Michigan
 

Far from Michigan

Michigan looks like a mitten, she said,
and home is the crook of the thumb.
She gave me a dry avocado stone.
Mystery struck me dumb.

Memory sets like a weave in the mind,
it binds it, or else it expands —
the hem of a dress, the comb of the sea,
bladderwrack strewn on the sands.

None of it real now, some of it true
and all of it moulded by time.
Dive down the sofa, tobacco-stained fingers,
pale dregs of the evening still shine.

What ghosts, what shipwrecks, fall down the cracks
or hide under rocks like a newt.
Sometimes a day can be stranger than years,
like the stone of a puzzling fruit.



S1L2 was "and I grew up just south of the thumb"

S4L1: "shipwrecks" was "galaxies"
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It’s hard to make Michigan mysterious for someone who grew up there, but I love how you’ve done it. I love the deceptive simplicity and childlike wonder, expressed so beautifully by the anapestic ballad form—a favorite of mine. One metrical glitch for me is “and I grew up just south,” which might have worked as two anapests later in the poem, but comes off here as three iambs. (The phrasal verb “grew up” is naturally stressed on “up.”)

Three more trifling nits:

- Lowercase “From” in the title.

- Fix the typo “avacado.” (And aren’t you Brits supposed to spell “molded” with a “u”?)

- Add a comma after “years.”

I love “diving down the sofa” to bring up “ghosts and galaxies.” I wondered whether the N had been smoking or stained his hands on cigarette butts swallowed by the sofa, but that hardly matters.

I’m enchanted, Mark.

Like Carl, I enjoy the speaker checking the couch for lost memories. I just wish there were a little more for the reader to piece together. I presume that the speaker's intensity of feeling toward the mystery woman (girl?) makes her the beloved, and that S2 is scraps from a proverbial long walk on the beach. Had the speaker never seen an avocado stone before? Was it a nontraditional romantic gift? Was it totally out of place on the beach, what with avocado trees only growing in locales with mild winters? If not that, then what does Michigan have to do with it?

Metrically, there are a couple rough spots for me:

- L2, as Carl notes. In addition to "grew" being suppressed by its particle, "up", I want to stress "I" and "just" on their own merits as well. Excising "just" could solve this at the expense of the precise meaning.

- Somehow I have a hard time letting the adjective "dry" suppress the secondary accent at the start of "avocado". Maybe it's a nonlocal consequence of the iamb at the end of the line? I'd rather save the iambic shock value for "struck me dumb" on the next line in any case.

- Since the lines open quite variably in this anapestic meter, I find it less than automatic to suppress "pale" on L12.

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Start with this: I don't quite get the logic/simile of the final two lines, but that's just me talking — a very puzzled thinker : ). But I think I will come around to liking it once I think more about it.

The final line is a beauty.

I feel like I've not heard before the comparison f the shape of Michigan being like the shape of a mitten. It is a wonderful sonic/alliterative visual and is carried forward beautifully as the vehicle for a memory that seems woven, at times snugly and at times loose-knit. The deep dive between the cushions comes seemingly out of nowhere but I roll with it to be a search for more fabric to the loose-knit memory — but it is lost. The metaphors work well together: the mitten, the fabric that is a memory, the search between the cushions — all woven together in a wild, imagist kind of way.

There are a few killer lines that hooked me (pun!) as I wove my way through the fabric of memory.

I love the imagery of the memory's ability to both bind together and expand — That's the imagination in high gear!

As to the poem, it feels like a recollection of a tryst with an American woman that still lingers and has become a part of the fabric of your life lived.

For the record, I think Michigan looks like a turtle head.
I grew up in New Jersey, which looks like a bow tie... Or the bust of an old man in a square hat staring at Pennsylvania... Or a widget you fidget with — depending on how much coffee you’ve spilled down you : )

Wonder-filled poem, Mark. Trademark Mark.

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For Michiganders, the mitten shape is a cliché, but not for the rest of you, I hope. For use in future poems: Lake Superior is a wolf’s head, Lake Huron is a backpacker, and Lake Michigan is supposed to be a trout, I think.

Mark, I think it is gorgeous. There are just a couple of spots where the syntax seems to me to demand a stronger punctuation than a comma: the ends of lines S2L1 and S3L3. But perhaps British conventions of punctuation differ from American ones in those cases. For me, the lack of stronger punctuation confused me about the meaning of the lines, which I had to reread to understand. I like your handling of the anapestic meter. It benefits from variation.

Susan

Hi, Mark—

After the first quatrain I expected a poem about an old girlfriend. You surprised me by dropping her like an overripe avocado and giving me a poem about memory. All of us have had the experience of a smell or a snatch of melody unlocking a flood of vivid memories that we had no idea were hidden away in the deepest recesses of our minds. All of us have realized that an experience that we thought we remembered clearly didn’t, in fact, happen that way at all. And all of us have been puzzled by the oddness of the associations among experiences that we sometimes make. How much of ourselves have we forgotten irretrievably?

I had to look up “bladderwrack.” It’s my new favorite word.

Glenn

Michigan looking like a mitten is a cliché for those in the know, living in or around the state, but I think it’s fine here. Anyway, she’s explaining to someone who doesn’t know in the poem. (Though it is impossible to look at the state and not think that.) My family’s house back in the states (in Toledo, where I grew up) is about 4 blocks away from Michigan—used to run up there to get fireworks (illegal in Ohio) when I was a kid. And I lived in Ann Arbor for a while when I was in my 20s. Great, great city, Ann Arbor.

Anyway, I like the poem quite a bit, Mark. Just some thoughts, fwiw. Mitten is nice in the first stanza as she is handing him a pit (stone). For me, that image of Michigan heightened the moment of her giving the speaker the stone—focusing in on her hand. Love that, intended or not.

Stanza 2 is beautiful. I, too, had to look up “bladderwrack.” What a fantastic word—like something from the Jabberwock’s world.

I stumbled over “Dive down the sofa, tobacco-stained fingers,” because “tobacco-stained” feels like something found from the past, but but after looking at it again, I think this is probably just me. (I have just recently lost those stains on my fingers...)

I love that the stone seems to hang over the poem and the possibility of growth vs. the lack of growth. You have such a wonderful voice in your work, Mark, and that is true here as well.

Hi Carl,

I'm very pleased it enchanted you. I fixed the spellings/comma/title. Thanks for your eagle eyes there. And I think you might be right about S1L2. I hadn't noticed it because, of course, I've been hearing it the way I wanted to. But yes, so early in the poem it could create a stumble before the metre is established. Anyway, I've tried an alternative to that line. See what people think.


Hi David,

Thanks for the crit, and nice to meet you. I can see that the poem risks not giving the reader much to go on and different readers will have their own tolerance for that. The vagueness, in a sense, is the point, that the details of the memory/narrative are less important than their lasting presence in the mind. Would you really want me to answer all the questions you pose, either here or in the poem? I will reveal that the speaker, and the poet, had indeed never seen an avacado stone before.

I think I'm OK with the metre on the "dry" and "pale" lines. I scan the first

She gave me a dry avocado stone.

As for "pale dregs", well even if "pale" is slightly stressed, "dregs" will be stressed more, so it still comes out as trimeter to me.


Hi Jim,

I'm glad you hadn't heard of the mitten thing. I was slightly worried that the image might be so well-known over there that US readers would just groan at the opening line. And even though Carl says it's a local cliche, clearly it's not completely ubiquitous. Yes, it was the sonics that drew me to the opening line. The events and people in the poem are a composite, which seems appropriate.

Thanks for your enthusiasm for this.


Thanks Susan,

Those commas you mention seem fine to me. But that's not to say you're wrong. Perhaps you're right about S3L3. I'm thinking. Thank you for "gorgeous"!

Hi Glenn,

Yes, it is more about "memory" than the specific memory. I wish it were better (the poem and my memory ha). I may well come back to it, to try to do it more justice.

(I know you haven't suggested improvements, I'm just thinking aloud).

Cheers all! One line changed.


Edit:

Thanks James,

I missed your crit when I was writing my response.

I'm glad the opening works for you despite it's familiarity. Thanks for the very kind words. It's great to see you here BTW.

I'll think about the "tobacco-stained" line. I know what you mean. That line feels like it's in the past but in the poem's logic should be in the present. And no, I haven't smoked in 10 years.

Mark, I agree that L3 and L12 technically scan. They are places where the rhythm is fighting the meter more than I would like.

Great new second line, Mark, and you get a gold star for “crook,” a charming and overlooked word.

Hello Mark,

So that first quatrain, the cadence of it, the weight on "mystery", come across as if the N had never seen an avocado before, and then wants to make a moment out of it; and the way the sentiment gets echoed with "like the stone of a puzzling fruit" with the emphasis on "puzzling" comes across to me as forced "wonder can be found in common every day things" trope.

Thanks for coming back, David. I can't quite see it myself but I accept I might be hearing it in a way I want to hear it. I know "pale" is a strong word to ask to be unstressed but I think in context it works to slow the reader down there. I'd be interested if others have the same issue.

Thanks Carl

Hi Yves,

You're right, the sense is that the speaker has never seen an avacado stone before. This actually happened to me. Someone handed me one and asked me to work out what it was and I couldn't. I don't think I ate an avacado until I was close to 30. The return of the stone at the end isn't supposed to invoke "wonder can be found in common every day things" but suggest a metaphor for how a memory of one day can remain central, solid and strange amongst the mush of years of surrounding memories. Probably over explaining now...

Cheers folks.

I've decided to change "galaxies" to "shipwrecks". It is more in keeping with the imagery. I think I was just enamoured by the alliteration with "ghosts".

PRO: “Galaxies” must have made that line pent. Why didn’t I notice?

CONTRA: A shipwreck usually lies on the bottom and doesn’t go anywhere, so the “falling” is hard to picture. (I’m saying this as if a ship or galaxy falling down the sofa wasn’t odd to begin with!)

What a wonder of a final image! But the fourth lines seems a little too hyperbolic, a little vague — to me. The "mystery" of Michigan or of the stone? It needs, I think, to be made subtler: paired down, it's too loud a line, without quite setting up a precedent for its loudness: it could be handled better. Would you consider "sink" instead of "fall"? I return, eagerly, to that last image.
Hope this helps.

I like it very much and have a few observations - no nits. There's an "M" progression from Michigan to Mystery to Memory. I believe you don't use "I" very often in poems, but prefer to make statements about how things work, or what they are, such as in the first two lines of S2 and the last two lines of S4. As always, your poems have much music: stone/struck/stranger, mind/binds, home/hem/comb, dive down/dregs, wrack/wrecks/cracks/rocks. I like how "moulded by time" reminds me of fungal mould. You use "down" twice: dive down and fall down, which seems to suggest actions of memory, which "sets," "binds," or "expands." If I were to use the word "didactic" about some lines in the poem, I would take it back since the suggestion of such is quickly followed by vivid images: hem of a dress, comb of the sea, bladderwrack. I think teaching is in your blood, and your poems search for answers like any student would, rather than preaching from a pulpit. As for the connection between an avocado stone and memory, I recently described certain of my memories as a tiny bitter rock deep inside me that needed to be dissolved.

Hi Mark,

As usual I’ll say what bells this rings for me.

Your first line leads me to “Michigan seems like a dream to me now”. (Simon & Garfunkel) which has the same metre.

I remember when avocados were something weird and wonderful in the UK. Kids around the country would suspend the stones over jamjars of water to see what they might grow into.These days my kids think that avocados are what toast is for.

Ah bladderwrack. Slippery slimy and popping under your toes as you ran along the beach. Fucus vesiculosus. We studied it for biology “O” level.

Tobacco stained fingers ferreting down the back of the sofa is also a familiar thing. It was usually where I ended up trying to find my cheap clipper cigarette lighters. And I would often dredge up long lost treasure there – from postcards to pencil-sharpeners, So “shipwreck” works for me. (And “crook” is just the right word too.) I didn’t quite get how the pale dregs of evening fit in there, but that may be because I thought the tobacco-stained fingers and the sofa was a single memory and I expected the final line to follow on from them, whereas I can see now that they are each isolated images.

I did enjoy the seeming self contradiction of the unreal being true. And the return to the avocado stone was very satisfying.

Cheers

Joe

Michigan's mitten-like appearance is news to me, but I like what you do with it.

Mary mentioned "didactic", and that's what I feel about the first two lines of S2 (which seem a bit vague and fuzzy to me anyway), but (as she also says, I think) the imagery redeems that.

I think I prefer "galaxies" to "shipwrecks".

The whole thing is a gorgeous experience, though.

Cheers

David

Hi Carl,

"What ghosts, what galaxies, fall down the cracks" was still tetrameter, I'm sure. David prefers galaxies and maybe you do too? I do think a shipwreck can fall down a crack, though. It could be balanced on rocks at the bottom of the sea, then slip down further into some even more mysterious crevice. I'll think about that line.

Hi Cameron,

I'm glad the ending works well for you. In a way, the ending explains the beginning: it's the fruit stone that is the mystery, the "puzzling" thing.
What would you think of something like this?

Michigan looks like a mitten, she said,
and home is the crook of the thumb.
She gave me a dry avocado stone.
I held it. It struck me dumb.

But then, I do like the way "Michigan/Mystery/Memory" fall down the side of the poem, as Mary points out. Again, I'm still thinking. And I'll think about "sink" as well, which could work. Cheers.

Thanks Mary,

I do like the feeling of making a statement, I think perhaps people shy away from them too much. I hope they don't have the negative connotations of "didactic" though, which is defined as

"intended to teach, particularly in having moral instruction as an ulterior motive.
in the manner of a teacher, particularly so as to appear patronizing"

If the statements were along the lines of "racism is bad" then they would be didactic but hopefully the examples you point out in the poem are more mysterious than that: subjective ideas presented as objective fact, in a way for the poet to understand them him/herself. I'm glad you like this. I really love reading what you see in the poems.

Hi Joe,

You're right about the Michigan line, though it honestly hadn't occurred to me. Now I can't help singing the opening of the poem! What a beautiful song that is. I'm glad lots of things resonated with you. And I'm glad you undertood the exotic qualities of the avacado. Also, there's something very strange about the stone when it's dry. It has a quality of polished wood. Thanks!

Hi David,

Thank you. I'm thinking about galaxies vs shipwrecks, and other things. I quite like the idea of saying something "fuzzy" in a very declarative way. There's lots of linked imagery in that stanza: weave/bind/hem/comb/, even the bladderwrack are like giant threads or hair. I'll take "gorgeous". Cheers.

Thanks for returning folks. This one is still percolating for me.

I’m late to this and have little to add except I like it. I’d never seen Michigan as a mitten. To do so is an example of how a naive, even youthful imagination, can make discoveries. This sense of youthful discovery is reinforced with the full end rhymes. I usually prefer more subtle rhyme but this works well here. It all adds up. I don’t see need for any changes.

Mark, “fall down,” like “grew up,” is a phrasal verb normally stressed on the preposition. That’s how I got pentameter. HOWEVER, accents can be shifty, and I don’t rule out the pronunciation “fall down the cracks.” I didn’t get it, but others may. I do miss “galaxies,” but sustaining the marine motif is also nice. I’m on the fence.

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I love "crook" but prefer "galaxies".
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Hi Mark,

I like it. I enjoy the anapaestic bounce. And I relate to the fondness for (some) memories, for digging them and reminiscing.

Dive down the sofa, tobacco-stained fingers,
pale dregs of the evening still shine.

This struck me as in the imperative, and as such didn't trouble me. As I read it he's telling his fingers to dive down the sofa, where I presume, more memories may lay in the cracks. There's still time left in the day to indulge in more memories.

One line puzzles me:

Sometimes a day can be stranger than years

Are you saying that sometimes a day (i.e. the one with the woman from Michigan) is stranger that the combined strangeness of several (relatively dull?) years? Somehow, to me, it doesn't quite seem to say this. Also the only overt reference to day is the present one (whose evening is upon the N). But that could just be me overthinking. Or are you saying something else? Or is this part of the puzzle?!

EDIT:

I guess it's in part the indeterminateness of "years" that leaves me scratching my head. I might say, "a day can be stranger than a year", or "a day can be stranger than some years". But absent a determiner, it seems more like years in general.

Though even then, I'm not quite sure what the comparison is saying -- how it works: Is the strangeness of that day more than the sum of the strangeness of each day in several years? So, the day was maybe 1000 times stranger than than the average day in those years? Or just that it was stranger than the strangest day in those years?

Now, what was I saying about overthinking this?

Anyway, maybe there's a clearer way of saying what you want to say here? Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks it strange.

best,

Matt

Thanks Matt, Jim, Carl and John

I'm going to stick with "shipwrecks" for now, I think. Carl, I see now how you got to pent, though by that point in the poem a tetrameter reading would probably be instinctive. Well, it's a moot point now, I suppose (unless I change it back!) :)

Thanks John

Hi Matt,

I'm glad you like this.

That's more or less it, yes. Perhaps you are over-thinking (or I'm "under clarifying" ) but you got there! There may be a better line, though. Thanks for giving it some thought.

Thanks again, everyone.