Hi Tony

I agree on the Eliot and thanks to Matt it is resolved.

Repeats? Predates William Carlos well and truly. @Break, break, break” of Tennyson for one.

I feel the ending has to echo the message.

Thank you

Jan

Jan, I should clarify that part of what I meant by “not well read” is that of the things I’ve read, I often seem to forget supposedly unforgettable details, as was the case here with “Prufrock” and the spoons. Part of being well-read must be assimilating well what one has read, or at least rereading the material until good assimilation has occurred. But I was enthralled by “Prufrock.”

Now you have changed things so that the first two and the last stanzas contain one rhyming pair each, of the same rhyme sound for both, while the third and fourth stanzas have between them an identity rhyme in the second and first lines, respectively, and a rhyme in the last lines. This is an even less clear rhyme pattern than the original’s.

It seems to me that “close to closed” would be the more correct form, grammatically—otherwise, a reader must assume an unspoken article before the second “close.”

I hadn’t realized that about the owls. Your reference makes your allusion much more apt—but how many will be aware of this reference?

Oh, dear—yes, it’s quite true!

Okay; it doesn’t feel like much of a shift of thrust to me. I simply hear you saying here that the men have returned to a state like childhood and that and the factual details they remember have been separated from their original psychological significance. These concepts, while not explicitly stated earlier in the poem, are well enough implied by it, I think. To me, this part would come most alive and feel most new and compelling if delivered as illustration.

Definitely improved! The Eliotesque stanza ends very strongly now. Excellent revision. To my taste, I still feel that "number" and "markers" are close but not quite right. Maybe you could do some kind of pun on "order" since they are ordering in a coffee shop? Or somehow pun off of the "numb"ness inside of number?


They number coffee cups
as markers in their lives.
Beyond their work, what’s left?
These cups of emptiness.

Hi, Jan. I've been watching you wrestle with this one. I'm commenting on the second revision. For the most part, I enjoy what you're doing here.

Throughout, I'd like to experience a bit more rhyme. The 'eh' rhymes at the close of each stanza feel a bit too far apart to me. The stanzas that use 'eh' rhymes in L2 as well as L4 float my boat a bit more, and having all the stanzas do that would do a lot to reinforce the poem's theme of repetition and predictability.

S1: I like the poultry associations of "clutch." At first I wondered why you used "repeats" instead of "repeat," when the subject seemed to be "life and words," but then I realized that "life and words" might be the object of "stumbling," and that "stumbling" must be the gerundive subject (rather than a participial adjective modifying "life"). But "to stumble" doesn't take an object, does it? "To fumble" does. I also wonder if some metrical irregularity there might illustrate the stumble/fumble/jumble. Perhaps:

Their jumbling of life and words
repeats, again, again.

Standard caveat: I may be completely misreading both what I see and what I think your intentions are.

S2: Why the shift to past tense ("sat") here?

A parliament of owls
sat perched upon the edge
of losing memories,
regurgitating them.

Or are you treating "sat" as a past participial adjective to describe the owls/old men, further modified by "perched"? So there's not actually an active verb in that stanza at all?

I would be inclined to make this

A parliament of owls
perches on the edge
of losing memories,
regurgitating them.

Losing an unstressed syllable at the beginning of the second line fits with the concept of losing things.

The lines that end with the word "lives" seem a bit too close together (bolded below), making it harder to find the intended rhymes:

They number coffee cups
as markers in their lives.
Beyond their work, what’s left?
These cups of emptiness.

The circle of their lives
Is coming close to close.
Demeaned as demented,
they’re children in regress.

"Demeaned as demented" feels unsatisfying both metrically and logically. Who are these unseen people demeaning them, and why should we care what they think? How are they relevant? Is the narrator one of them?

L1, L3, and L4 of this stanza seem to need punctuation:

Ideas beyond them now
just people and events.
Tired in the dying light
they let the years condemn

I hope I've said something useful here. Again, I enjoyed the imagery here.

Alexandra, Tony and Julie,

My thanks you have pushed me and I am grateful. I feel I am much closer in Revision III which I now have to leave for a while to regain perspective.

Jan