[Maryann Corbett]

On Bloomfield

Our beards are soft and gray as morning ash
endowed with parables and cigarettes.
Our coats, a vagary of petty cash,
describe the button holes in safety nets.
And if this station cracks beneath our boots,
the cold, erasing rain may knit us suits.

[Philip Quinlan]

This poem is a bit of a puzzler.

The only sense I can make of the title is that it is the name of a town (probably one of several) in the U.S.

I was trying to acclimatise myself to the idea of a beard being endowed with parables and cigarettes (I failed) when I realised that what the first two lines (as a consequence of the lack of punctuation) actually mean is that "morning ash" is so endowed. Stumped then.

The rest of this appears to make even less sense.

I googled "Bloomfield Station" and what do you know? there is one in New Jersey. But that didn't help any.

To have chosen this, Wendy must have got it. So I'm assuming there is some U.S. code in here that a humble Englishman couldn't hope to decipher.

But coats can't describe and rain can't knit. I know this. Illogical ideas, but not startling enough to count as truly surreal in an unsettling or disturbing way.

I look forward to Wendy's elucidation and comments.

No idea who might have written this (unless someone like Allen T, who sometimes comes in from left field...)

Getting ready to kick myself in due course...

P

[R. Nemo Hill]

This is a marvel to me. As for some of the apparent lack of logic to the description, I can only say that the impression I got was that of gazing in reverie at an everyday scene in an everyday place (Bloomfield = Everytown) through a veil of some sorts: a wet windshield perhaps, on a gray morning; or maybe eyes still full of sleep during a morning commute. The paint-by-numbers postcard has been dipped in something viscous and melancholy that makes the colors and the sharp edges of reality run together. As such, it paints a mood with words, rather than talks a picture.

Such an approach might prove too dense in large doses, but sized like this I think it works perfectly.

Nemo

[Tim Murphy]

It left me cold. I'm sure that its difficulties can be puzzled out, but it doesn't motivate me to make the effort. Perhaps Wendy can educate me.

[Carol Taylor]

Maybe it wants a reader who assumes that obscurity equals profundity. The problem with this poem is that it is four lines too long. The writer should have stopped with the two excellent descriptive lines, 1 and 3, and left the conclusions to the reader. If Bloomfield Station ever cracks beneath my boots the last thing I'll worry about is a new rain-knitted suit.

Next?

Carol

[Robert Pecotte]

It appears, to me, to be a riddle.

I’m not good at riddles; to little zeal for that kind of quest. If it’s not a riddle, then I do not understand it at all. That could be a sign of my stupidity, many things are, but then again, it could be a sign pointing to limited appreciation for this particular poem do to its apparent opacity.

Fr. RP

[wendy v]

Well, it’s a killer. I see it as a poem about the homeless at a train station. No sooner does the subject appear than we’re given that devastating image of erasure. This poem shows us just how much atmosphere, imaginative thought, and empathy, can arise from a mere six lines. Every word is intentional and purposeful , yet the poem does not appear beholden to the intellect. Rather it appears beholden to, and emboldened by, the emotion that conceived it. A real lesson there for all of us. To give the intellect its secondary due: I imagine the imagery and the undisturbed meter would mean a great deal less without…well, without what feels like the holy ghost of restraint. Beautifully handled.

[Robert Pecotte]

Give the intellect its secondary due? You can’t read this poem without it, much less figure it out by placing the intellect second. Emotion over intellect is the life of an animal not a human being. Intellect informed by emotion is human.

I thought of the homeless but then the last few lines lead me away from that, into riddle land.

Sorry, but I’m not with it.

Fr. RP

[wendy v]

Bless me father, for I have sinned. ; )

[Michael Cantor]

I love it (and I'm pretty sure I know who wrote it), and to me it's a creative spin on a snapshot of early morning commuters, dreary and depressed in a cold rain at a gray station in a gray town, seen through the lens of mentally and visually bleary eyes, and turned into something else. And it reminded me of the Unreal City section of The Wasteland, and I cannot not like anything that reminds me of that faceless crowd. It's a painting as much as a poem, and you wouldn't look at a painting and complain it's obscure or puzzling (at least I hope not) - you'd go with it. I think poetry deserves the same - certainly for six lines. This might not work nearly as well if it was a much longer poem, but for a six-liner - oh hell, climb on and take a ride on the railroad. (Or, whatever you do, don't read In a Station of the Metro.)