[James Midgley]

.


The Weather

Asleep in its meat
the tiger catches
a few important facts
here redacted.
Instead we turn to
facticity itself
which via tiger
should be understood
as blinds. See,
he is conscious elsewhere,
the tiger, he is
dark inside
but you may peer
and dream
the sacked marbles
in the sockets
or the barbs
the housecat covets,
the dream covets.
Someone is going to
offer up a pigeon
which is to go quite beyond
fact, to put the bird
among the cat,
which should be understood
as eating. Question.
What reprimand is fitting
for the tiger bounding
out of bounds
at your dream's behest?
Call it a name.
Call it lion.
Make it speak
a language it abhors
like French,
the tiger making preference
for consonants that clip
each grey ending
from its flight.
In the whiskers you have read
the aperture
through which a head may go.
From the feet you know
the acres of running
and the breaths that grow there.
In the darkened room
a hand kills a candle;
a scalp sticks
between black railings;
and the roar
is more chalkboard
where cursive repeats
a word not quite legible --
at least not to you.



.

[Carl Copeland]

James, this reminds me of Stevens in being philosophical with some exotic fauna sprinkled in to save it from abstraction. I happen to love Stevens, but it’s more for his language than for his philosophy, which I’ve never gotten my head quite around. I enjoyed the dazzling wordplay of your previous two poems, but here you’re playing up the philosophical with a sparer, almost syllogistic style. Anyway, I’m just trying to sound intelligent while admitting that the poem is still dark inside for me. I’ll keep feeling around for the light switch.

[Jim Moonan]

Originally Posted by Carl Copeland

James, this reminds me of Stevens in being philosophical with some exotic fauna sprinkled in to save it from abstraction. I happen to love Stevens, but it’s more for his language than for his philosophy, which I’ve never gotten my head quite around. I enjoyed the dazzling wordplay of your previous two poems, but here you’re playing up the philosophical with a sparer, almost syllogistic style. Anyway, I’m just trying to sound intelligent while admitting that the poem is still dark inside for me. I’ll keep feeling around for the light switch.

Carl's assessment is beautifully put and I have the same impressions (though I don't know Stevens' poetry). I don't know if it's the short lines that prevent me from finding my footing or the constant shifting from one image to the next that prevents it from cohering in my rather slow-footed mind.

I thought maybe it could be relineated into couplets to help delineate the barrage of imagery in the poem. Something like:

Asleep in its meat the tiger catches
a few important facts here redacted.

Instead we turn to facticity itself
which via tiger should be understood



I wish the title gave me more.

But I could be way off... Like Carl, I'm groping around for a light switch.

.

[Susan McLean]

As I was reading this, I got the distinct impression that the tiger was Trump and that this was a political poem in disguise. I got that impression from the way facts are discussed in it and by the way the tiger fulfills the dreams of the house cat by going out of bounds and by being a more effective predator.

Susan

[John Riley]

Maybe it's a reaction to too many literature classes, but I'm not one to try to figure out a poem. Or perhaps it's because I'm so bad at it. After reading this several times, I think of the impossibility of knowing what is happening from species to species. I think of the famous Wittgenstein statement that if a lion could talk, we still would not be able to understand what it is saying. Does a cat dream of being a tiger?

I'm prepared to accept my reading may not be what is intended. I can still enjoy the way the poem works on the screen. The bit about abhorring French and preferring "consonants that clip/each grey ending/from its flight" and reading the aperture through the whiskers.

I will read it more because I enjoy reading it and may have a moment of deeper realization.

Best

[James Midgley]

Hi Carl, Jim, Susan and John! Thanks a bunch for giving this a go and providing your responses. This doesn't seem to be doing its job yet. While it's obviously bouncing off the Stevens poem, it isn't meant to be a philosophical treatise but rather something closer to a slip-and-slide (playful).

I'm glad the Wittgenstein is coming across to you, John. The poem, in my head, is more or less as you have it in yours -- the strange possibility-impossibility of projections into others' heads (of any species).

But it's clear the language isn't proving sensual or succulent enough in its current incarnation -- it certainly shouldn't be coming over as precious and pedantic, as it seems to be doing.

Thank you again, all of you, for your kind attention here.

[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by James Midgley

While it's obviously bouncing off the Stevens poem …

Ah, that explains a thing or two. I hadn’t gotten as far as “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock.” It just seemed Stevensy to me. You’re both comparing imagination with a more limited mental life—that of animals in your poem and of dull, conventional people in Stevens’s.

[Barbara Lee]

James I think the best part of the poem with the tightest language is in these lines:

Call it a name.
Call it lion.
Make it speak
a language it abhors
like French,
the tiger making preference
for consonants that clip
each grey ending
from its flight.

The sounds of clipping consonants is great. But each line is so tight. I like how you are using the breaks and overall path of the language. However, it almost feels as though the desire to make meaning clear overtakes the first part of the poem in a way that sacrifices language. I think the strength of the poem is in the kind of tight, more subtle tone/ narration of the lines I quoted. I hope that makes some sense to you.

I think your use of image and great line breaks will take you farther than trying to tell us more.

Cheers
Barbara

[Matt Q]

Hi James,

I wonder if the form here is working against the poem. The short lines make it (for me, anyway) harder to follow the poem, which is already not the simplest thing to follow. Have you tried it as a prose poem? I tried removing the line-breaks and found I enjoyed the poem more, because I found it easier to read/parse and so could better enjoy the play of ideas.

Do you want a comma before "here redacted". Also is the tiger to made to speak French, a language it abhors, or is it made to speak some other language that it abhors in a similar way to which it abhors French? Just wondered if you wanted the latter, which you may well do, or had missed a comma.

best,

Matt

[James Midgley]

Hi Carl, Barbara, Matt -- many thanks for your generous crits here.

Carl, thanks for coming back. It's helpful to know that the specific Stevens poem didn't leap to mind.

Barbara, thanks for weighing in with the lines that work best for you. I've never been accused of trying to make too much sense! It's helpful to know this could stand to be more playful with its language and approach.

Matt, I came to the same sort of conclusion minutes after posting the poem here. Rather than prose-poetry I've been trying it in long single-line strophes, which seem to gel nicely with the idea of blinds and of things being half-obscured. But putting it into longer lines also revealed fairly immediately to me what many have commented on here -- that swaths of the poem are lacking in thrills, for want of a better word.

I'm a very slow redrafter, so I probably won't be adding new drafts to this thread (in fact, it'll likely take me years) but your comments here are very useful and will inform the process as it gradually happens.

Thank you again.