[oliver murray]

Tim admits to being somewhat mischievous and describes any approval of the poem as "uncritical" and the more disapproving comments as "closely reasoned and argued."
In my view Janet, and Terese as well, were just redressing the balance, to a small extent.

Janet,

thank you for your detailed comments. I am too tired and bleary-eyed to reply in full tonight, but shall do so tomorrow.

Terese,

Apologies, I posted this, I thought, over an hour ago. thank you for joining in here and for your detailed comments. I can't quite see what is wrong with "enthusiasts" myself, per se, but it adds nothing to the piece and I have deleted the lines you suggest, and I hope this meets some of Clive's objection as well. Your reading is close to my own, in general, but this is not to say Clive's and Robert's are not valid too, on the basis of the text. I see no reason why critics cannot have a discussion here, if they want to, on points where they disagree. This is an early piece of mine but I am quite fond of it and want to make it as good as possible. thank you for your help.

Regards to all,

Oliver.

[Alan Sullivan]

Tim has asked me to look in at this thread. I had no idea that I would encounter such a protracted controversy. I have read the poem closely, and I'll make a few comments on it. I have not read all the subsequent discussion, so please forgive any redundant remarks.

First, a general observation: the poem made me a little uneasy about its form, because much of it looked and felt more like metrical verse than free. I think Clive's proposal to relineate would relieve this effect. The shorter lines suit the phrasing of the poem somehow.

I came to a stop at "hard leaf" for the same reasons that Clive did. I see this point has been argued back and forth. I would add that gold leaf is not hard; it's soft. Gold is malleable.

The final image of the poem seemed needlessly murky to me. It may be a mistake to swerve off in that direction, rather than complete the more promising metaphor suggested by "ancient language."

Tim and Clive both may harbor some prejudice toward short lines. Nevertheless, I hope Oliver will reconsider.

Alan

P.S. Oh, I see he has reconsidered. Also I forgot to mention that I would have been content with the Irish word for spade. Context would have made it comprehensible.

[Alder Ellis]

Hi Oliver,

I also assumed a connection between the marks on the gold pin and the grandfather's shorthand. In fact, I discerned a rather formidable metaphorical scheme in the poem, which apparently has nothing to do with your intentions. Oh well! I'll invoke the old "intentional fallacy" doctrine which asserts the irrelevance of authorial intentions and claim that the following is the "real meaning" of the poem.

The poem presents two apparently divergent metaphorical analogues of the grandfather's short-hand notes: the water which "without prejudice, records the sky," presumably much as the grandfather recorded data in his police notes; and the buried pin with its "repeating curve design" presumably resembling the look of short-hand. The water-reflections are ephemeral ("real-time," as Robert put it); the buried pin is relatively permanent. The water-reflections are immediately intelligible; the buried pin, by association with the "ancient language" aspect of short-hand, & by virtue of deriving from an ancient & to us alien cultural context, is relatively unintelligible. And so on . . . the two metaphorical threads suggest complementary ironies with respect to the theme of "what marks we leave." The original fullness of meaning which the marks have at the moment of their recording (in the consciousness of the recorder) perishes with the moment. The marks that survive are inevitably more or less cryptic remains of that originating moment of consciousness.

Not that I would seriously advance this as the real meaning of the poem. It's more like an "emergent phenomenon" in the poem. Other things in the poem lead in other directions.

Anyway, I haven't quite read the whole thread, but I did think Clive's relineation of the opening lines was pretty impressive, sort of like reclaiming energy that had been dissipated. However, this is a matter of style. It seemed like a marked improvement, but perhaps not in the style of Oliver Murray. A different feel to the energy. Something to wrestle with.

Jacob wrestling with the angel is a fitting emblem of the poet wrestling with the critic (or reader).

[RCL]

I've enjoyed this thread throughout. And AE, I'm impressed there are still those around who know Wimsatt's The Verbal Icon! I'd bet you're also conversant with The Well Wrought Urn and Seven Types of Ambiguity.

Cheers,
An Old New Critic
(so trained at Michigan)

[Clive Watkins]

And what about I. A. Richards’s Practical Criticism, which, though first published as long ago as 1929, ought to be required reading for every member here, particularly his analysis of the responses of his readers to his selection of poems?

Clive

PS Note to Clive: Re-read it at once.

[RCL]

Clive, agreed! It's a gem. I routinely taught it in intro to criticism courses.

Cheers,

------------------
Ralph

[wendy v]

Interesting discussion. Hey, where are the free versers ? !

I'd be interested in hearing why Oliver chose to write this particular poem in free form. I'm not challenging his decision; just curious about his process. I can only speak of my own experience, which is characteristically simple: sometimes a poem insists upon it. If I had to dig a little into my own process, I'd say it isn't so much that any particular poem won't 'fit' into a regular meter, (we can all force anything into form), but that the poem, for reasons which are particular to the poem at hand, and mainly having to do with wedding sound and sense, (or maybe even having to do with the slant of the sun), is asking to pave its own, irregular way. My own instinct is that this poem does seem to want to find a kind of earthy, alternating, more regular form, though I'm aware of my own leanings, and my perceptions might be clouded by a close familiarity with Oliver's formal verse.

I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts, particularly those free versers and ambidextrians out there.


wendy

[oliver murray]

Wendy,

This was one of the first poems I ever wrote, when I began about two years ago, and, at the time, I was not terribly aware of metric verse, although I grew up with it and when I did try it, I took to it quickly. I sometimes find a free verse poem can be easily converted, but
sometimes it resists, and vice versa. It is not so much a matter of easy or difficult as easy or impossible. I have not yet tried it with this poem, but I am trying to prepare a book manuscript at the moment and would like to have about ten free verse poems in it, if I can, for variety. For instance, I wrote a poem "A Boy's Story" around that earlier time, which I later wrote as a metric poem and called it "Early Erotica." It went down well, on Eratosphere, but, before I could send it out, it was accepted and published in the free verse version, and I will probably leave it that way in the book, if ever, for that reason. Free verse is still a challenge to me, in a way that metric isn't, so I niggle away at it.

Regards,

Oliver.

[oliver murray]

Alan,

Many thanks for reading and commenting. you will see, in my reply to Wendy, why this is free verse, and I will almost certainly give it a go in metric. I am just pushed for time at the moment. My only reservation about "slean" is that it should have a "fada" or "long accent" over the "e" and is pronounced "slane" which is nice, but would probably not be known even to most Irish people now. Maybe it wouldn't be important, but my impression is that Irish poets have avoided the word to date, but, what the hell, maybe I'll go with it.

AE

Many thanks for your very interesting reading. When I wrote this first I had actually no idea what the marks on the ornament were, or did not visalize them, so I cannot say I saw them as other than marks, but I do see your point here, which is an interesting one. My poem was relatively simple, so far as I know, new marks disappear, old marks may return, but man disappears anyway, with little trace - what are the marks we leave? I do appreciate you reading and commenting on this piece.

Regards,

Oliver.

[alvaro.alarcon]

I'll post here because I think a fresh face would be good for the conversation.

I've wanted to comment on Oliver's poem since it was put up, but have always felt unprepared to do so. I'm restless about what the poem means, but as it stands now the poem has much history, looking back, without that feeling that when one looks back from one's place in the present the past is often quite distinctly, even irrationally, different from the position in the present. Hence the idea of the "Good Old Days" or the "Dark Days of Old."

Working on this poem certainly is a rich experience and I can understand why Oliver wants to revisit it, almost in the manner a grown man wants to revisit a place where he often hung out with his friends in his youth.

Can the poem give more regarding the distorting influence of the passage of time? I always feel that looking back, I gain perspective on an event that I lacked at the time of the event and lose other forms of perspective that I once had.

Memory is challenging. Good luck!

I'll reread the poem again now, and hopefully I've put a lighter spin on the conversation.

Cheers,
Alvaro

[This message has been edited by alvaro.alarcon (edited January 29, 2004).]