[Alexandra Baez]

Revision

Window, March


Oh weeping window, braced against the crisp
young day! March has caprices—now it lifts
upon your face in mist, then beads and drips.

Just yesterday, it greeted me with clear
views through your panes and into shining air.
Each morning, all of life seems capsuled here

within your little picture’s latest shifts
to wakened sun or winter-laden wisps
of coldness hesitating on the cusp

of spring. And only one thing stays the same:
round every pull of whim, round every claim
of weather—your illusionary frame!


Revisions:
S1 L1--"Oh" was "O"
S1 L3--"then" was "in"
S2 L1--"Just" was "but"
S3 L2 was "to lilting sun or wan, enshrouded lisps"
S4 L4--em dash was ellipsis, "illusion-bearing" was "dilapidated"



Original

Window, March


Oh, weeping window, braced against the crisp
young day! March has caprices—now, it lifts
upon your face in mist, in beads and drips.

These mornings, I arise not knowing which
will greet me—scenes of shrouded depths, or clear
views through your panes and into yellow air.
Each picture clasps me with a cocksure grip,

as if the whole of life were bosomed there—
in lilts of sun, but also subtle lisps
of coldness hesitating on the cusp

of spring. And only one thing stays the same
round every pull of whim, round every claim
of weather—your dilapidated frame!

[Jim Moonan]

.
Quickly, because I'm on my way out...

I like everything about it, and there's a lot to like.

I picked up on/liked the assonance first; the quietness of the "ss's/sh's/sp's".

I easily found the rhythm that runs fluidly throughout.

The slant/off rhymes are my favorite kind of rhyme.

The imagery in the first stanza is as lucid as the tangible thing you're describing in your mind's eye... Really beautiful writing.

The poem's opening "weeping window" is a powerful image/metaphor and one that I can't recall ever seeing/hearing in poetry put quite that way. Windows are a common, but one's that are animated to be weeping are quite another.

The poem gives every indication it is heading toward a somber end — and then you abruptly change your mood to be distracted by the shoddiness of the window frame. I was really surprised by that and know for certain there is a different ending that you had in mind but veered away from that would have been as effective as the surprise ending.

Beautiful rumination on condensation : )

I'll come back.

.

[Julie Steiner]

Hi, Lexa!

On the whole, I like the conceit, but I am utterly distracted by trying to figure out why you have chosen not to make this 14 lines, and why the rhyme scheme is so unpredictable.

I suppose that the technical unpredictability matches the unpredictability of March's weather, as seen through the window, but my left brain is so engaged with analyzing the mechanics that my right brain is having a very hard time being swept away by the poem.

I was also a little distracted by the "yellow air," which I personally associate with pollution (wildfire smoke, etc.). Perhaps "golden"?

I hope some of these thoughts are helpful, or at least prompt some discussion that might be. [Oh, good, I cross-posted with Jim's view.]

[Carl Copeland]

Lovely, Alexandra. A few thoughts:

Did you intentionally choose the exclamation “Oh” over vocative “O”? I’d have expected the latter, but you may be playing with my expectations as you clearly are with “weeping window.” Every other time I read it, I get “willow” and have to start over!

I’d drop the comma after “now,” but only because I hear no pause there.

To clasp with a grip is borderline redundant, but it’s really “cocksure” that startled me in that line. I suppose you do want the sexual innuendo—especially in close proximity to “bosomed.”

I didn’t experience the left brain–right brain dissonance that Julie did, but it occurred to me that you could address all of her concerns by cutting S2L3 and giving each tercet a triple rhyme. Something like this (though I couldn’t find a rhyme for S2L1):

These mornings,
          shrouded depths, or scenes so clear
it seems the whole of life is bosomed there.

Each picture clasps me with a cocksure grip,
with lilts of sun, but also subtle lisps
of coldness hesitating on the cusp

That would also help foreground the internal rhyme of “clasps” (like “mist” in S1). I suspect, though, as Julie did, that the “technical unpredictability” is more play with expectations.

If you did have an alternative ending, as Jim suggests, you chose the right one for me.

[Roger Slater]

I like this a lot. My only thought is maybe change "lisps" to "wisps."

[Glenn Wright]

I like this poem—particularly the contrast of changing nature and static window.
Your opening line personifies the window by describing the condensation on it as “weeping,” but then I find myself wanting to know why the window is weeping. Is it overcome with joy at the return of warmth and life? Is it grieving its own lack of participation in that new life?

[Carl Copeland]

Alexandra, I like the new S2, but am less thrilled about S3. A quiddity that lilts sun and smudges lisps is just too murky for poor me.

On a more trivial note, a dash was the right mark for the last line. In my philosophy of punctuation, an ellipsis stands in for missing words or a lapse of time.

[Rick Mullin]

Very good, A.

You capture seasonal transition and actually get the temperature as well.

Both are enhanced by the way you handle the monorhyme stanzas, which are done well in any case with the slants. Using the same basic rhyme in the first and third stanza, rather than coming up with something new each time, is a good move. There is a vowel sound affinity between the second and fourth stanza schemes as well. Steps forward and back and forward. A blossoming transformation.

And this has been a weekend of excellent poem endings ( referring to yours and Julie's ). The poem, like a great many poems I suppose, frames a picture. Here the frame itself is significant.

Rick

[Alexandra Baez]

Jim, thanks, and I’m so delighted that you’re responding to so many of the things I was trying to do. Yeah, “weeping window”—Carl is right that “weeping willow” had something to do with the inspiration for that.

I’m surprised, though, that you think “The poem gives every indication it is heading toward a somber end.” That’s actually not what I’d had in mind at any point! In fact, the first version of the ending went,

of spring. Each dawn, I drink in everything
you bring, oh kitchen window! More, I claim
the whole dear life beyond your tiny frame.

But I guess I can see why you anticipated gloom, since I’d headed from “lilts of sun” to “subtle lisps of coldness hesitating on the cusp of spring.” As to the “dilapidated frame,” that was just factual reportage, but I’ve since reflected that in terms of symbolism, it could suggest that all our experiences of life are relative and hence potentially misleading in part because the apparatus through which we view them is itself subject to the weaknesses of relativity.

Julie, I’m glad you like the conceit pretty well, and you got me thinking on the other stuff. I’d been okay with the rambling rhymes—it’s a device I’m quite fond of and have been emboldened even more to pursue since becoming acquainted with the work of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (a pioneer and a master of that approach). However, I never was too content with that one four-line stanza in the midst of three-line ones—I like a look of order on the page. So Carl’s take on your suggestion struck me as an opportunity to seek a workaround for that, if not for the rhymes themselves. In the process, I did try regularizing the rhyme scheme and I now feel that it works well; in the repetition of rhyme sounds in Ss 1 and 3, the desired feeling of unpredictability is still conveyed, which I had not anticipated.

Why is it that so many poets seem to feel there’s something inherently magical or even compulsory (given close alternatives) about 14 lines? Yes, they characterize the sonnet, but does that by definition make the use of 13 or 15 lines in other types of poems less effective than 14? At no point was I conscious of choosing or not choosing to make this poem 14 lines. I was simply trying to convey what I wanted to in whatever amount of space that could be most effectively done. That being said, in trying a rework based on your and Carl’s ideas, I was able to trim some fat out of S2 and am now left with 12 lines. I'm hoping that the new all-tercet form preempts any readers' questions about why there are not 14 lines instead.

Yeah, I’d thought that about “yellow air” as well, but I have been so struck by the diaphanous light yellow color of the morning light outside my window that I hated to lose that reference. However, another potential conflict with “yellow” that I'd become aware of is that I was using it to help describe a scene that I’ve just called “clear.” “Golden” would conjure a much richer tone than I had in mind, so I’ve gone with “shining,” at least for now. Thanks for goading that (I think) dual improvement!

Yes, your thoughts have been instrumental in my working toward what I believe is a ground-level improvement in this whole poem, so thank you very much.

Carl, thanks! I had started out with “o” but just became self-conscious about its archaic feel and so I changed it just because I felt that I had to. But I think I’m going to change back now—after all, if it’s okay with you, how bad can it be? And yes, “weeping willow” was on my mind, too, but the window was indeed dripping, so it was not much of a stretch to call it so.

Okay on the comma—dropped.

In the way I had things laid out, it seemed there was no way around saying both “clasp” and “grip,” but you’re right, it felt a bit ponderous. A rework of this phrasing came naturally with the overall revision. I had zero intent of sexual innuendo with “cocksure” or “bosomed.” How could sexual innuendo find a legitimate place in this poem? "Cocksure" derives from the word for rooster, and both words simply conveyed, I hoped, something else that I wanted to. However, in my recent revision, “cocksure” has disappeared for other reasons.

Thanks a lot for your brainstorm on a different layout for this. As you’ve seen, I’ve experimented with it and have liked the results well enough to continue tinkering. Sorry I’ve been doing this in real time here without documenting each change; before I even saw your last comment, much of the “quiddity that lilts sun and smudges lisps” had already gone. I've commented more on the rework to Julie, above.

I’m glad you like the ending, too.

About the dash in the last line—did you notice that in the revision, I added a colon at the end of the first line of that stanza? I realized that without it, this stanza wasn’t very precisely saying what it was trying to: I didn’t mean “round” to refer to the circumstances surrounding the whims of weather, but only to the location of the frame around these scenes. I’d thought that with that colon, the dash was no longer appropriate—no? To me, an ellipsis can be used to suggest a dramatic pause leading up to a ringing conclusion, which what I was trying for here in lieu of a comma (although I actually preferred the feel of the dash in V1).

Roger, thanks, I’m very pleased. I know that I’ve used “lisps” oddly here, and yet to me I hoped that it seemed oddly right, and more striking than “wisps.” I also like its alliteration with “lilting.”

Glen, welcome! I’m glad you got into the poem. I can understand your reaction to the “weeping”; I hadn’t had anything in mind with that word besides conveying 1) dripping and 2) the gloom of late winter/early spring. I’m not sure I can flesh the latter out any more, but it’s worth thinking about.

Rick, I’m glad you like it, especially the repetition of rhyme sounds in Ss 1 and 3. I agree, I think it helps create a sense of the back and forth that I'm talking about. Even though most of these words are one of two pronunciations of “a,” I didn’t feel a vowel sound affinity between Ss 2 and 4, but I’m glad that you see a connection.

I’m pleased that the ending works for you, as well. Endings, along with titles, used to be the parts of any poem I wrote that I struggled with the most. I’m looking forward to commenting on your and Julie’s great new posts.

[Alexandra Baez]

Okay, I think my revision based on Julie's and Carl's comments has now finally stabilized enough to formally invite feedback on it.

Carl, I'd still be interested in your answer to this:

About the dash in the last line—did you notice that in the revision, I added a colon at the end of the first line of that stanza? I realized that without it, this stanza wasn’t very precisely saying what it was trying to: I didn’t mean “round” to refer to the circumstances surrounding the whims of weather, but only to the location of the frame around these scenes. I’d thought that with that colon, the dash was no longer appropriate—no? To me, an ellipsis can be used to suggest a dramatic pause leading up to a ringing conclusion, which what I was trying for here in lieu of a comma (although I actually preferred the feel of the dash in V1).

Thanks!