Memsical!!! YAY!!!! Yes, it was funny how the initial caps felt right, but once the poem became more itself, they felt wrong! Those lines feel alive, I suppose, because they are exactly the world I'm living in at this moment—the slowed-down midwinter world with deep rain and critters nibbling the stalks in my veggie garden! These are the things of the world that hold me in place.
ARROW!!!!! I am SO glad you feel this way! And I know exactly what you mean. The original poem came out all in a rush, all there. Strange baby! I didn't know what it was, or what to do with it, which is why I posted it. As always on the Sphere, getting reactions truly helped me begin the cold work process. After that first hot rush of image and sound—the settling and chiselling, helping it find what it needs to be. I think at the time of writing the original version, I was really feeling a mood in the world of fractured haste, of restraints coming off—things that need to be in place, of being bombarded with superficial messages. I try to stay away from the news, and never use 'social media', but I must have been reading too much that day, and I just felt like WHOA!! But you were right that the ending wasn't right. It just wasn't there yet. So, love you, and THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! -------------->>>>>>>>
Yves! So glad you see the improvement! I like the sound of piss together with circus in the next line. And I've always loved witch's bottles filled with urine hidden in the walls or floors as protection against bad magic. If the piss leaks, good magic loses its power. I kind of like the word "piss" in this context. BUT I will keep the line under consideration, I promise! Thank you!
Carl, first, no need to apologise! Siham, Rick and Mary taught me so much in my beginning days as a poet. They were part of my 'singing school'. Also, it might interest you that the Dylans as we call them in my house, too (Thomas and Bob), are what we brought my daughter up on. I believe if you steep children in the Dylans from birth, they are set for life!! The joy and play of language never fails them. I do know after the last 15 years of writing poems, that I'm not drawn to the poetry of ideas but to the poetry of song-making. I don't know what it means either, but I think when this kind of poetry is done well it is still possible to talk about it, to riff off it, to feel soul-nourished by it, to dream on it. I feel like I'm trying to tap into something that is quite beyond me. The surface-social consciousness is responding to the moment to moment bombardment of impressions and news cycles, unrestrained impluses and vanities and demands , while the lower level where eternal verities, instincts, deep rhythms, bedrock stuff keep me steady. It's a pre-literate language for these things that I'm trying to tap.
This is what I hope for, but succeeding is a VERY different matter!
I hear what you say about losing the clear groove, and I know I could smooth it. But I'm drawn by a sort jazz syncopation, and also by sort of pushing the note (STRESS) so it is becomes part of the next word. Stresses for me aren't as simple as OFF and On. It's more like phrasing. I don't know how to explain it, except to tell you that I learned SOOOO much about phrasing from Frank Sinatra. All the amazing Jazz singers who do this amazing bend off the beat, carrying it on further than it has a right to! Yet it works! When I say it aloud, the Etna line, I can bend the sound into three uneven stresses.
I get, too, that the difference between 'don't' and 'do' is hard to parse in the poem. I think I read it as showing that 'don't' and 'do' are somehow inseparable; that one becomes the other. Realities shift, perspectives shift, norms crumble. One of the poems that is life-blood to my poetic life is Wordsworth's Intimations Ode: "the things which I have seen I now can see no more". There's something of that in the first part of the poem, and perhaps the poem revised itself into something more like what Wordsworth felt by the end of his great Ode: there is something deeper than tears.
I am very glad for your engagement with this poem, Carl! All the points you raise are so interesting for me to think about, and consider as I revise.
John, I love your response. I feel as you do. I love wonder, and wandering, too. I know just how you feel. I don't understand, either. It amazes me that I've reached this age, and I've studied and I've paid attention, and still I don't understand. And I don't feel any need to any more. The soul, or the imagination, or whatever word one wants to use, clearly wants something else. As you say 'to look and touch and reveal'. That's beautiful, John! I had to give a talk a few months ago on the subject 'What is Poetry". HA. Anyway, I used as a mantra throughout the talk the line "we are in danger of losing our senses." We need poetry that brings us back to our senses. It really is, it really can be, the most physical of all the arts. Thank you, John!!
Nemo. Thank you for yes and thank you for 'dew'. I knew it was right as soon as you said it. Also, what Mary said!!!!
Thank you so much EVERYONE for helping me pull this into shape! It really took the village! Honestly, every kind of crit, every riff, every single angle, everything! I honestly use all of it. Nothing any of you say is wasted. It all helps me.
Cally
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