[Jim Moonan]

rv.2
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Feast of The Holy Family

Truth: I always took her side. She always lost.
She's cry in the kitchen after dinner dishes
then disappear upstairs to the guest room and cry more.
I would listen at the door and beg, "Mom can you stop?
Please stop." But she couldn't.

Years later and now I’ve fallen surreptitiously
in love with a woman half my age who sings
in St. Cecilia's choir and bears strange resemblance
to my mother, who sang show tunes to me
but looked somewhere far away as she did.
I watch her dark eyes lifting and falling,
her long, swirl of dark hair falling.
her mouth opening, my mouth mouthing,
I am love again.

Come home to me on this feast day,
Holy Family of mine. Come home.
Our song and my crying ache to be one.
Find my ear fast, before my crying is done.




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rv1
Feast of The Holy Family

Truth: I always took her side.
After dinner in our dark house
she'd disappear into the guest room.
I would hear her as she cried
and sometimes I came to the closed door:
"Are you alright, Mom?
Can you stop crying? Please stop."
It always seemed to make her sob more.

I’ve fallen in love with a woman half my age
who sings in the choir, looks like my mother,
sings like my mother, who sung to me.
I watch her eyes lifting and falling, her long,
swirl of dark hair falling. her mouth opening in song,
my mouth mouthing, I am love, I am love.

My family, uprooted family, broken family
I am always walking away from, come home
to me on this feast day of The Holy Family.
Speak to me words that breathe life into
my sickness, my blood, my soul. My song
and my scream ache to be one sound
of water falling, of voices gurgling, slipping
over smoothed river stone, finding my ear
even though the sung words are drowned.


Original
Holy Family

Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Nobody's perfect!
I always took her side.
Most nights in our dark house
I could hear her as she cried martyr's tears
in the guest room. The sound swarmed my heart
and swallowed my soul. But my soul survived.

Holy family. Broken family.

I’ve come so far; it's been so long; I still sin.
I’ve fallen in love with a woman half my age who sings in
the choir. I watch her eyes lifting and falling, her long,
swirling dark hair falling over her breasts. My mouth,
falling open, mouths, I am love, I am love.

On this feast day of the Holy Family The congregation
stayed until the singing stopped. The organist continued on
as they filed from the pews, his fingers fluttering over the keys,
all stops pulled, the pedals under his feet throbbing
to be heard, searching for perfect thunder and light.

Holy family. Broken family.

Do me no favors. I wander the world
forever walking away from the sound
of spoken words that tried to take
my breath away. I go away and away.
My sickness and my health are one.
What I have done and failed to do are one.
My song and my scream are one.
Water streams like the voices echoing
against the marble stone, finding my ear
even though the words are broken.


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[Jim Moonan]

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Yesterday was last year. I've taken last year's pile of four poems I tried to turn into one and paired it down to two. It's a new year.


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[Jim Moonan]

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I again must apologize for the continuing changes/deletions. I think now, as it turns out, this was the one poem I wanted to write. I'm happy to have it sink now that I've whittled down to this one.
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[David Callin]

Hi Jim. I think I would get more out of this if I knew the backstory better - so does that story (or stories?) need to be more upfront in the poem? - but I got a lot out of it anyway.

I am wondering what the fourth section adds here. I like the way the third section finishes, but you might find that, if you go back to there, you find a different, better way to end it.

But you might not.

Still, this might at least kick-start some further thoughts on the poem. I hope so.

Cheers

David

[W T Clark]

Well I'm glad you cut those other things Jim but I still think this poem requires a lot of reworking. I do not think it has imagined a mind outside of that which created it. The events it describes are blurry and indefinite where they should be sharp; its refrain of "Holy family. Broken family" falls flat because we are given no real idea what it is refering to: what family? how "broken"? The later passages are vague and fragmentary where they should cohere with the earlier sections. Maybe their fragmentariness would be less grating if we had a stronger, more sharper understanding of the family events that have influenced the narrator's guilt. The woman he has fallen in love with is a cipher and we have no incentive to care anyway because the narrative is so vague.

I said somewhere else that when your poetry abandons sentimentality, abandons the high, arch "poetic" need to be deep, it strikes me as much more alive and measured; well this poem strikes me as a move in the opposite direction: a kind of stream-of-consiousness flow with some holy concepts thrown in. I would stop worrying about deepness and start worrying about sharpness. There is an excoriating idea for a poem hidden somewhere here.

Hope this helps.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by W T Clark

Well I'm glad you cut those other things Jim but I still think this poem requires a lot of reworking. I do not think it has imagined a mind outside of that which created it. The events it describes are blurry and indefinite where they should be sharp; its refrain of "Holy family. Broken family" falls flat because we are given no real idea what it is refering to: what family? how "broken"? The later passages are vague and fragmentary where they should cohere with the earlier sections. Maybe their fragmentariness would be less grating if we had a stronger, more sharper understanding of the family events that have influenced the narrator's guilt. The woman he has fallen in love with is a cipher and we have no incentive to care anyway because the narrative is so vague.

I said somewhere else that when your poetry abandons sentimentality, abandons the high, arch "poetic" need to be deep, it strikes me as much more alive and measured; well this poem strikes me as a move in the opposite direction: a kind of stream-of-consiousness flow with some holy concepts thrown in. I would stop worrying about deepness and start worrying about sharpness. There is an excoriating idea for a poem hidden somewhere here.

Hope this helps.

I agree with a lot of this. There's interesting language and phrases in this that I enjoyed, but I felt like my attention was being pulled in different directions, and it didn't cohere, or coagulate into a whole that I could see.

Another thing you could do vis-a-vis sharpness is continue to shroud the whole, but pare it back into it's most essential parts, and interesting language. But I think you'd still want to hint at some kind of narrative.

[John Riley]

Jim, I think and have to say that I don't see a poem until the last stanza and that is so much better than what comes before. It's sort of weird. The top two are full of dark houses and "martyr's tears" and swarm and swallow. I guess the second one is an announcement of faith and I don't want to seem to be mocking that but for me there is nothing that attaches.

Then the last one starts like a knife flick. It doesn't need anything that comes before. In my reading, it's as though the top two are revving the motor until the car warms up.

I hope this isn't too much but that is what I see. I hope it helps.

[Nick McRae]

Originally Posted by Nick McRae

I agree with a lot of this. There's interesting language and phrases in this that I enjoyed, but I felt like my attention was being pulled in different directions, and it didn't cohere, or coagulate into a whole that I could see.

Another thing you could do vis-a-vis sharpness is continue to shroud the whole, but pare it back into it's most essential parts, and interesting language. But I think you'd still want to hint at some kind of narrative.

Thinking a little more about cohering into a whole, and having more of a focused narrative, I'm starting to wonder if some narratives and themes are just hard to pull together. No matter how you dress them up, it's hard to turn them into a compelling story.

One of the issues I'm finding in my own writing lately is that I just can't find many topics that I'm passionate about. All of the themes I'm interested in - I've already written down. New ideas and concepts are hard to make work because I just don't care about them that much, and they're difficult to make interesting.

But take something like Michael Cantor's recent poem about his wife. That's stunning subject material, which is bound to give you a resonant poem.

So if there's no overly strong central narrative, maybe we're left with focused, stunning language to pull the poem through.

Jim, when I look at this poem there is a lot to like re: language, but along with a bit of focus, I wonder if there is also an underlying chord of negativity which is a hard sell for a reader.

I think, generally, when people read anything they're hoping for an uplift or dopamine hit. And when a poem offers that it can go a long way in how it reads.

So maybe it's a question of whether you're writing this for you or for others (it sounds like it's for you). I've had a similar thing with some of my writing - poems that were absolutely pleasant and interesting for me to write, but when they were in front of the eyes of others it just looked like I was depressed.