[Matt Q]

.
In the place of lions

In place of lions, just their white bone jaws:
mousetraps of teeth, and he the rodent prey.
Daniel, he hears them hiss, whose fishhook claws
rake at you now? Have you no god to stay
these lithe new beasts that slaver at your squeals?
He tries to run. His pale, unblemished skin
has never learned the songs of flesh that heals.
It glows. A light to guide the nightmares in.

Morning arrives in waves that sculpt the sand
to feline shapes and worse. Now Daniel prays
for armour plate, a carapace, a hand
to clasp in his against the fang-sharp days.
Beneath his quilt, less blessed than other men,
he huddles naked in his homemade den.

.

title was, "After the intervention"

S1L2 "him" -> "he"
S1L5 "dark" -> "lithe"

[mignon ledgard]

Matt,

Is it about an adult's circumcision? Ouch.

It rides the sonnet, versus the sonnet rising above its content. I admire this.

The first strophe, a good depiction of a nightmare, a dexterous 'untidy' picture - the taste of a puzzle, as dreams tend to be. You’re good at these..

The closing hits harder than morning light usurps the space of an alcove. How strange to say, “Beautiful, Matt,” to such lonely feeling that comes through.



Sigh..
~mignon

[Julie Steiner]

I'm reading this as an intervention of the "Get your life together, get a job, we're not going to enable you anymore" kind, in which the target of the intervention is being judged for moral shortcomings, when actually his failure to just "snap out of it" is beyond his control due to depression or a medical inability to comply with the interventionists' wishes.

Overall, I like the imagery, except for

     Morning arrives in waves that sculpt the sand
     to feline shapes and worse.

I am probably not supposed to be picturing a litter box at this, but in a feline context, it's impossible for me not to.

[John Riley]

I'll need to come back to this, Matt, but I'm reading Daniel from the famous lion's den. Then again, maybe my immersion in religious history is clouding my reading.

[R. Nemo Hill]

Matt, I love how the poems divides the nightmares between night, S1, and morning, in S2. And I love how the biblical myth serves as the foundation of all the cascading images. I, personally, read the nightmares as a post-intervention state assailing someone in a hallucinatory state of detoxification. But, really, such suffering is archetypal no matter what its cause, and I love how such suffering brutally interrogates its avatar, Daniel, challenging him, tearing at him, re-imagining his endurance, his beasts, his den. Paradoxically, such non-literal diversions from a mythic tale prove its vitality. I guess when I first read this, quickly, I sensed the obscurity that some will no doubt find here. But coming back more attentively now, it seems clear as a bell.

Those last two lines are an astounding dénouement.

And, as usual, each of your poems is an utterly unique creation.

Nemo

[Rick Mullin]

Hi Matt,

Good one. Like Julie, I read this as being about an intervention in which friends and family try to tune the guest of honor up. So, comparing the intervening parties to lions and the guest of honor to Daniel is a tremendous conceit. I love the image of yammering bone-white jaws coming at Daniel.

The first stanza is more of a slog on first and even second reading than the second, which flows nicely. This line is hard to get through reading it aloud, for example.

has never learned the songs of flesh that heals.


The s - sh - s makes for a tongue twister.

There is a transition of flow in the second stanza, which is a good thing. It's meant to be more calm and reflective and, I guess, deliberative. So I'm not for smoothing out the angst in the first. But I think it can be de-slogged here and there.

Rick

[Jim Moonan]

.
Hi Matt, It always pays off to spend time with your poems, deconstructing them to understand what is just below the surface. In this poem I found who I think the Daniel is — although it is a shared identity of Daniels to my ear: the Daniel of The Book of Daniel with his apocalyptic interpretations of dreams, and the Daniel of my childhood catechism who was fed to the lions (but I think miraculously saved by a Guardian Angel) So that is my frame of reference as I go about deciphering how to translate it to understand the personal pain that is present in the poem. The N is projecting.

I continue to wonder what the type of intervention it is. The poem clearly states that what transpires in the poem takes place after the intervention. Personally, I don’t hear it as the conventional intervention that Julie implies. I see it as a medical intervention of some type that succeeds in partially dismantling the demons, but not wholly ridding him of them. They remain at bay. It feels like something of a mashup of a strange recounting of a biblical story combined with the N’s personal struggle to stay in control of his thoughts. How the two connect is the stuff of nightmares. (I sometimes think life itself is best described as a mashup: making resonance from the dissonance).
I agree that on first reading it came across obscure and comes clearer with subsequent readings, but unlike Nemo I still haven’t found much traction to latch onto and say with any confidence I know what the poem is about. But I have a feeling. The built-in obscureness of it reflects the high symbolism that can sometimes grow from intense mental anguish, pain, etc.

But as always, I am rewarded by taking the time to let this settle and take shape, however amorphous.


.

[Carl Copeland]

I think I like this, Matt, and it deserves better than my two superficial nits:

- If you’re concerned about inveterate misreaders like me, you’ll add quotation marks to L3 and L5. I had to work back from the first question mark to realize that “Daniel” is direct address and “whose” isn’t relative. I know it’s a perverse reading; it’s just what I do.

- Strictly speaking, “him” in L2 should be “he.” It’s a fussy point of grammar that nobody gives a hoot about anymore, and I’m only mentioning it because the poem’s language is so elevated.

Sorry, but I just can’t go deeper at my current level of mental alertness.

[David Callin]

Hi Matt. I think I'm with Rick in thinking that the octet is harder going than the sestet, although "A light to guide the nightmares in" is just great. In fact the last three lines work really well for me.

Actually, the more I read the first five lines, the more I like them. Maybe it's just a matter of applying myself.

The final six seem fine, but - somehow - the sand took me by surprise. Should it?

Cheers

David

[Matt Q]

Mignon, Julie, John, Nemo, Rick, Jim, Carl and David

Many thanks everyone for your thoughts on this.

I figured this one was a bit obscure when I posted it. Still, gotta leave the reader with something to do!

I don't think the current title is working. And I wonder if its myth-level sense is coming across: that this takes place after Daniel is saved by God's (divine) intervention? The other meanings of "intervention" -- one of which I thought I wanted, but I'm having second thoughts about -- likely steer the reader too strongly, and in too many possible directions. So, I've tried another title.

At surface-level, part of what I'm hoping to get across is that the poem occurs after God has intervened to save Daniel from the lions. And the lions (or their jaws) in his dream are asking him / taunting him about the "new beasts" he now faces. I'd be interested to know if that came across. Maybe the new title works against this. I'm not sure.

Mignon,

That's definitely an interpretation I wasn't expecting! I'm pleased the dream part worked for you, and to hear you call the close beautiful; I'm glad the loneliness came through.

Julie

Not having cats, I didn't make that connection. Do your cats sculpt their shapes in the sand box? I guess they must do. I'd be happy enough an alternative to "feline". After all, the "new beasts" the lion jaws speak of are not necessarily feline. I did consider "monster shapes", but it's a bit too abstract. I also considered going with "nightmare shapes" and switching out "nightmare" in S1 for "monsters", but I like the assonance of "light", "guide", "night".

John

Yes, it's very much the Biblical Daniel I was after.

Nemo

I'm really glad you liked it, and also that you found a way to make sense of it. If it is archetypal enough that the specific interpretation doesn't matter, then I'm happy.

Rick

I'd be interested to hear what else you found hard work in S1, if you can pinpoint it. The line you quote, I personally don't have a problem with when reading aloud, but it's useful to know you do. I had toyed with "hymns" in place of "songs", which gives alliteration with "heals", but "hymns" seems too religious here; "songs" seems more primal, more human, which better contrasts with how one might cope without divine intervention. Personally I wasn't sure of "slaver at your squeals". I do want the lion jaws to be mocking Daniel, but I did wonder if "squeals" was a little awkward here, and might strike people as rhyme-driven.

Jim

I'm glad you spotted the dream-interpretation connection to Daniel. Useful to know you're left wondering what sort intervention was meant, and as above, part of the reason I removed "intervention" from the title is the question of what it means that it maybe becomes a puzzle that distracts.

Carl

Now you mention it, "he" is grammatically correct, I hadn't even clocked that. Somehow "him" just seemed natural. Though I think you're right about "he" sounding more elevated. So I've switched it. Thanks.

I had the spoken part in and then out of italics, but eventually decided I didn't need it. I'll be interested if others had the same problem you did. I am trying to workout in what way you found it ambiguous, misread it. "Daniel, he hears them hiss" seems an odd construction if it's read in the sense of "The man from Del Monte, he say yes" (that's from a British ad). Is that how you heard it? On the other issue, I'm not sure italics/speech marks would make a difference. Isn't the "whose" in "Daniel, whose fishhook claws ...", ambiguous until you read beyond the line break anyway? Maybe I will go back to italics, but some reason I currently prefer it without.

David,

I'm glad S1 grew on you on rereading. Why sand? Well, mostly it goes with "waves". Morning comes in waves, and waves shape the sand. I could go with "land" instead. Also, I guess, the sea is a symbol of the unconscious and here he's emerging from sleep onto the shores of consciousness. Hmm. I guess "land" could also work? Sand is more sculptable, though "land" is less likely to evoke a cat litter tray to Julie!

Oh, and maybe I have rather inaccurate mental images of the whole Old Testament taking place in or near a desert

Thanks again all.

Matt