[Jim Moonan]

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Hi James, and welcome! This was/is a pleasure to read —What an energized, imaginative romp through the rat kingdom(?) or its metaphorical equivalent. You weave images with sonics beautifully and your word selection and phrasing is distinct.

My only problem is with my inability to feel confident I know what is happening in this. It feels metaphorical but I can’t make the connection. My problem, not yours! It good to see a word like “burgeon” appear. It’s a hard word to apply to anything I can think of, but you found a way. I also liked this:

their feet which had been almost human
interlinked like verses

Matt also points out other arresting images that make this feel elevated to be a vision.

I like the flurry of hyphenations at the end.

Maybe as others take a shot at what is happening in the poem I’ll come back and finish this crit, but my first impression is that it is packed full with good poetry.

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Coming back in to say I overlooked the "Amen" that ends the Poem. Interesting name choice, Amen.There is a Joycean stream of language that ends the poem

L25: stumbled on the phrase "the one led away". Is it another way of saying "the one takeaway"?

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[James Midgley]

Hi Glenn, hi Matt, hi Jim -- many thanks for your generous takes on this.

I'm glad the rats grew on you, Glenn. The 1984 reference is a fortuitous one. I can't recall when I first drafted this poem, but I re-read 1984 fairly recently -- so there's every chance it was somewhere in my mind during its conception. Poor Winston. Poor Rat!

Matt, I'm really glad this worked for you. Your reading matches my intentions, as far as I can judge, pretty completely, which is very heartening. In these recent drafts I've tried to strengthen the nod to the Pied Piper tale (subtly). Is that coming over as a helpful lens?

Jim -- many thanks for the warm welcome and for dropping by! I'm very glad you seemed to enjoy the poem, even though things remained a little mysterious for you. 'the one led away' was intended to be read as 'the one who/that was led away'.

Thanks again, all of you.

[John Boddie]

James -

It's good to see your work again.

I came away from several readings with the impression much the same as I might have after looking at a painting by Bruegel. There are marvelous details but the overall effect is impressionistic. The bodies of the mice, the background of the local and the people in it and the names of the mice. The piper is there and may be leading everything (after all, we are never told where the piper led the mice).

I can't point to anything in the piece that would benefit from a suggested change. I'd pay good money for a book that had this in it.

JB

[Cally Conan-Davies]

G'day James! What a treat!

I'm so glad John mentioned Bruegel. The poem is very like that! Impossible to paraphrase, completely evocative and provocative, from endearing to chilling, the flavour runs the full gamut really.

The whole thrust of the poem is carried into the final 'name'/word which itself says a lot—the traditional amen of a litany, and I can't help but hear 'ah, men . . .' in a sighing tone of mingled exasperation, disappointment, pity, and, yes, a deep affection for the whole holy mess.

I think the poem is ingenious, imaginative, really smart, rich, has momentum.

For me this litany invokes something about humanity. Probably humanity itself.

This poem will always be more than anything we can say about it. It's so playful!

Cally

[John Riley]

James, I agree with what has been said. This is a delight to see posted here. Thoughtful and well done. Great work.

[Matt Q]

Hi James,

Originally Posted by James Midgley

Your reading matches my intentions, as far as I can judge, pretty completely, which is very heartening. In these recent drafts I've tried to strengthen the nod to the Pied Piper tale (subtly). Is that coming over as a helpful lens?

To be honest, I didn't catch the Pied Piper nod, though I did pause on "piping", but took it to be either noises made by the people during or after the litany (who then piped down), or to the sound of the band. I didn't take the "gutterpipe which sang in a low tuba note their compressions" to be a literal musical pipe either, though I can now see it as a clue. I'd imagined a literal gutter pipe filled with rats, and the pipe either metaphorically sang, or amplified the sounds of them pushing together. I'd taken the barrel similarly, as filling/burgeoning with rats. Both seemed images of rats squeezing into things.

Anyway, maybe that's poor reading on my part. Maybe I should have put the pipe and the rats and children together, but I didn't. Now that you've flagged it, I can see the nod, of course, but I don't know that I can make too much sense of it.

OK, so in the story, the PP enchants the rats and children. So in the poem is he the one casting the fascist spell over the people, here, enchanting them that way? Though in the story it's only the children (and the rats first) he enchants, not the adults. So maybe not. Or are the children getting indoctrinated and that's the enchantment?

And if in the poem. the PP is luring away the rats (and possibly children) then who is calling the names and taking the one person away? Or is the PP doing both? Is the calling of names a form of piping? (Though in the poem the calling of names happens after the piping is over).

And in the story, the taking of the children is the consequence of the townsfolk not paying for the removal of the rats. Is this intended to be paralleled in poem somehow?

Also in the story, the PP takes the children, though this doesn't seem to happen in the poem, though perhaps I should take "when ... the piping died down" as, "after the children had been led away by the PP"? Or perhaps the idea is that we're at the point where the rats have been removed, but the PP has yet to come back for the children?

Anyway, these are the directions I tried going in to find a way to fit the PP story into what I'd originally taken to be the narrative of the poem, and I didn't really get anywhere. That could well be me, of course.

best,

Matt

[James Midgley]

Hi JB, hi Cally, hi John and hi again Matt. Thanks so much for reading and commenting on the poem. I'm glad you've found things to like in it, and all in all you've been much too kind. Thank you again.

I can see the Bruegel -- the town in my mind has the same dark muddiness and jumble to it.

Thanks for coming back to the piece, Matt. I suppose 'lens' may have been too strong a word -- but the poem, as it began, was certainly riffing off the legend. In older drafts the poem began earlier, with a kind of census-taker-character merged with PP coming to take stock -- but I preferred to start in media res in the end, and thought this one of those times where less finnicky information might be better.

Anyway, the poem probably wants to do its own thing at this point. If it's successful without that framework, then all the better. I do wonder if more of a helping hand might be in order somewhere, but I'll have to let it sit for a bit before re-assessing.

Many thanks again, all of you.