[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.)

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.