[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.