention" in the title, it seemed to take on too much weight when people tried to interpret the poem, without obviously helping to steer them in the direction I wanted. And no one seemed to spot the "divine intervention" aspect.

Plus I've never had a substance-misuse/addiction issue like the man whose troy I read, so it didn't really feel like my story to tell. Whereas, I do know a fair bit about anxiety, and (unhelpful) ways to avoid facing it, which is why the man's story stuck in my mind. You don't need drugs to avoid facing your fears. So I figured the maybe poem didn't really need the "intervention" aspect. But now I'm thinking it doesn't fit the Daniel as well if it's read that way (which wasn't to say it was perfect in the first place).

I definitely do see how you read it as about trauma/PTSD: He's traumatised by the real lions, and now imagines predators everywhere. Which is another issue for the poem.

On the sea metaphor, I think you have a point, and David raised a similar one, I think. In the first draft, there was more of the sea metaphor: the new beasts "prowled the shore". I was thinking of the sea as the unconscious, as the place of dreams, but the poem could do more suggest that. At the literal level, there is the definitely the question of why the sea is in the poem.

Often, if a poem works for me and works for others, I don't mind so much if we read different things into it. And while it does seem to work well enough for some readers, I'm not even sure if it quite works for me yet.

So hmm. Lots to think about. Thanks for pressing me on this one.

Thanks again everyone,

Matt

[mignon ledgard]

Matt,

I hope you do not change the poem. The risk of downgrading it is ominous. The anxiety of which you speak is well reflected, and the language is elevated in good taste: it is art.

If obscurity is what allows the different readings and does not boil the poem down to the anxiety with which many of us are acquainted, then, I suppose I like obscure poems. As long as interpretation(s) is are possible, the writing elevates the content. It is a worthy piece of writing - I would hate to see its original qualities diluted.

Besides, the anxiety you speak of is very much felt in the poem, no matter the interpretation.

In any case, please, leave the original up for comparison and continued discussion.

As for writing poems before doing research, I do the same and would not change it. I love surprises and, long ago, I learned that, no matter what I write, I will have lots to learn from researching 'after the fact.' It's not as much fun to write from recall.

It is a privilege for readers to have living authors who are open to discussion of their poems. But it is not a poem's duty to be explanatory.

Ay, ay, ay!
No scalpel to this poem, no no..

~mignon

[John Riley]

Matt, your explanation makes what you are doing clearer. You've chosen a difficult topic to develop using imagery. I know a little something about coming off opiates, and a variety of other things. I don't know how I would be able to demonstrate the anxiety and terror attacks so kudo for trying. There is a long period of waiting to be able to deal with anxiety without the drug. It's not an experience I'd wish on anyone except Trump. I didn't hallucinate but I'm sure others have.