Arrow!!!! Thank you soooo much for your reading, Arrow! Yes, the zeitgeist. I was definitely tapped into a strange world convulsion, I think. I didn't expect these lines at all. All I had was a line that came up from sleep with me when I was waking one morning: 'when don't turns into do'. I wrote it down, which is not something I usually do. At the time I thought -- how liberating! Just as Rick put it "The power of the uncontrolled once we open up and realize we don't have it under control." I mean, we're so held back by 'don't's in our lives. It's as if we learn them so much deeper than we learn the 'do's. The trouble is, when you let everything out, everything DOES come out. Everything. So I am hoping that something complex comes through, something unsettling.
I think you're onto something with the ending. I can't see a way at this moment, but I know I need to keep dreaming it. I don't want to step in with my reasoning boots on. I want to wait to see what the poem wants . . . thank you for your guiding eye!!!
Dearest Jim! Hahaha!! No, not a drop of water in sight! HA. I'm so glad you had that giddy-up feeling! It needed to rush in an onslaught of images, really. I agree with you in that I don't think the poem wants to GO anywhere beyond that "moment when don't becomes do" as you put it so beautifully. I am also very glad you can follow the metre like a ride. Variation is the heart of metre to me. It comes alive through irregularities. It's just who I am. I love bouncing along rather than a smooth ride.
You locked onto the very thing I couldn't solve. The title. YES. Until moments before I posted the poem, the title was 'Untitled'. And at the last moment, I thought perhaps that's a copout, so I went with the practice of using the first line as the title. So thank you! You were absolutely right. The title needed work.
Rickster -- you fixed it! Rickster the Fixter! How did I miss that? The first line as the title, then dive straight in! I love your reading of the poem. The glory of no restraint. But as soon as I started riding it, something crept in -- unrestraint applied across the board -- really scary things happen. The relationship between control and uncontrolled, restraint and unrestraint -- it's sooooo complicated and profound and layered. It's exhilirating with sinister undertones. Things can turn into their opposites so quickly.
Metre: I hear 3 strong beats per line, with some lines pushing to 4. It's a ride, I know. Lots of irregularties. But the 3 beat pulse is strong, I think.
I've gone with all your suggestions as you see. The capitalising was a great call. But I'm still too timid to close the space. I love my space!!! Ha! I'll see if I can go there eventually!! I promise!
Also, now I have 7 lines in S1 and 8 in the others, and I want to keep it 8 8 8, so I've got some work to do. I need to shift lines around, and try to come up with another line. So this could be how something might occur to me to adjust the ending, Arrow!
Thanks so much for your great readings, and great help! SO much appreciated!
Cally
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