Meeting a poet in New York at night
 

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Rev.1

..........For Josh

You're not a god: I think you gave up drinking
but not the city, which you still allow
to drown you in. You talk: as if you're sinking,
I hold your arm. Is it me, or Pentheus now

stumbling after his guide, girlish & blind
with seeing? Still, like him I half resist
listening, since if I listen then I'd find
myself starting to see like you: the fixed

& washed-up clarity of the drowned. You're brave,
more brave than me, with the city's needle-veined
Bacchae who've also learnt not to believe
in Presidents, or free will. Josh, who'd go sane

under the billboards' hectic mania?
or go cold turkey to the siren light?
You are the mask of my insomnia
noting each entropy, each half-life of night:

the blast shadows of bars that haunt us with
absence's red taste. There is no God
you say, who'd give us choice; but still it's this
old work (who'd pay?) that's chosen you: to hold

these ghosts atomed inside you from decay
as what night builds annihilates by day.

***
You're not a god: I think you gave up drinking.
But not the city, which you still allow
to drown you in. You talk: as if you're sinking,
I hold your arm. Is it me or Pentheus now

stumbling after his guide, girlish & blind
with seeing? Still, like him I half resist
listening, since if I listen then I'd find
myself starting to see like you: with the fixed

& washed-up clarity of the drowned. You're brav-
er than me with this city's needle-veined
Bacchae who've also learnt not to believe
in Presidents or free will. Josh: who'd go sane

beneath the billboards' on-off mania?
or go cold turkey to the siren light?
You are the mask of my insomnia
noting each entropy, each half-life of night:

the blast shadows of bars that haunt you with
absence's red taste. There is no god
you say, to give us choice, but still it's this
old work (who'd pay?) that's chosen you: to hold

these ghosts atomed inside you from decay,
as what night builds annihilates by day.
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Cameron, this time I’m in luck. I reread “The Bacchae” only a couple months ago. Easily one of the most bizarre and fascinating works in world literature.

You're not a god: I think you gave up drinking.
But not the city, which you still allow
to drown you in. You talk: as if you're sinking,
I hold your arm. Is it me or Pentheus now

In other words, you can’t be the god of wine, because you’ve stopped drinking, but the city hasn’t stopped drinking, and you allow it to drown you.

If you want the “which” clause to be conventionally grammatical, you need to lose “in” or add “it” at the end. (De-relativized, it’s “You still allow the city to drown you in.”) If it’s language play, then “drown in” sounds like a phrasal verb, “drown you in” becoming similar to “draw you in.”

stumbling after his guide, girlish & blind
with seeing? Still, like him I half resist
listening, since if I listen then I'd find
myself starting to see like you: with the fixed

It’s grammatically unclear who’s “girlish & blind” and resists listening, but while Dionysus and Pentheus in his getup are both “girlish,” only the latter is unseeing and unlistening. The N, like Pentheus (though probably not in drag), is being led into the drunken, stoned Bacchic revels of the city—potentially to his destruction.

& washed-up clarity of the drowned. You're brav-
er than me with this city's needle-veined
Bacchae who've also learnt not to believe
in Presidents or free will. Josh: who'd go sane

I get tet in L2 unless I stress “this,” which seems unnatural, and the line then scans as anapest + iamb + trochee + trochee + “veined.” Tet’s easier, and I’m fine with the odd short or long line, so forget I said anything.

If you’re addressing Josh, please use a comma, but Clarkean colonic philosophy suggests that you may be doing something else altogether.

beneath the billboards' on-off mania?
or go cold turkey to the siren light?
You are the mask of my insomnia
noting each entropy, each half-life of night:

With “You are the mask,” you move into different territory that I’m still trying to map.

the blast shadows of bars that haunt you with
absence's red taste. There is no god
you say, to give us choice, but still it's this
old work (who'd pay?) that's chosen you: to hold

“Red taste” sounds like the “red breath” of Zenkevich and Mandelstam. I found a great answer on the web to the question “What does the color red taste like?”—“Something like pink, only harsher.”

With “half-life,” “blast shadows” and decaying atoms, the dangers of drugs and alcohol shift toward nuclear annihilation and, with “entropy,” toward the heat death of the universe. It’s Josh, with his poetry, who is holding off the end:

these ghosts atomed inside you from decay,
as what night builds annihilates by day.

I suppose you mean “is annihilated.” I don’t find a suitable intransitive sense, so “annihilates by day” has to be understood as “destroys by day.”

BTW, Terence Stamp played a stunning Dionysus, but sadly only in key scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge4ynDhFVsg.

Isn't "abscence's red taste" just figuration around wine withdrawal?

The title drew me here.

I can't follow "the city, which you still allow/to drown you in," which would probably put me [grammar stickler] off at the opening of any poem, but particularly one about a poet.

(Among several ways of making sense of the phrase (depending on what is meant), the simplest would be to drop the "in.")

FWIW.

Hi Cameron,

Some thoughts. Feel free to disregard etc...

I don't mind "drown you in". I read it that the addressee has given up drinking but hasn't given up the city, the scene of the revels. He is allowing the city to "drown (him) in", like draw you in or suck you in. Yes, it's grammatically odd but it felt on the right side of creative use of language. I wonder if you need the full stop at the end of L1. As a complete unit of sense, L1 is quite confusing in terms of the relationship between the two statements at either side of the colon. Obviously, if the first line were "You're not Bacchus. I think you gave up drinking" that would be different. Anyway, might this work? (assuming I'm right about your sense, here)

"You're not a god: I think you gave up drinking
but not the city, which you still allow
to drown you in."

I really like the image here: "as if you're sinking,/ I hold your arm".

Pentheus was dressed as a woman when Bacchus led him, wasn’t he. But even if I hadn't just found that out via t’internet, it feels clear enough to me that it's the speaker who is "girlish and blind".

I wonder if L4 here is a little metrically busy. You have the substitution at "starting" then an anapaest on "with the". Could the colon do the work of the word "with", like this?

"myself starting to see like you: the fixed // & washed-up clarity of the drowned."

I'm not a fan of breaking "brav/er" like that. You've done it before and I've seen the point but here it looks a little bit ugly to me and I don't really see the necessity. Could it not be just "brave" then a change to the next line? The next line feels a little short anyway, like I could read it as tet.* Something like:

& washed-up clarity of the drowned. You're brave –
more brave than me with this city's needle-veined


I wonder if "go" sounds a little dull after the previous stanza's "go sane". Two "gos" in quick succession. What about "sweat cold turkey", (or something different, anyway)

I love this ending. The old work is, I think, poetry. I gave up drinking about six years ago and I was worried that it would mean I wouldn't be able to write. So much of my poetry had involved drinking, both in content and as fuel. I still love pubs and revelry, the romance of it. I relate, I think, to this.

Anyway, I like this poem a lot, Cameron. A nocturnal meander with an intriguing, somewhat sad, new friend, is what it feels like. I'm happy to do the googling to expand my classics knowledge when the poem is so intriguing. But, doesn't Pentheus get torn limb from limb at the end of this little excursion? Yikes.

Mark

* I see now that Carl makes the same observation.

Hi WT,


I often get the feeling that the extended myth conceit has a prophylactic effect on a poem. I worried by the end of the second stanza here, but you turn the whole out nicely, using the myth to very good effect.



I want back all the time I spent trying to like:

which you still allow
to drown you in.

It's so awkwardly ungrammatical that I don't think it's possible to land any kind of special effect with it.

And the "brave- / er" break seems to me a spoof on rhyming (or slant rhyming) that might work in a humorous poem. I think you can just go with the unbroken braver at the end of that line, because, yes, you hear the slant rhyme. It's no joke.

I love the ending.

I know Josh and have discussed drinking and God with him. We don't always agree, but I really like him and he's a very good poet. Yours is an interesting poem other than for the minor personal taste nits mentioned.

Rick

Revision posted
 

Thank you Rick, Mark, Yves, Carl, and Max.
Yves: that is indeed one way of interpreting the phrase: though synaesthesia is another, more personal version. Let the meaning creep in.
Max (and Rick and Carl) yes, I am interested in how much the use of "drown" as a verb would be noticeable. I am not willing to give it up, quite yet, but I would be interesting in any other comments on it: for and against. Sometimes it is good to have a prosecution and a defence. The poet is a jury and the defendant: the the witness.
Mark: what a wonderful critique...you are dangerous: you are beginning to make them your trade-mark. I have taken your suggestions. I do quite like the force of the two "go's" but I'll keep considering it.
Carl: I am not sure what the insonia line has that makes it so impossible? I've taken some of your suggestions—thank you, you are ever punctual with your curious expeditions into my land.

I was in two minds about the Bacchae here. It seems to have been accepted with embraces: I still wonder a little though. But there is something in the city that has that bacchic fire which made it seem so appropriate. Rick I am glad we have more matual friends.

Cameron, do you have synethesia? If not, then the meaning of "red" would have to be derived from association of red things (how do you think meaning is derived?), and if the red thing is not wine, then, at that point, the reader is making up their own poetry. I doubt there are many folk (Helen Keller and Evelyn Glennie who are probably in excess of 1 in a million talents) that can do the real time calculations to actually cross-relate senses (this can be tested): which of the infinite shades of red are we talking about? Do people interpret synethesia as some kind of heightened sensory perception, heightened cognition, something desirable and advanced? Are there not better way to use your senses? Heck, is it even the best way to associate between different senses?

Yves: yes.
It's not an intellectual mannerism. It is a physical experience.
Red: colour-wise: scarlet, a sickly-bright absence. But that is too many syllables.
As to poetry: as you have already demonstrated, there are interpretations outside of synethesiia, and inside: the poem delivers the reader extremely direct poetry, and therefore, there may be allowed moments where they can make their own. Still, that is not a great problem anyhow, if you object, as the description is not to provide its own non-synethesic interpretation. If the poem leads to the reader confusing ("deranging") their senses: I have no real complaints.

Impossible? I’d say it’s more than possible, even probable. What could I have said?