[Matt Q]

Foxed (R2 - urban version)

Dawn comes, and marching through the city mist,
a strange parade of everything I’ve missed,
of all I’ve lost and all I think I’m due,
emerges from the greyness, sheathed in dew
and glistening, sun spilling from each one.
These shining prizes that I should have won
wraith from the park, file forward from the past,
then whooping, pirouetting, dance on past.

Deep in my chest, a bitter liquid brews,
then thickens, purples up – a world-sized bruise.
It’s then I see the fox. Its russet tail,
bristling, flicks away this sorry tale.
So what? it growls. You want to be a bard?
This is your path. The easy way is barred.


----

S1L1 "morning" -> "city"
S1L5 "haloing" reverts to "spilling from"
S1L6 "perfect" reverts to "shining"
S1L7 "woods" -> "park"






Foxed (R1)

Dawn comes, and marching through the morning mist,
a strange parade of everything I’ve missed,
of all I’ve lost and all I think I’m due,
emerges from the greyness, sheathed in dew
and glistening, sun haloing each one.
These perfect prizes that I should have won
wraith from the woods, file forward from the past,
then whooping, pirouetting, dance on past.

Deep in my chest, a bitter liquid brews,
then thickens, purples up – a world-sized bruise.
It’s then I see the fox. Its russet tail,
bristling, flicks away this sorry tale.
So what? it growls. You want to be a bard?
This is your path. The easy way is barred.

-----

S1L1 "Dawn comes" -> "Dawn dribbles in" and back to "Dawn comes"; added "morning".
S1L5, "spilling from each one" -> "haloing each one"
S1L6, "shining" -> "perfect"
S1L8, "leaping, spinning, whooping" -> "whooping, pirouetting"
S2L4, "upright, proud" -> "bristling"


Foxed

Dawn comes, and marching through the mist,
a strange parade of everything I’ve missed,
of all I’ve lost and all I think I’m due,
emerges from the greyness, sheathed in dew
and glistening, sun spilling from each one.
These shining prizes that I should have won
wraith from the woods, file forward from the past,
then leaping, spinning, whooping, dance on past.

Deep in my chest, a bitter liquid brews,
then thickens, purples up – a world-sized bruise.
It’s then I see the fox. Its russet tail,
upright, proud, flicks away this sorry tale.
So what? it growls. You want to be a bard?
This is your path. The easy way is barred.

.

[R. Nemo Hill]

This is so great, Matt. You know, up here, especially of late, there are so many poems that foreground their formal concerns, calling attention to their structure, too often subverting all their other elements to it, making form an end in itself. They begin to seem like exercises, parlor games in which their pedantic certainty of structure annihilates that mysterious uncertainty that lies at the heart of all the poetry I love.

Yet here is a poem that has it both ways (and as a bonus stands on its head the formalist boogie-man of the identity rhyme, ha!). Formally, clever as a fox; and yet still wild from the chaos of the woods.

Nemo

[Roger Slater]

I enjoyed this as well. My only note would be the meter in L12, which seems to have an extra beat (it's too unwieldy to read "flicks away" as an anapest).

[Clive Watkins]

I, too, like this, Matt. About line 12, why not reverse the order of the first two words, like this: “proud, upright, flicks away this sorry tale”?

Clive

[Carl Copeland]

Clive’s fix for L12, replacing headlessness with a spondee, is great. My only other nit is that the “shining prizes” parading past one by one are a single wraith (unless you’ve verbified “wraith,” which I don’t think anyone will get). The consonant cluster in “wraiths from” would be a mouthful, but still … Much enjoyed, Matt. I can relate. Shades of Dante?

[Joe Crocker]

Me too for Carl's crit on wraiths, and Clive's fix for S2L4.

I heard something of Larkin's "Next please" in stanza 1. I thought here was some overkill in the leaping, whooping, spinning and dancing in L8. And some of the descriptors seemed slightly flat eg shining, glistening, russet, proud.

But it still works well.

[Phil Wood]

Enjoyed Matt, but I wondered if you could risk more bardic fun like 'burr/burl-sized' or 'bitter potion'. Help to accommodate wraith. Muchly entertained by the rhyme play.

[Hilary Biehl]

I'll echo the praises this has had. It just gets better with each reading. "Wraith" as a verb works for me.

You could switch the order of "proud" and "upright" as Clive suggested and it would read more smoothly. But don't mess around too much with this one.

[Joe Crocker]

Hi Matt

On L8, it’s hard to assess overkill without knowing how you’re reading the poem, and what you think I’m trying to kill. Could you say more?

When I said "overkill" I meant that the line felt a little overladen to me. The sense of the line is contained in the last 3 words "dance on past". I like "whooping", but do you really need both "leaping" and "spinning"?

How about "and leaping, whooping, dancing, they have passed" ? (That way you get your homophone variant of past)

Joe

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Matt—

I enjoyed this piece very much.

I wondered if “wraithe” might work to clarify that it is a verb.
“Breath,” “cloth,” “bath,” and “smooth” are all nouns (or adjectives) that become verbs when an “-e” is added. It’s not in the dictionary, but you might get credit for a new coinage.

Glenn