[Trevor Conway]

NEW VERSION:

(Some minor changes plus a new stanza added)


Gardens left untrimmed conspire,
always brutal in their wanting
to be more fearsome, animal, cruel
to concrete and delicate eyes.

They become dense,
impenetrable even,
with stupid growth and grand neglect,
accepting invitations of wind.

There’s taming in them
when someone has a mind to work
muscle and blade, time and spirit.

I have sought, like others,
to render them geometrical,
and felt success in mucky fingers.

All that, though, is bound to be brief.
Permanence is green,
sprouting, unsatisfied.



ORIGINAL VERSION:

Gardens left untrimmed conspire,
always brutal in their wanting
to be more fearsome, animal, cruel
to concrete and delicate eyes.

They are rendered dense,
impenetrable, in fact,
by stupid growth and grand neglect,
accepting invitations of wind.

There’s taming in them,
when someone has a mind to work
muscle and blade, time and spirit.
All that, though, is bound to be brief.

Permanence is green,
sprouting, unsatisfied.

[Jim Moonan]

.
Quick stop-in to say I like the thrust of this.
It may need to be warmed up a bit by inserting the N a bit more... I agree gardens cannot be tamed for long.
In the penultimate line, would "evergreen" be more forceful than "green"?

.

[John Riley]

I want to step in and agree with Jim. This is well written but at the end you don’t sense much. In revision, I suggest you do what Jim said and put the human more deeply into the poem. What lies beneath? Why write the poem? What is trying to be said and how? Those are good questions to ask yourself. I don’t mean a lot if “I” but leave the reader asking why.

Good start.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Trevor Conway

Gardens left untrimmed conspire,
always brutal in their wanting
to be more fearsome, animal, cruel
to concrete and delicate eyes.

They are rendered dense,
impenetrable, in fact,
by stupid growth and grand neglect,
accepting invitations of wind.

There’s taming in them,
when someone has a mind to work
muscle and blade, time and spirit.
All that, though, is bound to be brief.

Permanence is green,
sprouting, unsatisfied.

I agree that you could insert more of the narrative, but an alternative would be to tighten up what you've got and paint a crisp little portrait (which you're close to now). If it were me I might look at a few things:

Originally Posted by Trevor Conway

Gardens left untrimmed conspire,
always brutal in their wanting
to be more fearsome, animal,
cruel to concrete and delicate eyes.

They are rendered dense,
impenetrable, [new adjective here],
by stupid growth and grand neglect,
accepting invitations of wind (could be a stronger word here).

There’s taming in them,
when someone has a(could omit) mind to work,
muscle and blade, time and spirit.
All that, though, is (could omit) bound to be brief.

Permanence is green,
sprouting, unsatisfied.

There's something about the close that leaves me a little.. unsatisfied. Poetically it's well written but I'm not personally seeing a clear link between it and what comes before. I enjoyed the first three stanzas, but the fourth maybe needs to tie it all together more clearly.

On the other hand the close could also be improved by extending it's content some and making it more rhythmically coherent with what comes before. I can accept an ambiguous close, but in the first three stanzas you've got some sweeping rhythm, where the final stanza is so dense that it could maybe use just a little more rhythmic oomph to close it out.

On the whole I enjoyed this one, I just figure it could use a few minor touchups if you don't go the route of extending the narrative.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Trevor—

I like the central idea that plants are relentless in their antagonism toward us and that there is a persistent ruthlessness in the way they struggle to regain control against our attempts to tame them.

I like the zeugma in S1L4 in which the plants’ roots literally cause concrete to crumble and in which jungles figuratively seem fearsome when personified in the human imagination. I also liked “by stupid growth and grand neglect/ accepting the invitation of wind.” This captures the mindless, chaotic growth of plants, spreading their seeds on random breezes, in contrast to the planned, careful, geometric growth of the concrete buildings .

I was puzzled by S3L1: “There’s taming in them.” The meaning—that they have the capacity to be tamed—is clear, but it struck me as something that Yoda might say. The last line, “sprouting, unsatisfied” is also fairly clear, suggesting that the growth of plants—unlike that of humans, which is directed toward achieving a goal—is purposeless and endless. But, as Nick pointed out, it seems a bit anti-climactic rhythmically.

I could not understand the title. You might be able to insert the N more forcefully into the poem as Jim and John suggested, by choosing a title that establishes a context for the N’s musing—something like “Finding a Mayan Temple” or “Jungle Warfare.”

Hope this is helpful.

Glenn

[James Brancheau]

Hi Trevor--I agree with Jim and John as well. And inserting the speaker more, as John and Jim suggest, would definitely be worth considering. That may help to focus the poem as it seems a bit scattered at present. You have all of these ideas here taking the poem in different directions—the cruelty of nature, hard work, permanence, etc. Loosely connected? Sure, maybe. But I think that you need to establish more of a connection one to the other. The poem seems to wander off here and there, get tangled up, like the plants in the garden. There are ideas here that could be cultivated and some that could, perhaps, be uprooted.

“There’s taming in them” is awkward and confusing and “a mind to work” sounds, well, umm—a completely different tone, angle there, I think. In the close, I’m not sure that I’d agree that permanence is green. Mortality, maybe. Permanence could be green. It’s just that the poem doesn’t, imo, support that.

There are parts that I like quite a bit: “Gardens left untrimmed conspire,” (nice start, interesting, makes me want to read on), “accepting invitations of wind” (again, interesting—though I think that you accept invitations from someone (or something)—and this might also make for a nice close to a poem). And I really like the idea of ending on “unsatisfied.” That could bring together a lot of what's going on in the poem, imo.

Although I think the poem needs some work, I do see a lot of potential here. Cheers, and good luck with it.

[Jim Ramsey]

Hi Trevor,

Here's a once highly anthologized and once popular poem that yours made me think of. I think it was your title, "Neighbourhood," that made me think of the transience of human lives in the greater scheme in the same way this poem does. This poem does not focus much on nature, but rather the inevitability of decay through time. In a way I think your poem, especially because of the title, is more about the passage of time than it is of nature per se, although the two are both devourers of us little human beings. Anyway, here it is:

The House on the Hill

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

Jim

[James Brancheau]

Looking at this again, I think this is more cohesive than I originally thought. The poem seems to be depicting a pointless struggle against a kind of entropy. Maybe a struggle to regain some kind of order in the world. I couldn’t see the forest from the garden, I guess. I agree even more now, however, with inserting the speaker (narrator) more into the poem (assuming that I’m in the ballpark of understanding this). I feel that there needs to be something more specifically, concretely at stake. A more specific struggle would be more interesting to me. Right now the poem seems isolated in a bubble of indisputable truth. I can only nod my head and say, yeah, that’s right. And...?

I do like it considerably more now that I have a better understanding of the poem (I think...). The idea of permanence (and stating that it’s green) may have thrown me off. For what it’s worth.

[Joe Crocker]

Hello Trevor

I do like the final 2 line stanza, and also the "stupid growth and grand neglect" line in S2.

I'm less sure about L1 and L4 in S3 but like the "muscle and blade" of L3. On my first look I misread "Time and spirit" as "Time and spit" and I think I prefer the latter!

Joe

[Phil Wood]

I like Joe's suggestion of 'time and spit'