[Elle Bruno]

Tribe
Mary Meriam

You wonder what is memorable.
You forget me.

What I find most unbearable
is to be forgotten.

So easy for me to feel your isolation,
your search for sisters, words.

The purple ink of the mimeograph,
freedom through fires, beyond barricades.

I see you bravely continue.
I wonder do you see me at all?

The old photograph is missing,
but you find the losing lottery tickets.

My heart beats faster when I think of you,
your stories, and what you’ve survived.

Summer melts away,
a soul en route to a port of call.

Faded blue sky. We’re familiar with
grief, and decades old.

[Richard Meyer]

I'm not getting the significance of the title. I'll let it work on me.

I find the strength of the couplets variable. The images in some are striking and incisive, such as

Summer melts away,
a soul en route to a port of call

but others fall a little flat on my ear, for example

I see you bravely continue.
I wonder do you see me at all?

Richard

[W.F. Lantry]

Mary,

I like everything about this, the diction, the tone, the direction. The only difficulty I had was that 'port of call' didn't sound absolutely modern. Does anyone say that anymore? Not a big deal, but pointing that out keeps me from sounding like I'm gushing!

Very nice indeed!

Thanks,

Bill

[Elle Bruno]

Hi Mary,
I didn't care for this poem much when I first read it but it has grown on me now so I'm happy to consider it again.
Perhaps knowing some of the thinking behind the poem from your previous discussion helps me put it in a better perspective.
I'm not sure that's quite fair when talking about the poem now, (insider knowledge!) but certain things, like the mimeograph, make more sense.
And a part of me thinks I should have figured it out with the clues in the first place.. But I didn't.
So I have a vague understanding that this a story of someone left out -both individually and collectively.
Someone who missed a historic moment perhaps in the feminist movement.
Maybe I'm still wrong. Ha!

I like the way the poem rocks back and forth.
Her/N Her/N
It is as if N would like to get away from herself but can't.
I like the couplets. Start/stop Start/stop

You wonder what is memorable.
I see this as 'her' having big ideas, a big picture of life.
You forget me.
And little N saying 'But what about me?'

and here it happens again:
I see you bravely continue.
Big her.
I wonder do you see me at all?
Little ol' N

This captures the movement well in a few quick words:
The purple ink of the mimeograph,
freedom through fires, beyond barricades.

and N's desire to be part of things, part of this person:
So easy for me to feel your isolation,
your search for sisters, words.

But always back to standing on the sidelines.
What I find most unbearable
is to be forgotten.

This is a sad poem.
I'm not sure my comments do much in terms of workshopping but those are my impressions of the piece,
which is surprisingly strong in my opinion.

Thanks Mary,
Elle

[R. Nemo Hill]

A free verse ghazal, this seems to have the ghazal's underlying mood of organization, its restless focus, with none of the formal devices. Interesting approach.

Nemo

[dorianne laux]

Hello Mary- I agree with what everyone has said about the strengths of the poem, but I'm a bit confused as to its subject. There have been some conjectures, but I just can't be sure. That said, I chose it because the lines that are strong are very strong: "What I find most unbearable/is to be forgotten" feels like a first line to me, and announces what could be the poem's very difficult subject. "Isolation... grief decades old". Since I can't be sure what the poem is about, I'll stop there and ask if you care to give us any hints. If not, that's fine, and I'll leave it at wanting to know more about being forgotten. It's a real human desire and fear and I'd like to see the poem enter into that very scary territory. If it is about the women's movement as someone suggested, it might help to single out a particular woman in the movement, someone on the sidelines. There's a section of poems in Doug Anderson's book, The Moon Reflected Fire where he allows minor characters from the Iliad and the Odyssey to speak. We love hearing from those who had no voice.

[Edmund Conti]

I wasn't sure what this was all about, so I read it again. And again. Which is a good thing. What I came away with was liking the first two and the last two couplets. Summer melting is jarring and ports of call are, to me, evocative.

[dorianne laux]

I've been thinking about this poem, and Elle's comment about it being about someone in the early feminist movement. What if the title gave it some context and we rearranged some of the lines thus:

Photo of an Anonymous Suffragette

What you find most unbearable
is to be forgotten.

Summer melts away,
a soul en route to a port of call.

Faded blue sky. You're familiar with
grief, and decades old.

So easy for me to feel your isolation,
your search for sisters, words.

The purple ink of the mimeograph,
freedom through fires, beyond barricades.

Does it help to know that my heart beats faster
when I think of you, know what you survived.


Again, this is a quick re-visioning, and maybe more is needed, but the reader now has something to hang the images on. -d-

[Edmund Conti]

That works better for me even without the title change.

[R. Nemo Hill]

I think, as a title, that Photo of an Anonymous Suffragette is much too flat & expository. I don't see why a poem has to be pinned down like that. I find it far more evocative of a human condition when left wide open. Beyond Barricades might make a nice title, but in the end I think Tribe is more mysteriously resonant.

The poem is not hard to read, only hard to ground. But since it is not hard to read one can read it over again and again and let the ground form on its own, gradually, layer by layer.

Nemo