[Siham Karami]

(A brief note on why this is in the Deep End; it’s metrical without end-rhyme, and I wanted to revive this forum to explore the use of irregularity - or too much of it - in a regular meter, and any other thing one might be bothered by in this poem.)

Revision 3

Elegy to My Heart

I know you dying and I know you alive
Captivated by a pair of hands
The harp glistens down its waterfall
And choirs rise above a distant dune

Vast orchestras know nothing of our rhythms
Entwined in a concerto’s tidal flow
The universe a waveform passing through
As intimate as fingertips and bones

So television news is now a ghost
Like Walter Cronkite’s sonorous farewell
And daily bread in mother’s radio
Drones metallic noise into the blue

And pain a swelling mountain urging on
And on and on the awful drumming falls
And yet you hold me in this pas de deux
Partners in a whirling prayer whose blur

Overturns each wave that aches between
The arms of lost affections and their wars
So ancient lutes could finally enchant
This chamber music floating on the sound

—————————————————-

Revision 2

Elegy to My Heart

I know you dying and I know you alive
Captivated by a pair of hands
The harp glistens down its waterfall
And choirs rise above a distant dune

Vast orchestras know nothing of our rhythms
Entwined in a concerto’s tidal flow
The universe a waveform passing through
As intimate as fingertips and bones

So television news is now a ghost
Like Walter Cronkite’s sonorous farewell
And daily bread in mother’s radio
Drones metallic noise into the blue

And pain a swelling mountain urging on
And on and on the awful drumming falls
And yet you hold me in this pas de deux
Partners in a whirling prayer whose blur

Overturns each wave that aches between
The arms of lost affections and their wars
So ancient lutes’ glissando could enchant
This chamber music floating on the sound


—————————
Elegy to My Heart
Revision 1

Captivated by a pair of hands
The harp glistens down its waterfall
A chorus dawning in a distant dune
I know you dying, know you too alive

Vast orchestras know nothing of our rhythms
Entwined in a concerto’s tidal flow
The universe a waveform passing through
As intimate as bones and fingertips

So television news is now a ghost
Like Walter Cronkite’s sonorous farewell
And daily bread in mother’s radio
Metallic noise drones into foghorn blue

And pain a swelling mountain urging on
And on and on the awful drumming falls
And yet you hold me in this pas de deux
Partners in a whirling prayer whose blur

Overturns each wave that aches between
The arms of lost affections and their wars
So ancient lutes could finally enchant
This chamber music ferried through a sound.


***************

Original Stanzas1 and 2 were:
I know you dying, and I know you alive
The harp glistens down its waterfall
A chorus rises in the distant dune
Captivated by a pair of hands

Orchestras mere illustrations of your hands
Entwined in a concerto’s tidal flow
The universe a waveform passing through
As intimate as bones and fingertips

[Roger Slater]

Glad to see you here once more!

I'll need more time to digest the substance of the poem, but for now I have a comment about the meter. Every line is standard iambic pentameter, with two exceptions. One of those exceptions is L1, since the reader isn't in the swing of things and doesn't know to promote "and." I think the line would do better if you moved it to the end of the stanza. Make it L4. I think that would keep the beat going, and I think the line also works better there for non-metrical reasons.

The other line that stopped me a bit is S2L1. I'm not sure how you intended it to be read, but I can't think of a plausible reading that yields IP. Perhaps we pronounce some words differently?

Overall, this looks and sounds very impressive, but I'll have to let it sink in for a while before I may have more to say. Welcome again!

PS a few hours later: I now see how to scan/say S2L1 properly, though it took me a while.

[Carl Copeland]

Siham Karami—I know you by name, and it’s a pleasure now to meet you.

I had exactly the same reaction to the meter as Roger. I read S1L1 naturally and got tetrameter with three consecutive unstressed syllables in the middle. S2L1 came out hexameter. Both, as Roger says, can be pentametrized with a little effort, but that kind of ambiguity in the opening line is a hard sell.

Also like Roger, I’m wary of leaping headlong into the Deep End, so for now I’ll just say that my favorite bit, because of the drumming rhythm, is “And pain a swelling mountain urging on / And on and on the awful drumming falls.”

[Siham Karami]

Thanks for your helpful comments, Roger and Carl! I too found the first line jarring, but kept it that way to see if it was needed, because the remaining lines in the stanza seemed less interesting, but your comments inspired a revision which I will post in a few minutes hopefully. Another thing I was trying to deal with, is the potential issue of too much similarity in its regularity. There’s always magic in a poem that commits to a meter and somehow avoids being too noticeable. I feel there will need to be more revisions. I had misgivings also about S2 l 1, one for the two lines ending with “hands” in succession and other with the off-meter that as yet didn’t seem to serve its purpose. So Roger, you picked up on two lines I knew there was trouble with but wasn’t sure where to go with it. Glad you liked it overall! Carl, nice to meet you too. I don’t think “the deep end” means “deep in expertise” but maybe just “familiar with the use of form beyond the superficial.” Which your comments indicate exists in your case. I think it’s a matter of one’s ear more than one’s academic standing. When I went to college, meter and rhyme were not even allowed lol. But I had a musical background which it was hard to avoid. My poetry class didn’t like my style lol. Glad to hear you liked those particular lines.

Best,
Siham

[Rick Mullin]

Siham,

I'm working on this still. I just want to jump in to say keep the opening line.



I like what you're doing. I'll be back.

Rick

[Paula Fernandez]

Hi Siham--

Nice to meet you! This poem has so much to offer and was a pleasure to read and re-read, each time yielding more happy surprises. The richness of description of various musical affects was stunning. Thank you so much for sharing it.

As to the meter, the current revision scanned easily for me all the way through and I never felt any sense of hesitance. (Tiny nit: I suppose you could replace "finally" in the next to last line with "at last" to prevent the awkward need give to sound all three syllables in "finally"). The easy rhythm, of course, supports the overall musical themes you have employed. And while there is no consistent end-rhyme, the persistent ending echoes (e.g., dune, through, blue, deux) produced a lovely impact. So on the sound front, this is a bravura performance.

On the sense front, I confess to some confusion. This confusion is grounded, first, in the title "Elegy to my Heart". I think by invoking the elegy form, your poem led me to believe there might be some sort of narrative forthcoming, in which I'd be finding out about the reason for elegy. In this, I was disappointed. I do not, at the completion of reading, find that I've made much headway in understanding this as an elegy. The only possible elegiac meaning I could parse was that the poem's speaker has a (possibly fatal?) heart condition ("I know you dying"). Of course, the near total absence of punctuation gives away--as the reading progresses--that the poem will be quite withholding on the narrative front. Rather, it is pure lyric energy, piling sumptuous musical descriptions one on top of the other all the way through to the final period, which, actually, I think you might consider deleting, as though the music was ongoing...

Indeed, I never really perceived an elegiac tone at all (apart from the words "dying" in stanza 1 and "pain" and "aches" in the final two stanzas). Many of the lines, for me, supported an enlivening and uplifting tone instead. In particular, I'm struck by the first three lines (of the revised poem) which are my favorite lines of the poem and which I felt set me on a path to delight (not sadness).

Finally, I found the first three lines of the third stanza stood out as breaking the spell of the poem--a bit of a disturbing clatter. Where most of the poem is taking me on a tour of the music of the natural world (waterfalls, dunes, mountains, tidal flows), it felt quite jarring getting that very concrete image of old Walter Cronkite's face right in the middle.

I guess, in summary, I would say this. If it's an elegy, for reals, I might need a bit more hint of narrative to join in the lament. If it's a celebration of music through natural metaphor, then, bravo!, but there are a few things that foil me in that interpretation.

I hope some (any?) of that is helpful to you. Really enjoyed reading this!

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Siham—

I enjoyed your poem very much. Like Paula, I thought perhaps that there was an underlying reference to a heart condition, and the music of the heartbeat is the music connecting the speaker to the universe, like the radio transmission of Walter Cronkhite’s last telecast, traveling in space long after his death. I especially like the image of the speaker being embraced by her heart, like the prima donna in a ballet’s pas de deux. I also like the /d/ alliteration in S1 that suggests the “lub-dub” of a heartbeat.

In S1L4, the lack of punctuation creates ambiguity. “I know you dying, know you too alive” could be understood four ways:
“I know you as you are dying and know you as you are overly alive”
“I know you as you are dying and know you as you are alive as well”
“I know you as I am dying and know you as I am overly alive”
“I know you as I am dying and know you as I am alive as well”
Perhaps this ambiguity was deliberate.

Very moving piece. Fine work!
Glenn

[Carl Copeland]

Stopping in again, Siham.

I’ve been learning on the Sphere that there can be too much of what I tend to consider a good thing—metrical regularity—but you’ll get no help from me in identifying any excesses. I like your metrical fixes, and the variations that remain work well for me.

Paula and Glenn put me streaks ahead with their heart-condition scenario. So much falls into place with that in mind, even the “metallic noise” and “foghorn blue” of medical equipment. In fact, it may be an echocardiogram poem.

Glenn also helped make sense of Walter Cronkite’s cameo—if those old TV and radio transmissions are part of the “waveform passing through.” I was thinking the waveform/universe was the wavefunction of the universe (not that I know anything about Quantum Cosmology). But if “daily bread in mother’s radio” is a religious radio program, are you deliberately introducing ambiguity by not identifying the title with caps and quotation marks and by using “in” instead of “on”?

I’ll continue to let this fascinating poem work on me.

[Siham Karami]

Thanks for your helpful comments, Rick, Paula, Glenn, and Carl!

Rick, if you mean the original first line, that was kind of my favorite line; but I rather like the new placements at the moment. Glad you like it thus far…

Paula, nice to meet you too! Thanks for your extensive and thoughtful insights. There’s more than one way in which this “Elegy” hardly seems like one. Is it even ok to write an elegy to something that’s actually still alive? That’s probably why I started it with the original first line. I’m actually glad that you found it overall uplifting; that’s my personal attitude about things, including death. So I’ve had a couple near-death experiences, not the exciting kind but more like the near-drowning where underwater looked peaceful and surreal and I thought maybe death isn’t so bad - before suddenly finding a rock and pushing myself up. But it was transformative and generally I was working towards a more positive view although there is sadness, I was going for a different take. It’s interesting that you thought of a heart condition. The dancing image was indeed inspired by an echo view of the heart, which I found fascinating, really looked like something dancing. But the echocardiogram proved I didn’t have a heart condition (previously diagnosed). But this is more about memories and what happens to them and to the person who carries them. Music is infamous for its way of carrying memories, and the heart is I believe where they are. Even if all scientists converged and agreed “it’s the brain!” I’m still going for the heart. But again it’s to me more than some physical pump. Walter Cronkite may not mean much for people who didn’t live through his tenure, but these elements are not meant so literally as they are setting the scene of an entire world passing through in all its odd bits of memories. I found the whole detritus of the world is also important, the jarring, the oddball parts of it. The wild cards. Even “chamber music,” a play on the heart, is another more ancient thing I’ve discovered. These jumbled timeframes can help us face the ultimate questions in some way and find solace in the face of so much loss. (Lately I’ve gone thru the deaths of a few loved ones.)

Glenn, so glad you liked this piece. I actually discovered it just before posting it here and had literally forgotten about it. So I felt it would help to share it in this forum and am glad I did. I knew it might need tweaking. All 4 ways of that line are possible. It’s deliberately ambiguous because it’s speaking of something one can’t really know or pin down. My favorite sort of thing. It’s good for different readers to see different things in it. That’s because I dislike language that is set in stone. Far better the language that fits multiple possible contexts. Our lives are all different. And a good thing that is too.

Carl, thanks for coming back! As I said above, I actually like varying interpretation and hopes it would if not make “sense,” opening up ideas or feelings. I spent some time thinking I had a heart condition, and was diagnosed with one, but later told no it’s just a few leaks in the valves. So I’m not a mechanic but am told this isn’t bad. I don’t really dwell on my physical issues in poems. My whole interest is in the intersection of life and death. And if you can explain what that means, pls let me know, but whatever it means, mostly I learn about it by paying attention to the world around us, all the fascinating creatures and debris in it, all of it. Poetry is the only way I can deal with it.

Best to all,
Siham

[Matt Q]

Hi Siham,

Great to see you back at the Sphere! I find lots to like here. I enjoyed the musical motifs. The heart seeming to range from harp and concerto to awful drumming and metallic noise. In the title, "heart" might refer to the N's own heart, or "heart" might mean "beloved". The more I read this, the more I tend toward reading the former, but I like that that the latter kind of sits in the back ground, and I guess that even on the former reading, the N is in a relationship with her heart that echoes a romantic one -- a life partnership anyway.

I prefer the original S1. With regard to line order, the original L1 makes for a very strong opening line, I think. It grabs my attention. It's new position at the end of the stanza doesn't work so well for me; it seems more of an afterthought.

I also didn't have an issue with the original L1. Your new version of it seems clunky to me, less naturally phrased, though yes, it yields a very regular IP.

I am glad you lost "hand" in the revised S2, though. As I found the image of a (literal) heart with hands a little odd, and that seemed to suggest that the poem was addressed to a person only.

Related to the above, in both versions of S1, I'm a little confused, in terms of the metaphor, as to whose hands play the harp, and who's captivated by it. If the harp is the heart, who's playing it (though I guess maybe God, the universe, the body)? And if the heart has hands ... well, as above ... that seems a little odd.

The imagery/metaphor of S2 seems a lot clearer: the entwined rhythms of N and her heart. The universe passing through.

S2L4 For some reason I want this to be, "As intimate as fingertips and bones". Maybe because it accentuates the 't' alliteration. Maybe because it ends the line on primary stress, which gives more finality to the stanza end, or because "bones" seems more dramatic here, so that it seems better coming second. Against this, possibly, is that this word-order gives you a slanted end-rhyme with "shows". But hey, why not have some irregularity there too

S3 seems the most opaque stanza here, maybe not helped by cultural differences, though I had at least heard of Walter Cronkite and can google. On first reading, S3 seems to bemoan the passing of time, the change in (news) media, radio giving way to TV giving way to ... the noise of Twitter et al and I guess, or to lower standards in news journalism . Though I'm not that sure how that fits the poem, except in relation to ageing perhaps. Change over time. Loss of a golden age? I guess I can see a descent from harmony to discord that fits the musical motifs of the rest of the poem. The heart failing? Maybe.

That said, I like that S3 is there. It adds something concrete to the more abstract/symbolic vibe of the poem, and maybe also something public/shared to the more private feel of this. I wonder if there's scope for more of this somehow? As it stands, the stanza maybe seems a little at odds with the rest of the poem in its concreteness/specificity.

In S4, the pain and awful drumming seems to continue on the metallic noise of the end of S3. I can read this as the heart -- given the drumming. Though then it seems the heart that holds the N in the face of the drumming. Given the TV news reference, I wonder if the drumming relates to war and coming disaster -- death even, and is in some way external to N and her heart, whose partnership seem lead to a transcendence of this pain/drumming/noise. Though possibly it could be that in partnership, the heart's drumming and pain become transcended, becomes enchanted by the ancient lutes of S5. I'm not complaining about finding this ambiguous. I like that I have options here, and that I'm led to reread and ponder.

In S5, I like the word-play of "chamber music". I wonder about music being "ferried though a sound". Isn't music normally transmitted as sound? On a literal level, how else could it be carried? Maybe you're wanting to say it's mere sound (a heart beat) that becomes music? But it sounds like the music is already there, and what it becomes is enchanted by the lutes.

best,

Matt