[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

SEASON OF FIRE

Abundant fuel
season on the forest floor.
The promise of fire
season in the crackle of grass.
The smell of smoke
season in summer’s hammer.

No rain!
season The ground is dying,
Shrinking inward,
season into itself.
Crops of rock
season rise from the earth. .

Leaves curl
season in the molten light,
opening the canopies,
season dappling the shade.
Their susurrate breath
season whispers rage.

The latent fulminate
season in eucalyptus leaves
is ready to detonate,
season ready to explode.
The Devil winks,
season wishing us well

[RCL]

Jan,

My first visual response is to the stanzas flickering like flames, and then I see the increasing desiccation of the land inevitably sucked dry as fuel for a demonic fire.

Pray for rain,

[Michael Cantor]

I like the poem, but susurrate and latent fulminate are totally out of step with the language in the rest of the poem (latent is okay, actually, if it modified a less pretentious noun), and took me out of the poem, and I'd suggest replacing them with the simpler but dramatic language of the first two stanzas.

[Tony Barnstone]

I enjoyed it. Not so sure about the call-out to mister Devil at the end. It seems an easy out for the poem. I feel that the issue of forest fires is deeper than the old devil-in-the-woods trope, having more to do with human encroachment on areas that regularly renew themselves and fertilize the soil via wildfires--bad for humans and good for nature. But beyond theme, I note that in this loose meter, something like old English stress meter (2 beats, caesura, 2 beats) you drop the meter at the end

The latent fulminate
season in eucalyptus leaves
is ready to detonate,
season ready to explode.

in these lines, which have 3 beats each. It feels like you are breaking the metrical promise you made earlier in the poem, to me.

Having said that, I enjoyed the language and imagery!
Best, Tony

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Thanks Ralph, yes we pray for rain we have been relatively lucky. We have had enough rain to give us feed into summer. Though our dam levels are falling. We are having heatwave conditions over the last few days nudging 110 degrees on your scale.

Hi Michael,

I tend to disagree by the Mark Twain the right word in the right place, susurrate is apposite and exact fulminate in the noun and the verb fits perfectly. I do not feel that they are out of register. This is not the easy speech of cattle yard and stable.

I am not dismissing your concerns but at present defending my usage. Thank you and I am glad that you liked it.

Hi Tony,

Yes we have encroached and so we live with them. There is no point in arguing with Nature it is always a pointless exercise. I’m not aware of any devil in the woods trope so I guess that doesn’t apply but my usage here is the devil being the king of all conflagration and a crown fire is probably the closest that we will come to Hell on earth, so I think it can stand.

It is in an Anglo Saxon format and based on alliteration two in one hemistich and one in the other The way I form this my alliteration’s will not always be the leading consonant but at times internal and as you say two main stresses per hemistich.

I am pleased that you enjoyed it, thank you

[Tony Barnstone]

Hey Jan,

Oh, I get that you are writing stress meter, but I was having trouble reading the lines in that stanza as only two strong beats, especially

SEAson READy to exPLODE.

I always imagine shouting the lines across a parking lot.

Best, T

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Hi again Tony in reading AS the alliterated stresses take precedence over any other stresregards

Jan

[Alexandra Baez]

Hi, Jan. I think that you could be a bit less telly in this poem in spots and strengthen the poem thereby. For example, in S1, you could simply mention/describe the types of flammable material on the forest floor without specifying that it is fuel. And in S2, in describing the ground, you could keep the “shrinking inward . . . “ part and add a little something extra like this but not mention explicitly that the ground is dying or even that there has been no rain. If you were to do a good enough job with such unannotated descriptions, they would do all that’s needed to paint the scene you’re trying to paint and lead the reader to the correct conclusions. We would be drawn more deeply into the experience of the poem by being actively involved in the deduction process. You’ve already pointed us in the right way with the title, so you could get away with a lot of pure images in the poem itself.

There’s an extra period at the end of S2.

I’m not sure I mind the three words Michael cited in the poem per se, but I think perhaps it’s their quick succession that may feel a bit much to me. I hadn’t heard “sussurate” before but clearly, it’s an appropriate description on a pure definition level, at least. “Fulminate” in noun form was new to me, but you give enough clues to help with this.

I really like the last line myself—it’s my favorite. I also like “summer’s hammer,” but I’m not sure exactly what it is—the heat, I guess?

[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Hi Alexandra,

We use no other descriptor for ‘fuel’ so to express it differently would take away from authenticity.

I hear what you are saying but I feel I have arrived at the correct tenor.

My grammatical housekeeping always leaves much to be desired. Thank you.

The hammer? When walking through tree shadows into full sun the sun hammers down. Hammers the dogs flat as well.