Quote:
Originally posted by Lee Gurga:
Speaking of bowls, here is one that I have been working on this week that I am not sure if I am done with, but I thought it was only fair to put in some of mine that may not be completely raw, but haven't had a chance to simmer:
spoon in the empty bowl
you teach me how to read
the pregnancy test
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Hi Lee,
I may have missed something somewhere along the line in this enormous thread, but as far as I can tell, no one has taken you up on your poem here.
Personally, I like it a great deal. In particular, I like the sense of quiet domesticity in that image of spoon and bowl, the way it sets a scene in five simple words. And then, the image of the couple bending over the pregnancy test, at once gently comic and gently suspenseful--the whole thing comes together in a beautiful moment of sun-filled (forgive the pun)
expectancy.
That said, I wonder if it may not be vulnerable to "over-reading." Specifically, I'm thinking of spoon and bowl, and what "empty" might be taken to imply. If you wanted to, you could read that image as a metaphor for the larger relationship . . . and then "empty" takes on a whole new set of connotations, skewing the reading of the poem powerfully in one direction. Of course, there's no way of saying what the test result will be, and in that sense, such a reading--a (presumably unwanted)
negative result--is entirely plausible. Actually, if the poem is be productively "openended," the possibility is almost required--where would the suspense be otherwise? The thing about "empty," though, is that it seems to preordain the results--as soon as you read the word, and the poem, in that way (empty=barren), it suddenly becomes hard to read it in any other. In other words, it doesn't feel so openended after all--and the reading that we're left with isn't nearly so much fun. Frankly, I wanted to kick myself for seeing it.
Anyway, I wonder what you might try here in place of "spoon in empty bowl" that would get around this problem. I still think the breakfast table is the perfect set up, and I like the word spoon. But can you eliminate "empty"?
For some reason, I like grapefruit:
spoon and grapefruit bowl . . .
Just a thought. And of course, there's no saying what an overactive imagination might make of "grapefruit" here!
Steve C.
p.s. I
love your tipsy snail, chewing through the wine labels. It reminds me of something I found in the saijiki just the other day under "bookworm": *
shimi no ato / "hisashi" no hi no ji / shi no ji kana (Takahama Kyoshi)
trace of a bookworm / of "hisashi," the letter "hi" / the letter "shi"
kana
Almost untranslatable, but "forever after" for
hisashi ("a long time") suggests a way:
what the bookworm left:
of "forever after"
pieces fore and aft
(Hmm . . . A little too clever perhaps.)
* Note to all: yep, "bookworm" (
shimi) is in fact a season word in Japanese--for summer in this case. Sure, the little beggars are around all year, but summer is the traditional season for bringing your books out into the garden to dry them in the sun (another season word, "dog days drying" . . .
doyouboshi) and so that is the time when one notices their handiwork. As for why you'd want to dry your books in the sun, well, you'd have to live through a Japanese rainy season . . . mildew everywhere! Yuck.
* * *
Editing back: Lee, we cross-posted. I claim the honour! I'm the first little turd to pop cheerfully up again this morning. Flush!
[This message has been edited by Stephen Collington (edited October 20, 2008).]