The Oldie Comp no. 145 'Out of the Picture'
 

COMPETITION NO 145

Someone has to take the photograph, and in any case not everyone gets in the finished print.

A poem, please, called 'Out of the Picture'. Maximum 16 lines.

Entries to 'Competition 145' by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), fax (020 7436 8804) or email (comps@theoldie.co.uk) by 15 December.
Don't forget to include your postal address.

Algernon, you are not an ugly lad!
Someone had to snap the shot.
True, your acne pits are rather sad
and nothing seems to staunch that stream of snot,

but those are not the reasons dad refused
to let you stand with us. You see his chief
has made it clear: the man is not amused
by ugliness that dwarfs belief.

Now you enjoy those summer holidays
at ritzy beaches where the water's clear.
Those take a wad of cash and Daddy plays
nice fifty weeks in every year.

So put the gun down now. Your daddy's prick
of a boss will be here soon with that troll
he calls his "girl". Back in the closet--quick.
In this family everyman plays his role.

In World War Two my father served in Sicily
and North Africa. A captain and flight surgeon,
his job was to cut men out of fallen planes
and piece them back together again, not much fun,

he said, all of that daily commerce with the dead.
He showed his faded sepia albums one day,
old photos of him and a lady “holding up”
Mt. Etna’s smoke; so unlike my Dad to clown or play.

Her name was Kate. Her curls had once been red, he said,
faded now to olive-brown. A pretty nurse.
Said he thought life with her might have been pleasant,
but in all the photos her face was cut out; worse,

sixty years in Dad’s mind had made her prettier yet.
I think my Mom, armed with scissors, had hoped he’d forget.

Well, it's not a photograph so perhaps it won't do. Nevertheless...


Out of the Picture

When Holman Hunt was painting
His celebrated goats,
The wretched beasts were fainting
Inside their shaggy coats.

With no hats or umbrellas
To shield them from the sun
Those sorry little fellers
Deceasing – all but one.

The Scapegoat is the live goat,
The dead goats out of frame.
Yet they are there; the trembling air
Remembers just the same.

My soul is an enchanted goat
The poet Shelley nearly wrote

Out of the Picture

Whose thumb is that I think I know.
His face is not depicted though;
The shot he took is sharp and clear.
In Photoshop, the thumb will go.

Photographers harrumph and sneer
But once it's made to disappear
The thumb exposed there by mistake
Won't make the photograph less dear.

It's mine, okay? For heaven's sake,
I did not want the lens to shake
And so I used my hand to keep
It still, then felt my tight grip break.

The shot is lovely. Take a peep.
Ignore my thumb, and do not weep,
For I can crop this in my sleep,
For I can crop this in my sleep.

Roger,

I love this Frost-y rhyme - I do.
It's excellent, so well done, you!
It really ought to win, I think,
It really ought to win, I think.

Nice one, Roger. I think it should be "Whose thumb this is." And I found myself wondering (probably it's John's goats) if you might get some grazing sheep in there and play on "crop." Just a thought. I'd like to have some sense of what the subject is.

Roger,

I'm teeth-gritting envious.

Great suggestion about the sheep! How about instead of "take a peep" in L13, "grazing sheep"?

Hi Susan,

This is a very poignant poem. Two small things: did you mean to alter the rhyme scheme in S3?
And her face framed with curls he said were red, but olive now confused me a bit. We might say 'olive skin' but it seems a little odd to me to describe hair as being that colour.

I think a bit of juggling with that stanza might help. Good luck with this :)

Thank you Jayne, Catherine, Lance and Susan. Here's another crack at the final stanza that works in the sheep as suggested. Improved?

The shot is lovely, lambs and sheep
Still gambol in my camera's sweep;
I promise, there's no cause to weep,
For I can crop this in my sleep.

Hi Roger,

Good, but I miss the Frostian repetition of the last two lines.

Thanks, Susan. Maybe:

The shot is lovely, lambs and sheep
Still gambol in my camera's sweep;
And I can crop this in my sleep,
And I can crop this in my sleep.

Oh, so do I - miss the repetition I mean. And where did the sheep come from? Totally rhyme-driven, I think. What has happened now is that the little scenario that the poem showed me has disappeared.

It was like this: our inept photographer is showing someone (his light o' love, perhaps) a picture that he has taken of her. When she shows distress at his ineptitude, he blusters - then tries to tell her he can make it better...

Could you try something like:

The shot is lovely - dark and deep - (if that's not too cheeky!)
Ignore the sore thumb - do not weep,
For I can crop this in my sleep (x2)

Do Merkins use the expression "sore thumb" for an obvious intrusion? I do - and I bet Tessa does, too.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stick_...e_a_sore_thumb

Thanks, Ann. I may take that. Catherine's thoughts definitely struck me as valid, but I lacked the skill to execute, so the sheep may have to go.

I have no idea what these contests are/will explore-- here's one that might fit -- I originally titled it Natural Selection but Out of the Picture works too



Looking through old photos,
I found the one of all the boys
in brown, lined up in rows
before the barracks in a town
in France. My father never talked
about the war or purple hearts,
but always watched old movies
Friday nights where frail men
died, the fittest men survived.
I watched them too though never
really knew what they went through.

I took that photo to the funeral
home for all to see. At calling hours
some men came Dad knew. They
laughed together, cried some,
shared collective memory.

In the Valley of the Shadow of Death

The first iconic photograph of war
was Roger Fenton’s moonscape from Crimea.
We see a path and plain and little more;
no dead nor signs of death, or life, appear.

We know, as shocked Victorians could not:
the barren, shell-shorn place resembles Mars,
but for a galaxy of large round shot
that yawns to the horizon, thick as stars.

For all the emptiness his camera showed,
for years we've argued and researched the claim
some cannonballs were set out on the road,
as if that made the wasteland seem less tame.

At last, we've proved they were. Could one contrive
a better metaphor? The conscience palls
at what we’ve learned since 1855
of war and misplaced focus, which is . . . Balls.


Frank

Frank, intriguing interpretation of the title and intriguing topic.
Shell-shorn? Shell-torn?
Galaxy? The shot is shining or twinkling? 'Rows and rows' or something?
I took 'cannon-shot' at first as a measurement of range. Would 'big round shot' be a possibility?
You have 'ball' in the penultimate stanza. Is this to prepare for the punch-word in the last line? If not, maybe something like 'placed some iron on the road' or 'placed that iron on the road'.
Maybe 'science proves' as you have' showed' in the first line of S2?
'calls' seems a bit rhyme-driven and not quite sure what it means here.
Any possibility of a link to the actual photo?

The title should now link to Erroll Morris's exhaustive but fascinating essay on the photograph. Added 'shocked' in another place - took your advice on 'proved,' which I'd been debating. Thanks.

Editing back in, to say the scales have also fallen from my eyes regarding cannon-shot.

Frank

I think the changes are effective and it runs well. Can't see why Tessa shouldn't find it her cuo of Yorkshire. Let's hope for a right and left for you and Roger.

Hi Frank,

I like your poem and can't see that it's 'maybe not The Oldie's cuppa'.

At first I thought shell-shorn would be better as shell-torn, but I've since changed my mind; I think you have it right.
Just a few suggestions: I would put a semicolon at the end of L3, and the age-old argument for/against initial capitals looms again! Personally, I think this poem would read far better without them; to begin with, I read that 'But' as being the start of a new sentence. A comma would help after 'Mars'.

The barren, shell-shorn place resembles Mars,
but for a galaxy of large round shot

'atop the road' seems a little odd to me. Wouldn't 'along the road' do?

In the last line, three dots are usual for an ellipsis, and why not end with the slightly more punchy . . . Balls. with a capital 'B'?

Hope this helps a little :)

Hi, Jayne - I wanted to take 'along the road,' as well, but Fenton shot 2 views from the same tripod angle before getting the hell out of there, and though show a ton of shot along the road, but only one shows some balls also on the road, leading to the inquiry about which picture was shot first, balls-on or balls-off, and if "off" came 1st, was "on" "staged." And, if so, does it matter?

Anyway, thanks for the comments - I adopted all of the other suggestions.

Frank

Still slightly bothered by 'shell-shorn'. If the place is barren, a moonscape, Mars-like, then what was there for shells to shear? On the other hand, shells can tear up earth and rock. Having now googled the Fenton pic I wonder if 'wheel-torn' would be a possibilty, as well as 'shell-torn'?

If 'atop' is strange, could the idea gf deliberate placing be reinforced by 'set out on the road'? The cannonballs on the right on what seems to be the roadway do seem to be carefully spaced, those on the left on the edge more of a natural-looking scatter. Seem to be about 60 all told.

Anyway, best of luck with this, Frank

Thanks, Jerome - I'll try it. I want to stick with 'shell-shorn,' though, both because it looks as if the landscape was shorn of trees and plants and because it's one of the few pieces of license I could shoe-horn into what is a pretty reportorial poem.

Anyway, I think I have what I wanted, but my money's on Roger for this one.

Frank

Frank,

I think you have a fine poem here. It's not a 'throwaway' one, as many competition entries are (either topical or very specific) - it's definitely a 'keeper' and deserves to be seen in an anthology, beside Fenton's original photo, which you've captured the esssence of very well, IMO.

Maybe it's worth enquiring whether anyone's planning to produce a new volume of war-related poems?

Meanwhile, it would be great to see it, and Roger's, on the Speccie page :)