LitRev 'On the beach' comp
 

Here's the thread for the next Literary Review Comp. Deadline 25 January.
Send your entries for 'On the beach' to: editorial@literaryreview.co.uk

Sorry, I'm not up to kicking it off, like John does. Over to you lot!
(Who's going to be the next spherian to win £300, or £150?)

A reminder of the rules: max. 24 lines for a poem that 'Scans, rhymes and makes sense'

October Sixth

October sixth at Hammonasset strand,
And people in the ocean. (Even I,
Who hates cold water, swam.) The azure sky,
As hazy as a day in August, sand
And sea and sun and sound of the surf breaking
And seagulls scavenging and butterflies
And bodies baking and the gulls’ harsh cries
Seem distant as the stars from autumn-raking,
Which soon will happen on suburban lawns
As surely as the wind produces waves,
As surely as birds migrate and the dawns
Grow colder and the bats seek out cool caves.
Yet here I sit in sultriness and writing
And on an apple — not a peach — am biting.

— Martin Elster (6 Oct. 2007)

Martin,

Lovely sonnet. Two things struck me: First - 'Sixth' looks strange in words, for a poem's title; why not just 'October 6th'? Secondly, there are a lot of 'and's in it. In the penultimate line, athough I love 'sultriness', I wondered whether something like

Yet here I sit in contemplation, writing,
and on an apple - not a peach - am biting.

would work. It would get rid of one 'and'. Maybe you could lose another one or two?

I'd give my right arm to see you win either £300 or £150 in the LitRev sometime (well, maybe not the whole arm... ;))

Thanks very much, Jayne. I am considering your suggestions, which are good as always. Please don't lose any of your limbs just to see me win one of these! When Charles Ives won the Pulitzer Prize for his 3rd Symphony, he gave the prize money away, saying "prizes are for boys, and I'm all grown up".

You had rooted for me in the cowboy poem contest and thought I had a good chance with a couple of poems, but it wasn't in the stars that time. Should I keep trying? It feels like repeatedly banging my head against the wall. I'm just kidding; I've actually only entered that one LitRev contest (though I did give it my best shot).

One thing I'm not totally sure about is what to put in the subject box when I e-mail them the poem. I assume it's "On the Beach." Is that correct?

Martin

Revision

October 6th

October sixth at Hammonasset strand,
And people in the ocean. (Even I,
Who hates cold water, swam.) The azure sky,
As hazy as a day in August, sand
and sea and sun, the sound of the surf breaking,
Spry seabirds scavenging, the butterflies
And bodies baking, and the gulls’ harsh cries
Seem distant as the stars from autumn-raking,
Which soon will happen on suburban lawns
As surely as the wind produces waves,
As surely as birds migrate and the dawns
Grow colder and the bats seek out cool caves.
Yet here I sit in sultriness now, writing,
And on an apple — not a peach — am biting.


Jayne -- after some more thought, I decided to put back "sultriness" because I feel the couplet needs to remind the reader about the fact that this uncommon autumn day was very summer-like. So, even though I felt your suggestion about "contemplation" was good, I think "sultriness" is what is needed here.

Hi Martin,
You certainly must keep trying. The odds are long, as there's only room for four poems usually, but "You've got to be in it to win it" and you have as much chance as anyone else.

I usually put the month and the subject in the box, so for this one
December Competition: On the beach will suffice.

Hi, Jayne--

I haven't entered one of these before, and I have a couple of questions:

1. Are there further guidelines, besides what's in your post? I didn't see any more info at the LitRev website.

2. May one enter more one poem in the same competition?

Thanks.

Best,
Jean

I hope Jayne will forgive me, but I know the answer to both of these questions.

1. No there aren't.
2. You may enter TWO poems. I don't know how I know this but I do.
3. You didn't ask this but I don't think you are eligible for big bucks unless you subscribe, only the tenners. An online subscription is cheaper and sufficient. The book reviews are quite good in my opinion - worth the money.

Hotel
 

Hotel

Internet access with broadband and wifi;
we want to inform you but never intrude.
Mobile phone network in every location,
the air waves more crowded than cars on the road.

Chargers, adaptors are spread like spaghetti,
the modern executive always in reach.
Push the red button, record your own greeting
your mother can call you when you’re on the beach.

Personal digital friend to assist you,
each juicy new message a blackberry treat.
Human touch waiters like silver tray postmen
cancel your loneliness, it’s obsolete.

Just a personal take on the rhymes.

Intrude/road. A perfectly acceptable half-rhyme. Didn't question it as I read it.

Reach/beach - obvious but much better that way round than the other and the bland, matter-of-factness suits the conceit of the poem.

Treats/(obso)lete. No! I can't live with a plural that doesn't have to be there when it skews that rhyme so totally. Could you re-think along the lines of "juicy new message, a Blackberry treat" ?

This is a neat poem and too good to spoil.

John,
I would forgive you absolutely anything, my friend!

Martin,
I like the revision; it's much better with fewer 'and's.

Jean,
I'm glad you're now on board with LitRev. John's 1,2 &3 sums it all up nicely.

Roderic,
Glad you're on board, too! I agree with Ann; your poem can be 'notched up' a bit, and it also needs some punctuation in line 7 and the last line, though those may change if you're going to tweak it. But you're way ahead of me - haven't even got a glimmer of an idea for this one yet :confused:

John, thanks for those answers.

Best,
Jean

Thank you, Jayne and Ann, for the suggestions. I'll probably take those. Not sure if Literary Review admits stuff that half rhymes, scans and makes sense.

Then Who Shall Win?

Ghost crabs in moonlight scutter across a dune.
Though camouflaged as air, they’re not immune
To the potent peril inching toward their site,
A feral demon threatening to smite
Whatever’s in its way. Then who shall win?
Creatures with shell or claw or wing or fin
Check out when oil checks in. They can’t elude
The kind of predator described as “crude.”
When pelicans and turtles start to glisten
With grease, it means in due course they’ll go missin’.
When such contamination reaches beaches,
The throngs won’t swim or bask or savor peaches.
Yet that alone could be the opening
For piping plovers to come around and sing
Their fife-like tunes again. The shore will heal.
Nature, not humankind, is at the wheel.
How many centuries, though, will she need
Before even a ghostie comes to feed
On seaweed that won’t sicken? Crude is flowing,
And no one knows which way the tide is going.

— Martin Elster
(27 Nov. 2010)

If You Could Be a Beach

If you could be a beach composed of sand
Or shingle buffed and rounded through the eons
Or fragments of the shells of tiny peons
Of hydrospheric life, you’d understand

The feel of being tread on by the feet
Of bipeds (bird or human), being pecked
By beak, or surf-caressed, claw-scooped, or trekked
Across by sauropod and solar heat.

You’d hear the piping plover’s piccolo,
Be tickled by the trotters of crustaceans
Or, on occasion, bear the agitations
From heaves that cause the coasts to overflow,

Reaching to pinnacles where birds of prey
Survey the waves erasing nesting sites
Of turtles which, in Earth’s scheme, have no rights
(At least not when her lithosphere’s at play).

But what if you were you beside the sea,
Basking in the sun one afternoon
When Earth, for sport, decided she would spoon
Some brine atop your head? Where could you flee?

Better to be the beach and lick the salt
Rushing across your shelly, rocky tongue
Tingling from such cyclic thrills among
The rise-and-fall beneath the heavens’ vault.

— Martin Elster
(27 Nov. 2010)

Sunday at Knollwood Beach

While dogs plunge in the surf and boats bobble and dip
on the waves, his feet flounder on slippery stones.
He stumbles on algae and fights not to slip
as dogs plunge in the surf. The boats bobble and dip
where the scumbles of aqua resplend. Motors rip
the air like shark teeth, matched by gulls’ hollow tones
as dogs plunge in the surf. The boats bobble and dip.
In the waves his feet flounder on slippery stones.

Waves, tossing her skiff like a toy faraway
in a sea of suspense, aren’t as deep as the swell
welling up near this shore where the terns dive for prey,
as huge waves toss her skiff like a toy. Faraway,
a kingdom awaits her where pebbles won’t play
with her balance. He slips. Brine is all he can smell
as the waves toss her skiff. Round that toy, faraway,
the seas of suspense aren’t as deep as this swell.

(19 August 2009)

On the Breakwater

One summer night, when wispy moon had set,
and slothful sea lay tranquil, lapping shore,
and stars glittered, the two young women met
and walked with fingertips in touch, unsure
of where to go, and found a place to sit,
remote, and turned their backs on lights and town
to gaze, without a word, at darkness lit,
but hardly, by a thin gold line thrown down
by Venus, with no sound except the sigh
and suck of ripples, and an owl’s high shrill
screeching, at times, from hillside trees nearby.
Then one locked arms around her friend, until
she felt the fervor of her clasp could be
in rhythm with the stealthily heaving sea.


Based on the 1934 short story “Two Hanged Women”
by Henry Handel Richardson

I love your sonnet, Mary. I'm wondering -- since you are naming the moon, sea, and shore as if they were pronouns (which I like) -- if you might want to capitalize them with their adjectival epithets:

Wispy Moon
Slothful Sea
Shore

I really like the alliteration in the poem. Very musical.

Martin

This one's from the archives, but may fit the bill:

DARBY TO JOAN

How peaceful is the eve's approach, my love —
the setting sun draws shades across the bay
as gulls inscribe their arcs of flight above
the homeward yachts erupting through the spray.
Along the beach, the young folk still at play
cavort and frolic through the waves, and there
a young Adonis stands as though the day
is his, proud pecs and biceps bronzed and bare.

A sudden rapture lights your eye, my dear.
Reflection from the sun's departing ray?
A mirrored glory as the night draws near
and marshals its empyreal display?
The dawn of inner peace?
x________________xOr is it just
the candle's gasp—a last hurrah of lust?

oOOo

And another from the ragbag, which may be seen as either too dated or too apocalyptic.

VIEW FROM THE BEACH

A stone upon the pond of apathy.

Concentric circles ripple, swell and lift,
surge shoreward, whipped by urgent energy
exploded from the subterranean shift.
Along the old defense, the tidal suck
exposes hidden bedrock in relief,
returns in folds; the scending mountains pluck
from harbour, hovel, hold, their toll of grief.

Apocalypse? A ravaged earth's revenge?
The mindless consequence of time and tide?
Or, hapless victims of the social fringe
that marks an ancient have/have-not divide?

Dumb ribbons of detritus and debris
cast question marks across the bloated sea.

oOOo

Track-Maker

You scent the steamy morning air
While crawling up onto the beach
This day which we could never reach,
Even in visions. Everywhere

Cycads, ferns, horsetails, scale trees
And Archaeopteris’s fronds
Lounge around the coastal ponds
To supplement that ancient breeze

With oxygen, allowing you
To breathe and grow and colonize
The land. Quick-darting dragonflies
As large as cats regard you while

Your hunger causes you to chase
Invertebrates. Though you now creep
Across the sand, you’ve kept the deep
Inside your blood — as did our race:

We swam in warm lagoons, and so
Our skin became devoid of down;
Yet endless locks hung from our crown
For swimming with our kids in tow.

Why do we still adore the shore?
You loiter in our memory,
While surging through us is the sea —
And will no matter what’s in store.

(28 Nov. 2010)

[Poem removed by author.]

here goes nothing
 

Holy moly, people are pulling out all the stops on this one, while I, like Jayne 2 days ago, am still searching hungrily for an idea. Perhaps this is what's troubling me, deflecting the muse:

The fuzz in Texas are a pain.
They've busted Willie once again,
A Texan of whom – say it loud –
His home state should be mighty proud.
What kind of bottom-feeding assholes
Would want to give our Willie hassles?

That made me laugh, Bazza. Here's another one I came up with today.

[This poem found a home.]

Martin - I love your turtle.

moot point
 

I'm thinking of pairing 'suit' with 'hirsute' on the grounds that in standard pronunciation we insert a 'y' between the 's' & the 'u' of the latter but not the former – ergo, true rhyme. Any thoughts?

bazza

I take it you mean between the first two letters of the latter's stressed syllable? Works for me. Room/perfume, do/view, etc. Do it all the time. Go for it.

Peter

h'm
 

Thanks for your reply, Peter, & for clarifying my foggy, inaccurate expression, which I have now corrected. But your examples don't quite fit the issue that's concerning me, which is about homophones v. true rhymes.

Bazza - that would be a true rhyme in my book - suit/hirsyute/you beaut.

Thanks, Cally. I don't think I am doing the equivalent of rhyming, say, 'loot' with 'lute' or 'bare' with 'bear' & I want to keep what I have written, but I'm glad of supportive comment from other practitioners.

bazza

John - I'm glad you enjoyed the turtle poem. That's nice to hear. Thanks.

good one
 

I'll add my appreciation of your verses to John's, Martin, with the proviso (my mind has been on homophones) that the 'muscles' in stanza 2 line 1 of 'Beached' should, unless you are writing an entirely different kind of poem, be 'mussels'. I hope that the aesthetically conservative litrev will twig your intricate rhyme scheme.

bazza

It still works for me, Baz. The way I see it, you are rhyming suit with yute, or to use another example, a la Cally, boot/beaut, coot/cute where the true rhyme lies in the oot/ute pairing. My two bob's worth.

Peter

ta muchly
 

And well worth it. I'm going with 'suit' & 'hirsute', that's absolute.

Beaut = byoot, if you see what I mean. And cute = kyoot. Imagine a word 'yoot' that means, oh frog-eating surrender monkey. Does it rhyme with 'boot'? Of course it does. Therefore... but you see where I am going?

I am not totally convinced by the above, but I can't see what's wrong with it.

moi aussi
 

et merci, Jean.

DAY AT THE BEACH

The two extremes
that life can reach:
a stick in the eye,
a day at the beach.

And everything else
can be said to lie
between the beach
and the stick in the eye.

the ideal beach
 

Whisperings of the absolute
on this sand crescent where I lie....
nobody wears a bathing suit,
and lovely women wander by
more depilated than hirsute
under a perfect sapphire sky.

The sea's near eighty fahrenheit,
the beach as clean as sanctity,
while bleached hues colonise the light
that licks the surface of the sea.
What treats might tempt my appetite –
encrusted oysters? Chilled Chablis?

The shore shack serves a seafood dish,
the fruit of this platonic bay.
I savour molluscs and fresh fish
till, as the mirage pales away,
I drift from the fulfilling wish
to face the same-old-same-old day.

Thanks, bazza, for your kind words about my efforts, and for spotting that typo.

I like your approach to this theme and the musicality of your poem. Very nice. "Suit/hirsute" is a perfect homophone to me. Both of my rhyming dictionaries say they rhyme.

Strangely beautiful, Bazza.