Deck the Halls 4: quail

Maryann Corbett · #1 12-10-2008, 08:55 PM

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Flush

Now twilight is beginning to sink
into the thicket of trees and vines,
and the pasture grass softens
from green to brown in its glide
up from the brackish creek.
Cool, warm, open black,
it's all there, framed in shadow
like a small painting, once hopefully made,
left now to hang on a doorless wall.
A covey of bobwhite quail
bluster up from the tall grass along the creek bed.
A cloud of white, brown, black,
a trace of blue on their leonine necks,
they hover for a noisy second,
then together thread into the woods.
Here, now gone, their flown arc lingers,
vanishes somewhere between me and the dark.

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Tim Murphy · #2 12-11-2008, 05:35 AM

I get the sense that the poet has actually been there, and too often I don't in nature poetry. I also have the sense of a sure sense of line, which I rarely encounter in free verse. Could it be that the author also writes formally?Nice poem.

Michael Cantor · #3 12-11-2008, 11:12 AM

I share Tim's feeling that there is a formal sense to this well crafted poem, even though it is not strongly metrical.

It is a finely wrought piece, and there is nothing I can point to as being wrong with it, but I wish there was something more strongly right - something that made me blink, or want to smile or applaud. It is a neatly handled small drawing, but even a haiku - tighter and smaller - has a twist, another side, a nudge if not a sting. I miss that here.

I often point out how difficult it is to look at a single line - metrically, or otherwise - out of context; and I think that sometimes applies to poems as well. My reaction to this one depends on context. As an offset or contrast within a collection of more complex poems, it could be excellent. But I think that if I read a collection of poems similar to this one, I would lose interest.

Rhina P. Espaillat · #4 12-11-2008, 12:54 PM

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This free verse lyric is skillful, but nothing happens in it except the flight of the quail--a moment caught--and the shift of colors that suggest the passage of time, the "noisy second" and its brevity.

I wish there were more tension in the language, something to counter the very clear sense with another thought just at the edge, or with a music more pronounced than this soft, even flow that goes exactly where it says it's going.

A couple of places that are especially lovely: the way the quail "bluster up," and how they "thread into" the woods.

And one place that raised the possibility of a surprise coming, without fulfilling the promise: lines 8 and 9, in which that "once hopefully made" feels as if it's going to lead into more information about some specific human experience.

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R. Nemo Hill · #5 12-11-2008, 03:04 PM

I share Michael's and Rhina's minor misgivings about this one, that quality of not-quite-enoughness. At the same time I realize that this here-now-gone quality is perhaps the whole point of the poem: the noisy second of time which the poet has flushed up from a landscape where all else is beginning to sink. That tension between rising and falling is what I don't recall noticing as primary earlier in the year when this one hit the boards; and it is maybe what I would now like to see emphasized even more in the structure of the text.

It is perhaps the hardest and most thankless of poetry's tasks, to capture a moment like this without strangling it half to death. To the poem's credit, there is no strangling going on here. Still, the moment might be lured into brief captivity with just a bit more novelty.

One other point that I made when the poem was first posted, one I don't remember ever getting a response to: isn't bobwhite quail redundant? Aren't they one and the same thing, or am I ornithologically misinformed.

Nemo

Donna English · #6 12-11-2008, 03:10 PM

I don’t recall ever reading this. It seems like a straight nature observation at first, but on rereading I think there is some subtext, something I’m missing, though I can’t quite put my finger on precisely what it’s trying to tell me. The lines comparing the scenery in twilight to a hopefully made painting that now hangs on doorless wall, beg to be investigated. It’s either unintentional and oddly placed imagery that side tracks a nature poem, or it’s intentionally there to hint at something else. Why else would a painting and a doorless wall show up in a nature poem? Isn’t it usually a painting that portrays a nature scene and not the nature scene portraying a painting? And the word flush brings to mind--flush against something--a wall perhaps? So, maybe the scene with the quail is the painting--how else could the speaker see the trace of blue, the light has already faded to the point where colors have become indistinguishable. I don’t understand the ending. The words tug at each other. Here vs. gone--lingers vs. vanishes. It a puzzling poem that leaves me wanting more explanation.

Donna

Tim Murphy · #7 12-11-2008, 04:23 PM

Nemo, you're misinformed. There are many species of quail, cf. Gambel's, for example.

Anne Bryant-Hamon · #8 12-11-2008, 05:36 PM

This one has a certain beauty. But I think it weakens after the 5th line. It seems to be attempting to capture the transitory nature of beauty. I really like the first five lines as they are. I don't remember ever having read this.

Elle Bruno · #9 12-12-2008, 07:59 AM

I enjoyed reading this poem when it was first posted, although I do not remember who wrote it, and it seems improved now, more fluid.
Although I understand the slight misgivings from some other crits, I think I am happy with the 'almost' feeling of this piece, a half-realized moment of loss or disappointment, a memory that almost surfaces. That's how I feel at that time of day, a sort of tugging sadness, so I'm pleased to see it expressed.
I think Nemo is right that pushing it further might force it into too-muchness, a grand realization. Death to a small poem often.
Either way, I'm happy to look at this one again and to read the reactions of others. Thanks, Dee

Chris Childers · #10 12-12-2008, 06:05 PM

Imitation Mary Oliver. I can hardly concentrate to read it through, and it's only 17 lines! Nice, dull, forgettable.

Chris