[R. S. Gwynn]

>>"There was quite a bit of revision, and there are still some things I'm not entirely happy with but can't think of how to remedy."
Can you tell us what parts you aren't happy with and why?


Sure. I've felt that a lot of readers don't "get" what's going on in "Galatea," namely that Pygmalion is going "back to the drawing boards" and making a new model.

I thought some of the rhymes were a little forced: stallions/scallions, manuals/spaniels. The daft/raft rhyme at the end of "Calypso" suddenly shifts her into British slang. I wasn't quite sure about "Dicey's Elegy" as a song title in "Eurydice." I was thinking, of course, of "Layla" and of Orpheus as an earlier incarnation of Eric Clapton.

I don't know if that long (visually long) line in "Psyche" is just a little over the top.

And so on. I am always plagued by second and third thoughts.

[peter richards]

I opened this thread because it was looking a bit still here and I though maybe I could get the ball rolling, so here I am, balancing on the rolling ball.

I failed to 'get' Galatea on the first reading. I might have got it if I'd stayed with it, but I was rushing on to read the rest of the thread, etc. Here's how it went:

I know who/what Galatea is/was, so that much of a problem was out of the way. The <u>possibility</u> that the voice could be that of Galatea herself struck me immediately, but as the octet wore on (to coin a phrase) it became increasingly evident that the speaker was of flesh and blood, while the creation was of stone. The sestet works hard to remind me that the speaker is actually stone, or at least reverting to it, but this could as well have been the voice of a human who was being used as the model for the new statue - the model for Galatea, in fact.

To the extent that this confusion is not all of my own making, I thought you could have started with e.g. -
'I'm Galatea, in the workshop sweeping' or -
'Galatea was in the workshop . . . ' - where the latter would shift the whole thing to the third person.

Either way, whether stone is being used to model stone or flesh to model stone, this poem has the voice of one whose significant other is working to replace her. There is an enormous poignancy in that. I don't find that much poetry in the rest of the series - good they are, but tending more toward witty exercises than poetry, when compared to 'Galatea'.

Whilst making the above comparison, I noticed that the great god Humour was out and about. Apart from the fact that

I'd as soon move back to the old block

is unashamedly hilarious, the first poem leaves you the choice of laughing or crying. I consider this to be the best kind of humour, as in Monty Python or Kurt Vonnegut. The rest of the set gave me the impression of having put on goofy teeth and red wigs in order to announce that they were Supposed To Be Funny. I'm being way over-harsh here, but it's just to illustrate a point. I'd certainly like to here your views on humour in poetry - is it a tool or a by-product?

Peter

[Tim Murphy]

In 1977, I think, Wilbur wrote to me to criticize some sonnets, saying, if I remember right, "When I was your age I was accused of going for the killer-diller last line, and I get the sense that these English sonnets were written backwards, their final couplets being their starting points."

Well, he was right. Long, long ago Frost said a poem couldn't be written backwards, arguing that if there was no surprise for the writer at the end, the reader would fail to be engaged. I happen to disagree with Frost, because the discovery of that couplet can be such a surprise, that the writer can surprise himself all along the way. Here's a poem you helped me with. Because it starts with an actual quotation, it is obviously written backwards.

Unposted

Abandoned where the grass grew lank and damp,
the antiquated grain drill seemed a toy
some Lilliputian farmer might employ
to plant a field small as a postage stamp.

Kelly opened a hopper filled with seed
nutty and sweet as Wheaties in the bag.
Where were the plowman and his plodding nag
to run that good grain through the metered feed?

Flushed from a pigweed patch, a pheasant sailed
over the leafless tree row flecked with red
where shrunken apples hung unharvested
or fallen to the stubble, lay impaled.

Squinting into the distance, Kelly said
“It was the farmer, not the seed what failed.”

[R. S. Gwynn]

There may be some justice in what Peter Richards says. Perhaps the long lapse between "Galatea" and the other poems in the sequence accounts for the qualitative difference he finds. Still, I find his reading a little odd: Galatea is a flesh and blood woman who was once a stone statue. After being abandoned by the sexist Pyg, she may nostalgically yearn for the days when she was insensible stone. Pygmalion prefers (as any artist would) the ideal to the real thing. Maybe I should 'ave 'ad 'er speak in Cockney, a la Ms. Doolittle.

[R. S. Gwynn]

>>I'd certainly like to here your views on humour in poetry - is it a tool or a by-product?

Peter

I suppose I'd pick the former; "by-product" sounds like some kind of toxic waste left over from the real product.

I think it's pretty well established that tonal ranges are best established by wide variation. I think of the drunken porter in Macbeth and how that silly scene increases the horrors of the murder taking place. I like to think that comic misdirection is a way of emphasizing seriousness, not of diminishing it. I haven't written too many poems where I consider the humor to be an end in itself.

[Adam]

Morning,

Why do you write in forms? Just like poems better that way?

Incidentally, speaking from the perspective of a regular old reader, I didn’t really have trouble with Galatea and couldn’t possibly mind rhymes like manual/spaniel, especially considering the context of its composition: somewhere between Texs and Calina. Doesn’t that make it “manyel/spanyel”?

In fact, reading through your list of reservations, I was rather surprised to find I had specifically enjoyed each of them. I do think that Galatea stands apart somewhat in tone—a bit more earnest. Why is it first?

Anyway, second, third and fourth opinions are sometimes worth about as much as second, third and fourth guesses. Thanks for the preview, as well as the chance to talk about it.

Adam

[R. S. Gwynn]

Adam asks a couple of good questions which I'll address:

On the matter of rhymes, I have to trust my own ear, regionally imperfect though it may be. I'll admit that Tim's reference to my "sang/thing" rhyme caught me in my cowboy boots, but it gets a good laugh when I read the poem and emphasize the absurdity of the rhyme. And yes, "spaniel" and "manual" are elided to more or less exact rhymes in my pronunciation. Regional accent has a lot to do with rhyme (Burns, Pope's "join/line" rhymes, etc.) and also quite a bit to do with syllable-counting in meter. I am teaching Frost right now, and I have to hear his voice say "flah" for "flower" to realize that he usually treats it as a one-syllable word. Of course, an earlier poet would have shortened it to "flow'r" if necessary, but we aren't allowed to commit the syn of cope, or if we do commit it we aren't allowed to use the apostrophe.

As for the matter of my writing in form, I can only say that I do it because I think I do it well. If I played tennis well, I would be foolish to give it up for golf, which I don't play well at all (actually I play neither very well). If I could write free verse well, I would write free verse. I did write quite a bit of free verse in earlier years (there's some in The Drive-In), but I found that my interests lay elsewhere. Since I don't find writing in form limiting in any way, I have continued to write in this manner. I realize that this is not a very satisfactory answer and says very little about the virtues of rhyme and meter in general. For me, this has always been a personal matter based on what I am most comfortable doing. It's simply a matter of playing to one's strengths.

As for the difference in tone in "Galatea" versus the other poems, I've explained that the ten-year lapse may have contributed to that. Still, I knew that the sequence had reached an end when Psyche says, "Love conquers Thought." That would be the thesis sentence for the whole sequence, and absurd as her situation is it still holds out hope that we boys will grow up sooner or later.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Tim hits on a good point. When we know where the poem is going to end the writing is much more difficult than when we begin and let the poem find its own ending. I don't think Frost is right here, either. Both ways can lead to satisfactory poems.