[Quincy Lehr]

The name of the game is this--a famous poem by a famous poet is below. Pretend that it was posted to Eratosphere for critique. This one would probably be on TDE.

SWEENEY ERECT

by Tom Eliot

"And the trees about me,
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me
Make all a desolation. Look, look, wenches!"



PAINT me a cavernous waste shore
Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,
Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks
Faced by the snarled and yelping seas.

Display me Aeolus above
Reviewing the insurgent gales
Which tangle Ariadne’s hair
And swell with haste the perjured sails.

Morning stirs the feet and hands
(Nausicaa and Polypheme).
Gesture of orang-outang
Rises from the sheets in steam.

This withered root of knots of hair
Slitted below and gashed with eyes,
This oval O cropped out with teeth:
The sickle motion from the thighs

Jackknifes upward at the knees
Then straightens out from heel to hip
Pushing the framework of the bed
And clawing at the pillow slip.

Sweeney addressed full length to shave
Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base,
Knows the female temperament
And wipes the suds around his face.

(The lengthened shadow of a man
Is history, said Emerson
Who had not seen the silhouette
Of Sweeney straddled in the sun.)

Tests the razor on his leg
Waiting until the shriek subsides.
The epileptic on the bed
Curves backward, clutching at her sides.

The ladies of the corridor
Find themselves involved, disgraced,
Call witness to their principles
And deprecate the lack of taste

Observing that hysteria
Might easily be misunderstood;
Mrs. Turner intimates
It does the house no sort of good.

But Doris, towelled from the bath,
Enters padding on broad feet,
Bringing sal volatile
And a glass of brandy neat.

[Mark Allinson]

Tom, you might have wondered why this thread has notched up 51 hits without a response.

That's because most of us are too-busy taking care of our kicked arses, cut dicks and crippled nipples to say a damn THING!

[Carol Taylor]

Tom, you might consider losing the initial capitals.

[Jim Hayes]

Cut Dicks? And Sweeney erect??

[Mark Allinson]

Ha!

That's right, Jim - a most disconcerting association of images!

Personally speaking, I would prefer a great poem to kick my arse, or cripple a nipple, rather than that!

Since it is Quincy's term, maybe he could tell us if he thinks Sweeny "cuts serious dick."

[Robert Meyer]

What Carol said.

Then I'd trash the epigraph. Who needs it? The first 3 quatrains are overfilled with fancy, but meaningless, junk. You possibly could salvage some of it, maybe a single first quatrain, something like:

Morning stirs the feet and hands,
reviewing last night's tangled dream;
it swells with haste a yelping sea
and rises from the sheets in steam.

Another thing, Tom, I realize that you are doing set of "Sweeney & Doris" poems; but I have some problems with the way you continually add characters that aren't used elsewhere, "Mrs. Turner" for instance. I think it is a distraction for the reader. I hope my work on this helps you. Good luck with it.

Robert Meyer

[Quincy Lehr]

Dear all--

Tom has asked me to reply on his behalf. As far as to whether the poem "cuts dick" or not, Tom is unsure (and squirmed visibly at the phrase when I brought it up), though his friend Ezra suspects it does.

On the matter of initial capital letters at the beginning of every line, Tom tells me that he maintains the practice not only for generational reasons, but also as a polemic against a certain class of writers of vers libre, whom, he says, have misunderstood what he and his buddy Ezra are trying to do. Indeed, he would normally post on Non-Met, but he feels he needs the discipline of iambic tetrameter for the time being.

Many of the characters can be found in a verse drama he is working on, though not all. As far as Robert's comments, he suggests that "Mr. Meyer should re-acquaint himself with the rudiments, at least, of Greco-Roman mythology, since the objective correlatives are the key to understanding the poem."

(He tells me he's about to start working on a much bigger poem, too, with the improbable title of "He Do the Police in Different Voices," but is afraid that it will be too long to be workshopable here. He'll let his buddy Ezra and his lovely wife Viv have a crack at it and see where it goes. If he doesn't respond, it's partly the big poem, and partly that he and Viv aren't feeling too well.)